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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#71

Post by johncena33 »

madamelic wrote: post #39
ggm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think society at large really benefits from employers doing things this way? If you were in the ethics department of a company, unpacked deep seated entrenched breach of social norms and were blocked from talking about it but still believed in ethics, what would you do? I am unsure I would be prepared to do what she and Timbru did but that's a long way from the implied cynicism and also frankly abject legalist…

If you fire your "Ethical AI" team lead for disagreeing with you... maybe you are only interested in the appearance of being ethical. Just a thought.

Clear violation of company policy is not disagreement. The entitlement of people never ceases to amaze me.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#72

Post by lmilcin »

khazhoux wrote: post #52
lsb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were they afraid she was going to do, take all the ethics?

Releasing even a single internal document without permission is cause for firing, and possible legal action. I can't even fathom this being up for debate.

Not necessarily. Google's US-based employees would be protected by Sarbanes-Oxley Act if they did it to report on fraud.

But generally, yes. Unless you have a truly extraordinary reason you can get easily fired in most companies.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#74

Post by benlumen »

brailsafe wrote: post #65
benlumen wrote: post #48

I'm not interested in the details of this, but from a distance - people sure do make life difficult for themselves, bringing politics and their opinions and controversy into workplaces. It's always tech and academia, too - you'd think it'd be enough to get just paid shitloads of money for interesting knowledge work and save the drama for friends in the pub (or the bar, or whatever).

Above a certain amount, unless you're a sociopath, selling your soul just makes you depressed.

I mean, I assume that most people doing these high-end jobs actually want to be doing them. If they've sold their souls, that's a seperate issue.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#75

Post by rmk »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #19

She gave a talk at my school once, she was invited by my then advisor. This was in 2017 right after she left MSR. We had a brief change, and even back then you can tell she’s not into kowtowing to the patriarchy. It’s quite hard for ambitious women in compsci, they have to walk a tight edge between firm and “motherly”. Men have no such constraints. —————————————— Clarification: I’m speaking about women researchers in…

I have heard that academic departments literally bend over backwards to cultivate women as professors and extend every possible advantage to them in order to promote them. This is from a classmate who did her PhD and is now a tenure-track professor at a prominent school. I know for a fact that she was also the recipients of various scholarships, grants etc. while she was in school, many of which she attributed to being a woman in the field.

Your statement that "it's hard for women in CompSci" rings false to me. I think women do face higher barriers in many corporate settings that have been mostly male-dominated, but my personal observations about women in CompSci academia lead me to believe that women are treated better vis-a-vis their counterparts in other university departments, and also in other male-dominated industries.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#76

Post by ggm »

freeone3000 wrote: post #54
rmk wrote: post #4

For 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…

MSR has a very free research culture. People there are technically fireable by normal means, but Microsoft chooses not to terminate employment for "outside-of-work" engagements, or for the subject of their research. Some very critical papers of Microsoft's AI approach were published under the MSR header. Not all of the findings were put into place, and Aether has the unenviable job of balancing ethical behavior with…

I have a lot more respect for MS and MSR than I used to. I grew up, and I learned more about both. Nowhere is perfect but, in a different context of the US attempts to define extraterritorial control on data held by European hosted services, MS was the company which stood up to the department of state. Google and the others folded.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#77

Post by andyxor »

ALittleLight wrote: post #32
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #19

She gave a talk at my school once, she was invited by my then advisor. This was in 2017 right after she left MSR. We had a brief change, and even back then you can tell she’s not into kowtowing to the patriarchy. It’s quite hard for ambitious women in compsci, they have to walk a tight edge between firm and “motherly”. Men have no such constraints. —————————————— Clarification: I’m speaking about women researchers in…

I've worked with many women at FANG companies and I wouldn't describe any of them as even somewhat motherly (though I have noticed "firm"). I think Dr. Gebru was fired because she cast Google in a bad light with some rather dubious arguments in a paper she wanted to publish and when she was asked to not publish her research she she sent an unprofessional email to a wide audience. I don't know why this person was fire…

Gebru wasn't fired because she "cast Google in a bad light", she gave an ultimatum to her boss threatening to resign if they don't disclose names of all reviewers who criticized her work AND blasted group emails calling for sabotage

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#78

Post by themolecularman »

darkarmani wrote: post #30
rsj_hn wrote: post #15

>Unfireable save for clear violations of policies such as sexual harassment I would take a look at (and consider donating to) FIRE to understand the current state of academic freedom in universities. https://www.thefire.org/news-and-media/ Just to give two examples: Bret Weinstein was fired from Evergreen for not participating in a no-white-people-on-campus day (and he was also subject to credible death threats, requ…

Fired? > A settlement was reached in September 2017 in which Weinstein and Heying resigned and received $250,000 each, after having sought $3.8 million in damages. He resigned as part of a settlement when he sued them. The university paid to get rid of him.

The videos show him getting mobbed by students, the University offered no protection for him. When told that students were going "car to car" looking for them, the University told police not to get involved.

It's a radical story and it needs more attention.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#79

Post by baxter34 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #44
schoolornot wrote: post #28

No qualms for Googlers getting a reality check. I don't get why people think they work at a liberal think-tank where no consequences exist for sharing opinions or confidential data about the company publicly. Had someone on my team decided to write a similar doc like the one Margaret published, I'd have fired them on the spot. Shut your mouth and move on if your ideology conflicts with your employer's.

Hiring an ethics in AI research team presupposes you want to have ethics in your AI. It's disappointing, but not surprising, to find they want a bunch of syncopants. Perhaps they shouldn't have bothered creating the department if they didn't want people working there to speak out.

So every company that has internal audits expects a bunch of syncopants? WTF?

Internal audits ranging from a technical issue that impacted clients to sexual harassments investigations are all handled privately and details are shared AFTER the issue is handled. And the details shared are filtered to avoid legal liabilities/bad PR.

An ethics team can certainly coexist with this, the same paper that caused this chain of events could have been shared internally, get a team on board to try to improve on those issues and later publish both the Parrots paper at FAccT and fixes simultaneously in a technical conference.

Still the whole thing is sad because the research they were conducting is impactful

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#80

Post by eat_veggies »

skissane wrote: post #46
schoolornot wrote: post #28

No qualms for Googlers getting a reality check. I don't get why people think they work at a liberal think-tank where no consequences exist for sharing opinions or confidential data about the company publicly. Had someone on my team decided to write a similar doc like the one Margaret published, I'd have fired them on the spot. Shut your mouth and move on if your ideology conflicts with your employer's.

> Had someone on my team decided to write a similar doc like the one Margaret published, I'd have fired them on the spot I sometimes don't agree with decisions my (present and past) employers have made. But I'd never go to the media or public forums with those disagreements. If I thought it was so important that I had to do that, I'd resign first. I strenuously avoid making any public comment about my current employe…

sorry about your backbone
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