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Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

reuters.com

101–110 of 307 posts

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some things are going to be hard to explain. Some skin tones, hair styles, accents, pitches, timbres, writing styles, etc. may have more/less separable entropy, and that’s going to inevitably make models seem racist/sexist for some applications. We all know that if you have garbage as an input the output can be anything. So a professional data scientist should do his job and analyze the data first , identify the pro…

If all you are wanting to know is "will this work" it is way to onerous to focus on getting a perfect dataset. If it gets into a product though, that is really pretty bad, but it may be a consequence of their development lifecycle or any other org issue rather than a failure of this or that data scientist.

>If all you are wanting to know is "will this work" it is way to onerous to focus on getting a perfect dataset

If the definition of work is relaxed and equivalent to "is better then random and our marketing can sell it"

If you are a professional and you data implies that race predicts school grades and you say "it works" instead of "something is not right, let me check the financial status or house size/family size" then you are an impostor, you plug libraries with code from Stack Overflow until it works, doing the right job would give you better results and fix the bias. If you work for Google,Facebook or other giants I am sure there is not an excuse that we don't have the money to hire competent people and cleanup the data or gather correct data.

Think about it, because some person/company is incompetent you make life harder for millions of people, why we try to find excuses for not doing the correct thing, we need to demand that this AIs with big consequences are created using mathematically correct methods and when someone reports potential problems we need to stop excusing the guys that want to silence them because bad PR.

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that AI research teams are full of philosophy graduates who think if statements are racist

Do you have an example of one of these ‘philosophy graduates’ you’re describing? The only person I’m closely aware of here is Timnit Gebru. She has a bachelors and masters in Electrical Engineering as well as a PhD. If you’re describing her and her ilk as ‘philosophy graduates’ because they have PhDs, I think you’re vastly mischaracterizing their education.

Timnit Gebru is just another racist, who uses her race card when she can't do her job. there are many like her in all types of jobs when things do not go well for them they bring out the racism card.

i am sick of the bs

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he was just being a racist, misogynistic ass.

Not sure why this is getting downvotes. When people say things like that, they’re usually racist and misogynistic. His comment was flagged for a reason.

An absurd and highly inappropriate comment. You’re the first to bring up race. There is absolutely no reason to infer that parent has any issue with race or sex whatsoever.

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#105
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an actually good question. AI is supposed to be fed with real-live data, after all it has to be something usable in the real-world. Now, you feed AI with crime data, looking at statistics such AI will suspect people having black color of the skin to be criminals more often than people with white skin. Is that ok? Is it ok to say that if some person happens to have black skin there is a bigger chance that it is…

> For ages Christianity was a source of ethics in Europe Two angels arrive in Sodom, and Lot shows them hospitality. However, the men of the city gathered around Lot's house and demanded that he give them the two guests so that they could rape them. In response to this, Lot offers the mob his two virgin daughters instead. ... Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt, but Lot and his daughters escape to Zoar, and end up…

LOL Genesis 19:30–38

is this really in the bible cant believe what i am reading big LOL

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#106

The “sensitive topics” extra review seems completely fair and obviously necessary. Anyone acting like that amounts to censorship in a private company is totally off their rocker. This article seems really weak, and of course there’s the obligatory attempt to tie it in with Timnit Gebru’s resignation and her very inappropriate behavior, even though for all of Google’s flaws, Google clearly and obviously did the right…

"Gebru’s weak paper" Could you please back up your claim as to the paper's quality - do yoy have credentials and background that enable you to cast this judgement, or is this pedestrian?

It has leaked. Activism masquerading as science. Yes, people also call critical race theory and intersectional theory academic disciplines. They hold conferences, have titles and credentials, are professors, etc. So yes the paper is high quality for a certain niche.

It's not a technical paper for not a technical conference. It's a "raising awareness" paper on identity politics beating the same drum, without much novel insight or analysis or new data. But yes, it has 120 or 200 citations, a fact that was proudly highlighted by authors on Twitter to underline the scholarly quality.

Yes, gender seminars and whiteness workshops are also properly credentialed.

Theology is also a discipline but perhaps not the same as sciences.

Quality is indeed relative.

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think the toilet issue you described is a problem that needs to be fixed? Because this way Google was effectively paying me loads of money to just go through 7 floors of bathrooms to find an empty one when I needed to use it. It's a waste of corporate resources to use a human resource's time like this. At the end the solution for me was just using the disabled toilet, as we didn't have disabled people on…

Did you miss this part? "If so that sounds like a facilities growth issue and not a sex imbalance issue" To make this into a gender issue, you have to argue google can't afford toilets

Of course it’s a growth issue, Google can’t easily afford the prime real estate with the current housing prices. Load balancing is just a temporary measure that can be done.

Google tear down meeting rooms to have more space for cranking more people in the same office.

Luckily I was working there in the good old days mostly.

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#109
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Google removed "Don't be evil" as their slogan quite some time ago. Don't think that was by an error.

This is a rumor that won’t die because it’s too enticing to believe and tack onto any anti-Google sentiment. The phrase was only moved from the introduction to the conclusion of the code of conduct, never removed.

It had multiple mentions (like a dozen or so). They left only one at the end. We can argue about semantics and it not being "technically removed" but the point is they broke the "Don't be evil" spirit of the company, and that was their intention.

It's clear from many events following that one that the company is no longer interested in developing a culture of "ethical employees". They just want cheerleaders now to keep increasing those quarterly results, no matter the cost.

I say all of this with the sadness of a former "Google evangelist." The old Google is gone, and Sundar Pichai being named CEO put the last nail in its coffin.

Re: Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is getting downvotes. When people say things like that, they’re usually racist and misogynistic. His comment was flagged for a reason.

An absurd and highly inappropriate comment. You’re the first to bring up race. There is absolutely no reason to infer that parent has any issue with race or sex whatsoever.

It’s called a dog whistle. You don’t have to specifically mention race or gender in order to imply something about it. It’s not inappropriate. I didn’t flag his comment. Someone else did. It should have been flagged and rightfully was.

I think your points would come across better if you didn’t use such extreme words (absurd, highly inappropriate, absolutely). It’s your opinion, not a fact.

I also find it funny that _my_ comment is highly inappropriate but the actual comment that was flagged is not? Why do you think that? I’m assuming you didn’t get a chance to read it, which begs the question, “Why did you feel the need to champion this cause?”

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