Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#2As noted in her pinned tweet (https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1357819673455202304), she was locked out of Google's system after sending an email supporting Timnit Gebru. (EDIT: and allegations of systems abuse; see child comment)
This new tweet makes the firing official.
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#3Person who called their employer sexist and racist is fired (no a second person).
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#4For people who are familiar with this, I have a question. How does research in an industrial lab vs. a university work, insofar as independence is concerned? In a university, aside from well-defined ethics guidelines for conducting research (e.g., involving animal or human subjects), staff are generally free to publish the findings of their research at any venue they see fit. Many are tenured professors, so they also have the added guarantee of tenure, which makes them unfireable save for clear violations of policies such as sexual harassment.
How do these things work at industrial labs, such as those of Google and Microsoft?
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#5Person who called their employer sexist and racist is fired (no a second person).
Well I guess it is easier to sweep hard problems under the rug than have a dialog with unsatisfied employees.
This is one of those times where people are going to intentionally conflate Google's legit right to terminate employment with what is best for the long term culture of the company.
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#6Google response (from Jan):
"Our security systems automatically lock an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered. In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today. We are actively investigating this matter as part of standard procedures to gather additional details.”
https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/20/google-targets-ai-ethics-...
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#7For people who are familiar with this, I have a question. How does research in an industrial lab vs. a university work, insofar as independence is concerned? In a university, aside from well-defined ethics guidelines for conducting research (e.g., involving animal or human subjects), staff are generally free to publish the findings of their research at any venue they see fit. Many are tenured professors, so they also…
Apparently the way it works at Google is they fire you when you don't rubber stamp everything.
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#8As noted in her pinned tweet ( https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1357819673455202304 ), she was locked out of Google's system after sending an email supporting Timnit Gebru. (EDIT: and allegations of systems abuse; see child comment) This new tweet makes the firing official.
IIRC she was leaking internal information to the outside press, it was not based on her position of supporting Timnit.
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#9As noted in her pinned tweet ( https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1357819673455202304 ), she was locked out of Google's system after sending an email supporting Timnit Gebru. (EDIT: and allegations of systems abuse; see child comment) This new tweet makes the firing official.
No. Her tweet does not say that sending the email got her fired, even if it's written to give you that impression.
Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google
#10Person who called their employer sexist and racist is fired (no a second person).
& saying your SVP has "ideas that are obviously very dumb".