Google told its scientists to ‘strike a positive tone’ in AI research • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by spoopyskelly » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

glitcher wrote: post #134

tanilama wrote: post #15

It is at will employment, the company makes it clear what you have done there, they want to have a say on it. If you want independence, goes to academia instead (though it is not easy to obtain it either)

It is at will research funded by google, the researcher makes it clear what their findings were, they want the original research paper to have its say based on results not spin. If google wants specific outcomes from research, go to the marketing department instead of funding real research.

Why would you want to shit on the company you work for? Just go virtue signal elsewhere.

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

#242

Post by ThePhysicist » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #201

There are many comments that identify the work by corporate sponsored researchers as fraud and not research. I have the unpopular opinion, and I vehemently disagree. There is no altruistic, sponsored research, no matter of the sponsor, be it corporate, government, non profit, or the Holy See. There is always a specific outcome the sponsor hopes for. The question is, how much pressure the sponsor puts on the researche…

Can you name a single occurrence where a publicly funded university in the US or Europe forced a researcher to retract a paper because it conflicted with the universities' commercial interests?

From my time at academia I also don't recall the university or research institute asking to check a manuscript before submitting it to a journal, I'd even go as far as saying that this was unheard of as it would go against the spirit of research.

And in terms of research outcomes the funding bodies usually want publications in high-impact journals, public acknowledgment or results that can be commercialized. There are disciplines where commercial funding plays a larger role (e.g. pharma, medicine), but for most publicly founded research it's a rather bold assumption to claim that the funding is conditioned on achieving a particular result and not on the general impact of the results.

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

#243

Post by 8note » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

cmiles74 wrote: post #192

Veedrac wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing the ideas with their presentation. Google never allowed someone to post a paper under their name saying ‘datacentres generate CO₂, that's evil and we should focus on smaller datacentres’, but that doesn't mean they didn't care about CO₂ production; clearly they did, since they're now carbon negative. Same thing here. The researchers' jobs aren't to publically deface Google, they're to help direct Goo…

I agree that Google may have been interested in hiring these researchers to help "direct Google down the right path". That seems reasonable to me. I'm not seeing where I confuse "the ideas with their presentation" or where anyone talked about researchers "publicly defacing Google". The Reuters article is talking about ML and AI researchers who are now (recently) finding their research subject to a new review policy,…

What's Google's going to care about is "are we going down the most profitable path" though.

It's a bit different from the right path

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

#244

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #106

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 nove…

Can you share a link to it? I’ve followed the situation but not seen the paper itself yet. Very interested to read it and judge for myself.

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

#245

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

kovac wrote: post #97

chaboud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> every paper has an angle Not really sure if this is true in general. May be true of commercial entities, but I really hope this isn't true in general. > Furthermore, ceding the technological lead and removing the business incentive likely has defense (read: offense) implications on the global stage. Does it though? Uncovering faults and cracks of a system does exactly the opposite. Discouraging experts from looking…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by ThePhysicist » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

jchallis wrote: post #146

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…

How did you know, as a graduate student no less, that research money spent on high energy research was low yield compared to the biological sciences? I think that's a pretty bold and naive statement to make.

For example, research on quantum-mechanical light-matter interaction was considered not very practically relevant in the 80s and 90s. In the 2000s the results were picked up by the superconducting qubit research community and used to great effect to build a viable approach to quantum computing.

The outcome of research is inherently hard to predict, and telling people that their field of study is "low yield" because it's not the hot topic of the day seems quite naive and arrogant to me.

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

#247

Post by ClumsyPilot » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #108

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you seriously arguing that one of the largest and most profitable megacorps in the world can't afford enough toilets, so we'ce gotta take a toilet away from female employees?

Profits aside, we do not consider stopping cramming people in an office, or hiring in a more agfordable location? What happened to common sence and self respect? This the literally shittiest, most submissive argument I've come across. If it weren't a civilised forum, i would've colled it bootlicking

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

#248

Post by ThePhysicist » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

aaaxyz wrote: post #155

jchallis wrote: post #146

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…

Reminds me of an interview a cosmologist from my university gave to the CBC around the time the higgs boson was confirmed by the CERN. When asked about real world consequences of the discovery, he answered "None."

If you had asked Erwin Schrödinger how his wave equation could be commercialized he'd probably wouldn't have had any idea either. 100 years later it's the basis for most of our advanced computer technology. I predict the same thing will happen with the standard model, it's just that we can't see the applications yet because we're not technologically advanced enough.

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

#249

Post by free_rms » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #202

free_rms wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of parent comment was "Google should tolerate research that's critical of Google", which I'm sympathetic to. My rejoinder was that if it's inaccurately critical of Google, like hyping carbon impact without mentioning a decades-long carbon mitigation program, I get a lot more sympathetic to Google's position. Why should they pay someone to spread falsehoods about them? I don't really care about the process mi…

Does it make sense to mention Google's carbon mitigation program in a paper not specifically about Google? "Large language models can have an outsized carbon emissions impact, but not Google's, those are carbon neutral".

They'd probably want to finess it a little bit more than that, but yeah?

If you're going to bring carbon emissions into it, mentioning current mitigations as well seems relevant unless you're writing an op/ed piece.

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

#250

Post by ClumsyPilot » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #126

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sorry, were you somehow under the impression that the people of Sodom, Lot, and his daughters are being held up as models we should all be emulating? I always find it a bit strange that people despise simplistic "Sunday-school" answers to life, but then when they read the Bible and find messy situations like the one described above, they say, "What kind messed up story is this?" Real life is sometimes messed up. A bo…

If you read the old testament, it's brutal and often barbaric. It's written in bronze age and relfects life of the time. To argue that it reflects morals or 'messed up' situatuons we'd consider in civilised society is to be delusional.