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

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

#251

Post by kyleblarson »

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…

I blame academia. Seems like most of these people spend years on degrees in critical theory, the whole time being coddled and told they are victims and never confronted or forced to argue with logic. Then when they leave the bubble of academia and get into the real world they expect the same treatment and the only thing they know how to do is play the victim card.

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

#252

Post by bzb6 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #87
bzb6 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A black woman? How is she black?

She's Eritrean-born and identifies as Black. Races aren't an exact science but social constructs. There's a gradual continuum in people's appearance along geographical areas, linking Sub-Saharan west Africa where most slaves were taken from in the Atlantic slave trade, to East Africa, to North Africa and the Middle East, to the Mediterranean coast, to central Europe to Scandinavia to Siberia to Central Asia to East A…

So what, someone being born in Europe does not automatically make them white. It just seems fishy to me. When she’s getting this amount of privilege from “being black”, saying that she identifies as black when she is clearly not black should not be enough.

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

zdragnar wrote: post #151
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The "right wing racist" bit is very new. It primarily represents the stereotype of an overly entitled, highly strung soccer mom insisting on talking to managers when she doesn't get her way with front-line employees at retail stores.

[deleted]

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

#255

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

cbozeman wrote: post #204
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What?? Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people. And I don't think anyone's disputing her desire to promote and encourage ethical implementations of AI technology. The crux of this issue is how you handle yourself, and it seems the more I read about how she handled these things, the more it seems like how children act. "If I d…

Again, if that were the case, there wouldn't be "tensions in google's ethical AI group."

They're clearly unhappy, and so are many google employees. This clearly isn't just one person, this clearly is bigger than that.

> You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people.

What ethical issue is there with the revelation of problems in the ethical AI division of google? You just "don't like how they act." I've heard many people say the same of individuals on street corners...not a great look.

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

#256

Post by microtherion »

pron wrote: post #199
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't the honourable thing be to first try to change how Google behaves and only if unsuccessful resign? Why is the assumption that employees shouldn't even try to influence the direction of their company? Why is doing so considered a tantrum?

> first try to change how Google behaves

By, say, attempting to publish papers and have internal discussions about it?

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

#257

Post by throwaway316943 »

pron wrote: post #199
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't the honourable thing be to first try to change how Google behaves and only if unsuccessful resign? Why is the assumption that employees shouldn't even try to influence the direction of their company? Why is doing so considered a tantrum?

There is a huge difference between skillfully navigating the internal politics and procedures of a company vs issuing demands based on flimsy evidence/feelings and threatening to take your toys and go home if you don’t get your way (and then throwing a social media tantrum when they call your bluff and accept your resignation).

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

#259

Post by lawnchair_larry »

js8 wrote: post #114
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…

> I understand that some may be upset about things their employer does and that's well within their rights. It is within their rights, true. But it's not just a question of law, but also ethics. We accept that, in democratic societies, we can freely criticize our government and still stay the citizens. There are good principal and practical reasons to have it so. However, in private companies, for some reason, we don…

The government works for me. I work for my employer. Do you see the difference?

Imagine hiring a plumber at twice the market rate, and instead of fixing your toilet, they start cashing your checks while making demands and telling the world on twitter that you’re abusive and racist. Who would tolerate such nonsense? Nobody.

This isn’t about criticizing an employer anyway. She could have discussed her concerns with them in a civil way. But that was not her goal. She is a narcissist, and there’s no winning with those people. They need an enemy in order to prop themselves up as righteous, and anyone will do. Working in good faith is a fool’s errand.

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

#260

Post by pron »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #243
pron wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> that companies like Google only exist in America in no small part due to that fact

That's a non-sequitur. There are many things that make America, and every other country, unique. Maybe America produced Google because it's the only country with that population size that's made up virtually entirely of immigrants?

It's also an is-ought fallacy. America is also the only rich country that's built that much of its wealth on slave labour, so does that mean slave labour is a good thing?

> let their ridiculously permissive (and coddling) employer pad their bank account

As a reminder, just in case the principles of capitalism, quite ironically, elude you, the company hires employees it expects will pad its own bank account more than it pads theirs.

> Not once they realize how everyone else lives.

It is certainly true that the conditions of most Google employees are much better than those of the rest of the world, but they are so because the company's employees created that wealth.

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