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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#111

Post by contemporary343 »

They also seem to have sidelined Samy Bengio (Yoshua's brother) who was the skip-level manager of the team and, as far as I can tell, backed both of them and continued to: https://twitter.com/L_badikho/status/1362892301979312128

As can be seen above, current team members state that Google is running a smear campaign against both of them. We should emphatically not take Google's words at face value here either.

All of this increases my respect for Microsoft Research immensely. They've been more hands off and had researchers publish work critical of MS technologies. It's quite telling that supposedly more open Google is incapable of creating as open a research org as MSR, which remains in my view an excellent example of what an industrial research org can be.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#112

Post by lrossi »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #105
chronic3802 wrote: post #97

- 135,000 Google employees - 2,000 signed a petition to support Timnit [1] - 2 employees resigned to support Timnit [2] When it comes to voting with your feet, no one actually gives a shit. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/04/thousands-petition-google-fo... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/04/tech/google-employees-quit/in...

This is something I feel like few people learn in life in the US. You may be morally right, but nobody ever has your back. The few that do you can probably call friends, but the many that don't will never lift a finger to help you legitimately when it matters.

I don’t see why you say US, it’s the same in any country.

Nobody in their right mind is going to quit their job over this during a pandemic, when it’s already so hard to find a job. I imagine ethics jobs are not in high demand.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#114

Post by [deleted] »

jboog wrote: post #37
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…

So you have one example of someone being fired at...Evergreen college or whatever And some guy who was temporarily suspended and then immediately reinstated. And this proves profs with tenure have the same or worse protections than employees of private industry? Have you ever heard of "at-will employment"?

[deleted]

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#115

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

I accept I will be looked at negatively for this, but I simply don't believe Google has any obligation to keep paying giant salaries to people who are actively - by their own words - working to show how harmful Google and/or its underlying technologies are to the designated victims of the age.

She was moving files and "private data on other employees" (?) off the Google internal network into her personal possession, in order to contravene their policies and share their work against their wishes.

You may be able to claim this is hypocritical as they claim to support openness, but I really think the very clear and states goal of undermining Google's alleged negative impact on non-whites negates any mutual goodwill that should be assumed.

TL;dr this is a completely legit firing, even if her intentions are good.

Tech companies will increasingly find themselves wrestling with a fifth column if this sort of thing persists. Just wait until the Woke stuff really gets tied up with unionism, and you'll see an explosion of allegations of "union-busting-to-protect-white-supremacy", some of which has already been alleged of Bezos and Musk.

None of this is good for anyone, in my opinion.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#116

Post by cleandreams »

Possibly she violated policy by sending internal emails to an ex-employee. That is fireable offense, yes. But this whole avalanche of incidents at google is still ugly and appears to be out of control. A bad look for google. Has anyone over there heard of damage control? Did it need to get this bad? At some level this situation must have been enabled by really clueless management. Or, it could just be the reality that google's use of user data is basically unethical and cannot coexist with a real AI Ethics team. It kinda looks like that.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#117

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

thundergolfer wrote: post #61
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.

Which doc are you referring to? Could you link it? Your last sentence has the implication that people should not attempt the change or challenge from within the corporate capitalist ideology of the big tech companies, which together make up a large portion of the entire technology industry and the US stock market. They should just concede and “move on”. I’m kind of sympathetic to this view. Someone who joins a corpor…

The reference is to this doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uO...

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#119

Post by ineedasername »

So they fired an ethics leader because she thought something unethical might be going on and was taking steps to investigate it by automating a review of her email, or something like that.

It seems she may have been passing on some of that information to persons outside of Google, which isn't great, but I also don't see much in the way of details on what that actually entailed, so it's hard to judge how inappropriate those actions might have been. Either way, still a bad look for Google.

Remembering the mid 00's, it's always jarring to juxtapose "Don't be Evil" with how they currently operate.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#120

Post by [deleted] »

minimaxir wrote: post #60
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).

It's impossible to work on the ethics of AI without involving politics.

[deleted]
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