171–180 of 307 posts
Every specialty has taboos and learning what they are and how to avoid them is part of being successful with the job. As a physics graduate student I made an impassioned case to a high energy researcher that the money spent on high energy research was low yield and should be pushed to the biological sciences ... suffice it to say he did not take my points on their merits. Upton Sinclair’s famous “ It is difficult to…
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My understanding is that the Google is pressuring it's employees (who are research scientists) to refrain from publishing papers that Google management believes casts a negative light on a Google product. It's not theoretical, researchers are quoted in the article and papers have been altered. I find it difficult to come up with an analogy from a public institution. What is the product the math department would be pr…
What if it's an inaccurate negative light? The Gebru paper makes a lot of hay about carbon impact, but Google's put a ton of effort into mitigating that, they've been carbon neutral on paper since 2007: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/our-...
Do you have an example of a public university censoring research papers that passed peer review because that university believed the paper cast "an innacurate negative light"... on what, exactly?
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When the result is predefined it's not research anymore, it's advertisement. Still calling it “research” is fraud.
This. Google wants their cake + to eat it to by hiring the best in class Ph.D's with the allure of doing "academic research" but paid a big-tech salary. Turns out it's mostly PR and buying yourself credibility at this point.
We already know that ,,self regulation'' doesn't work. It made sense to me that when I was working at Google I didn't talk bad about the company that I was getting my paycheck from. Alphabet is still a great company, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't need checks and balances from outside.
In my opinion, this is different: Google is hiring research scientists and telling them that Google would like to pay for their research. When hired, Googled told these people that they would be free to conduct research in their field without this kind of censorship. Now they are being censored, this is a new policy. In my opinion, this is very different from a typical employee "talking bad" about their employer. "Go…
It's an extensively sensitive subject and particularly in a field with such vague and 'subject to interpretation' results, the sponsor corp. is going to want to have a look. Considerably more so if the research is about the institution itself.
There was a specific case recently where the researcher criticized Google for something, but Google asked the researcher to include truthful information about the changes the company has already made to the system in question wherein it's been improved etc. This is a perfectly fair request by the sponsor, I think.
It's also naive for us to consider that what people chose to research, how they approach it, the results they are looking for isn't somehow altered by the researchers own biases. In fact, it's hugely arrogant for researchers to believe that they have some special access to the truth in this regard.
Every specialty has taboos and learning what they are and how to avoid them is part of being successful with the job. As a physics graduate student I made an impassioned case to a high energy researcher that the money spent on high energy research was low yield and should be pushed to the biological sciences ... suffice it to say he did not take my points on their merits. Upton Sinclair’s famous “ It is difficult to…
Keep mind that this is a new, recently instituted process. During the interview process when these researchers were hired, this policy did not exist. Perhaps they were naive to believe that such a policy wouldn't be instituted later but I think that's a different discussion.
If the outcomes of research don’t align to Google’s business strategy, they’re going to get rid of the research/researchers. Previously, ethics was good PR; now, it’s a risk in antitrust cases. This will continue to ramp up.
We already know that ,,self regulation'' doesn't work. It made sense to me that when I was working at Google I didn't talk bad about the company that I was getting my paycheck from. Alphabet is still a great company, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't need checks and balances from outside.
To those it pays, yes...
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When I was young and (more) idealistic, my department chair pulled me aside after I’d been dogmatic about something and said “everything is political... The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.” It took 10 years for that to really sink in, but I knew that every paper has an angle well before that. There’s a position of inevitability about AI around Google, and, to an extent, I agree. Unlike tobacco, alc…
This is such a tired argument. Sure, politics is in everything down to the design of the armchair you are arguing from. That however doesn't fucking mean that all papers shall be considered equal? Do you think you would be able to differentiate the value of a census statistics from a 2015 paper written by the state of Nevada from a 1930 census statistic paper from Nazi Germany? Excellent! Because very obviously there…
Minor point, but there was no Nazi Germany in 1930. They gained control of the government in 1932-1933.
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In my opinion, this is different: Google is hiring research scientists and telling them that Google would like to pay for their research. When hired, Googled told these people that they would be free to conduct research in their field without this kind of censorship. Now they are being censored, this is a new policy. In my opinion, this is very different from a typical employee "talking bad" about their employer. "Go…
Any researcher who thought they could publish research about 'race and gender' and not have it reviewed by a corporate sponsor is incredibly naive. It's an extensively sensitive subject and particularly in a field with such vague and 'subject to interpretation' results, the sponsor corp. is going to want to have a look. Considerably more so if the research is about the institution itself. There was a specific case re…
I'm not sure what the rest of this comment is alluding to... The posted article from Reuters doesn't mention race and gender, the article implies these researchers focus on AI and ML.
In regards to the "specific case", I would have to guess at what that case might be. Were I to guess, it seems like I'd be guessing wrong as this assertion seems to lack grounding in fact.
Naive or not, peer review is in place and part of it's purpose is to keep the biases of researchers in place. History has proven that this is far from infallible, but it's the process we have today and the process Google agreed to when it hired these researchers.