Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#241

Post by visarga » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #206

uh_uh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but she threatened Google with a lawsuit _before_ any of the current drama happened (excerpt from her email with regards to the recent firing/resignation): > I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herlle…

Since when do people use "gaslighting" this way? She and colleagues seem to use it left and right on Twitter regarding all kinds of behaviors. I thought it had a quite specific meaning in the context of narcissist abusers intentionally making their victims doubt their own sanity.

They are using storytelling and emotion as a replacement for study and analysis - the preferred method of identity politics.

Identity politics means individuality-less politics, where individuals are seen as mere parts of a group, or symbols for the common suffering of the group, and not by themselves. You hurt one you hurt the whole group, is the way they are thinking.

We have seen this recently in the Timnit vs Yann LeCun and Pedro vs Anima scandals, even the allies of wokes would be accused of being racist the moment they dared express a slightly more nuanced opinion. You have to approve the lead woke and not add anything or you're instantly the enemy.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#242

Post by cbozeman » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

fatbird wrote: post #194

cbozeman wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases. That sounds like more of a nightmare scenario than having to deal with this person... Its hard to even know where to begin with how something like this could go off the rails easily.

Indeed. Imagine how people of color feel at the possibility of an AI running ever-larger parts of society that has racism built right into it at the start because the people building it are blind to anything but the most obvious instances of it.

Like entirely too many people, you're confusing "racism" with "prejudice". They're not the same thing.

Actual racism is very rare in America. Prejudice is commonplace and has a lot more to do with the inherent tribalism of humanity than it does actual malice for someone's "race". And to take it even further, I think if people were honest, what they really dislike is cultural differences that vary dramatically from theirs.

To me this is just like trans issues... we'll never get anywhere significant with this stuff, because in order to come up with meaningful answers, you have to ask meaningful, hard questions. No one wants to ask these kinds of questions, because no one wants to have to deal with the answers that may come up, because that will also invite further study and further difficult, unpleasant conversations.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#243

Post by lawnchair_larry » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #217

pontus wrote: post #99

My god, people need to calm down. I understand that some may be upset about things their employer does and that's well within their rights. If their employer is knowingly engaging in illegal activity then by all means, be a whistle blower and set ultimatums, but this has gone too far. If you have a problem with the motivations of your employer or how it handles various sensitive issues then start preparing for interv…

> but this has gone too far. If you have a problem with the motivations of your employer or how it handles various sensitive issues then start preparing for interviews and leave the company! Why? It might be true that in the US the system is such that corporations are the property of their shareholders to do with as they please within the law, but that is a construct of a specific political process (e.g. [1]), and a…

This comment (and these foolish entitled SJW employees) fail to observe that companies like Google only exist in America in no small part due to that fact. No other country has produced companies that are even remotely comparable, and the US produces them regularly. Assuming, of course, that one’s preferred alternative doesn’t involve serving the CCP.

Maybe some folks prefer it that way, but they seem all too happy to compartmentalize the reality of the situation and let their ridiculously permissive (and coddling) employer pad their bank account, make them gourmet meals, babysit their kids, and do their laundry.

Google screwed up by creating an environment that fosters perpetual children. They’re fools to put up with this behavior. Walkouts should be a one way door. Call their bluff. They will not quit in any significant numbers. Not once they realize how everyone else lives.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#244

Post by hnuser123456 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

tomdell wrote: post #179

uh_uh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excerpt from Jeff Dean's email: > Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are e…

That claim by Jeff Dean has been more or less debunked. The real reason that Google demanded the paper not be published is that it is critical of models underlying the company’s fundamental business - the whole message from Jeff Dean is very misleading and states a bunch of other, unrelated things as the “real reason”.

AI is far more energy efficient than creating the incalcuable number of human programmers required to directly program the same solutions. Writing NLP code with non-ML methods, to the same level of quality, would be essentially impossible without an operation on the scale of warfare.

Even with the efficiency benefits that it already has, we all know ML still stands to be further optimized, and a lot of people are working on it.

Comparing the exponential increase of "intelligence" of computers versus our own, computers will be as smart as humans with similar energy efficiency in around 50 years, and they require no cars, food, etc. It will be hard to criticize the efficiency of ML when it is already moreso than our biological selves, but it will be done, and we will be wholly outsmarted.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#245

Post by dannyw » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #139

woah wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google tried to prevent her from publishing a paper, which is outside of their normal practice, then dissembled about what happened (pretending internal reviewers are anonymous, for example)

Again, I'm not really trying to defend Google one way or the other. At the end of the day it seemed like Gebru published a paper that was quite critical of how Google intends to make a sizable portion of their revenue, and anyone should understand that when you do that in a large company, it's going to get extra scrutiny. And it could very well be that the whole purpose of Google's "ethical AI" team in the first plac…

Maybe we live in completely different worldviews, but an academic on an Ethical AI team’s primary obligation should be academic honest and integrity.

If the truth damages the company, then that is the company’s fault, not the academic’s fault.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#246

Post by baron_harkonnen » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117

Wow, Google's ethical AI group sounds like the most toxic group of individuals I've ever heard of. I'm going to sidestep the debate about whether Gebru was "fired" or she "resigned", because that debate primarily centers on how one defines the words. But clearly she did do this: She sent a letter that made a bunch of (IMO) outrageous demands, outrageous because it essentially attacked other people at the company, and…

Even reading just your own, clearly biased, summary, it sounds like you are describing "worker solidarity".

People just shrug when "leadership" at a company fires people randomly, places bad managers on good teams, demands unwarranted apologies from workers and makes everyone obey arbitrary demands.

But when a group of employees try to take any of these powers into their own hands they are immediately written off as toxic.

Tech workers have been fooled into thinking that they are a respected and privileged type of labor. Anyone who has been in the industry long enough has already seen this degrade over the years. A decade ago engineers made much more decisions at companies, had some say in the quality of code and technical direction companies were in. Software devs are still paid well but are increasingly told to keep their heads down and focus on code, and zero consideration will be given to any technical concerns if they remotely impact some PMs quarterly goals.

As boot camps ship out more and more "good enough" engineers, and a "just ship it" mentality dominants, quality technical skills become less and less of an advantage.

Technical workers squandered their advantage by thinking that some how they really were better than everyone else, and that they would forever enjoy easy employment, high salaries, respect at work and comfortable working condition. In a few years I think most technical workers will see that in the long run Amazon's engineers and Amazon's warehouse employees become more and more a like.

Sadly, comments like this show most engineers will still rabidly support management rather than risk rocking the boat, deluded into believing it will extend their privilege in the marketplace just a bit longer.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#247

Post by uh_uh » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

AlanYx wrote: post #198

uh_uh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but she threatened Google with a lawsuit _before_ any of the current drama happened (excerpt from her email with regards to the recent firing/resignation): > I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herlle…

That lawsuit threat is really a critical contextual element here. Having a manager who's openly threatening to sue the same company she acts as a manager for creates a host of complicated legal issues for the corporation.

It honestly baffles me. I also expect had I - or any of the people I know - made similar threats, we would be fired on very short notice. The fact that Google just let this past threat slide seems highly unusual to me.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#248

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

fatbird wrote: post #176

xenihn wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her spat with the Facebook guy was before that.

That was a public argument on her core area of research. Google literally hired her to do that work. Being professionally assertive isn't toxic.

"I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. Many people have tried to explain, many scholars. Listen to us. You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias"

That's not being professionally assertive.

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#249

Post by dannyw » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

pontus wrote: post #99

My god, people need to calm down. I understand that some may be upset about things their employer does and that's well within their rights. If their employer is knowingly engaging in illegal activity then by all means, be a whistle blower and set ultimatums, but this has gone too far. If you have a problem with the motivations of your employer or how it handles various sensitive issues then start preparing for interv…

Why? Maybe this is my Australian worldview, but if my company is doing unethical things, here is my progression:

1. Speak up internally.

2. Speak up externally.

3. Speak to the media.

Do you think the Uber sexual harassment whistleblower should have kept quiet?

Re: Tensions in Google's ethical AI group increase as it sends demands to CEO

#250

Post by halbritt » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

nvrspyx wrote: post #200

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think you're conflating "Karen" with "entitled asshole". There are tons of entitled assholes in this world and "Karens" are just one type. As another commenter mentioned, "Karen" is used for entitled, soccer-mom-types, especially for treating front-line workers like crap and attempting to get a manager for their demands. As for the right-wing association, I don't think being right-wing is inherent to being a "Karen…

Spend any time in Berkeley and one will quickly come to the realization that Karens aren't the exclusive domain of the right.