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Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

axios.com

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Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#31

Post by babesh »

Barrin92 wrote: post #28
esja wrote: post #8

“In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts.” If true, that is damning, and would demonstrate once again that being an “ethics researcher” does not mean that you are are any more ethical than the average person. It just means you are more interested in the subject. As a side note, I wish this field was more intere…

>If true, that is damning it's not damning and not unethical, it's the definition of whistle-blowing.

There isn’t enough to tell based on the information provided. You are just viewing partial data with your biases. Haven’t we had enough of snap decisions based on personal biases?

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#33

Post by babesh »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #23
izacus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it'd be great to hear this from a respectable and ethical person and not someone who'll lie for their own gain, right?

Because Google has a stellar ethical track record and would never lie for their own gain, right? I think they’ve exhausted the benefit of the doubt.

It’s not like most people don’t do that either. Ha!

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#34

Post by izacus »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #23
izacus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it'd be great to hear this from a respectable and ethical person and not someone who'll lie for their own gain, right?

Because Google has a stellar ethical track record and would never lie for their own gain, right? I think they’ve exhausted the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not sure how one excuses the other really (especially since the other is a corporation of 100k+ people). This tit-for-tat behaviour really spirals into destructive retaliations which are bad for everyone.

See US news for example.

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#35

Post by cm2187 »

esja wrote: post #8

“In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts.” If true, that is damning, and would demonstrate once again that being an “ethics researcher” does not mean that you are are any more ethical than the average person. It just means you are more interested in the subject. As a side note, I wish this field was more intere…

In banks, I'd say half of the cases of insider dealing I have seen in the news the past 5 years came from the compliance department.

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#36

Post by ALittleLight »

actuator wrote: post #9
ALittleLight wrote: post #3

I was disappointed to find out that AI ethicists at Google aren't LessWrong style AI ethicists. I've just read one Google AI ethics paper in it's entirety but it seemed pretty non-insightful and not actionable. That said, if Google is "investigating" her because she was trying to find evidence of discrimination or bad treatment of Dr. Gebru, that seems borderline criminal behavior. (Assuming her attempts at trying to…

I think sending it to external accounts probably triggered this, there is no way this would not have raised a red flag in any company. I mean, Alphabet is the same company where a person took self driving documents with him to start a new company. Hopefully, if it was just normal conversations and after identities had been redacted, their access is restored. Still, analysing this information on their work machine its…

True, but it's only Google/Alphabet saying she sent data to external accounts and I don't think they're especially trustworthy. If she sent secret info to outsiders she deserves to be fired, but if Google is investigating her because they think she's looking for evidence of discrimination then Google deserves whatever civil and legal penalties apply.

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#37

Post by slut »

yholio wrote: post #22
esja wrote: post #8

“In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts.” If true, that is damning, and would demonstrate once again that being an “ethics researcher” does not mean that you are are any more ethical than the average person. It just means you are more interested in the subject. As a side note, I wish this field was more intere…

Leaking sensitive material is not unethical by definition, some situations might impose a moral imperative to act in this manner. In the narrow ethical world of top down organizations, be they for profit corporations or the Army, it's of course a mortal sin, as is every other attempt to bring accountability to upper levels and redirect the flow of bullshit from top-down to bottom-up. I'll let you guess who decides wh…

Had it been an independent or much less related third party I'd tend to agree. However, with Mitchell's relation to and defense of Gebru, I'm not terribly sure I'd call this ethical, unless one is completely able to suspend their own biases. Getting caught doing this is bad judgement either way.

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#38

Post by visarga »

yholio wrote: post #22
esja wrote: post #8

“In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts.” If true, that is damning, and would demonstrate once again that being an “ethics researcher” does not mean that you are are any more ethical than the average person. It just means you are more interested in the subject. As a side note, I wish this field was more intere…

Leaking sensitive material is not unethical by definition, some situations might impose a moral imperative to act in this manner. In the narrow ethical world of top down organizations, be they for profit corporations or the Army, it's of course a mortal sin, as is every other attempt to bring accountability to upper levels and redirect the flow of bullshit from top-down to bottom-up. I'll let you guess who decides wh…

> Leaking sensitive material is not unethical by definition, some situations might impose a moral imperative to act in this manner.

Doesn't apply in this case. Snowden acted for the country, not for his dear friend who was fired in a scandal. Their supporters on Twitter raised hell and even made a cancel list of twitter users (AI researchers) who dared oppose their comments (Anima A.).

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#39

Post by jakelazaroff »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #30
jakelazaroff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google has a stellar ethical track record and would never lie for their own gain, right? I think they’ve exhausted the benefit of the doubt.

The benefit of what doubt? No matter how much you distrust Google, we can’t really presume they’re guilty of hypothetical accusations that haven’t actually been made.

I’m just saying that we should take their version of the story with a massive grain of salt.

Re: Google is investigating the actions of another top AI ethicist

#40

Post by chipotle_coyote »

KirillPanov wrote: post #7
KirillPanov wrote: post #5

Do Google corporate email accounts allow IMAP sync, like gmail accounts? I mean fully-replicated BODY.RFC822 sync, not just headers. I have to assume not, otherwise everybody using this feature would trigger the same exfiltration-lockout.

Or instead of answering my question people could just downvote me. I guess. Legitimately curious here. "Download all my mail from the mail server" is something I do multiple times every day. I guess my workflow would be verboten in corporate environments? Is it really such an odd behavior that they have an automated check for this, and it isn't throwing false positives every hour? Or is this one of those things they…

The Axios article says:

According to a source, Mitchell had been using automated scripts to look through her messages to find examples showing discriminatory treatment of Gebru before her account was locked.

Google's own statement, quoted by Axios, says:

Yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts.

You're taking those as if they say the researcher was just using her mail client the way everybody does, but that's not what they say at all. The first one ("using automated scripts to look through her messages") says nothing about downloading at all; the second, official one, says that "thousands of files" were "shared with multiple external accounts." The allegation is clearly that the researcher wrote scripts to select (an apparently large number of) specific messages and forwarded those messages to people outside the company.

Nobody is saying "OMG SHE USED IMAP!". They're saying "She sent internal corporate emails to people outside the corporation."

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