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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#321

Post by frongpik »

2-tpg wrote: post #225
choppaface wrote: post #164

Dr. Gebru was fired for having consulted a lawyer. (Jeff Dean and others were aware that Dr. Gebru was consulting a lawyer long before her termination). Employers can do stupid things, but not illegal things, and it's beyond stupid to fire somebody for talking to an attorney. Google felt threatened and so they acted, fair and simple. While it's OK to feel threatened, it's not OK to retaliate, which is what Google, le…

Gebru was fired for unprofessional conduct and disturbing the work place. She tried to sneak a Google authored paper through internal peer review, by submitting it on the day of the deadline, and having the paper approved without incorporating any feedback of the internal review. Then she wrote an angry unhinged email to her colleagues and subordinates, where she said that Google was marginalizing Black women for spe…

Offtopic. Oracle does something similar, but on a bigger scale. They approach potential clients with two stacks of papers: one is a contract and the other is a lawsuit. A discreet way to nudge clients to do business with you.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#322

Post by [deleted] »

themolecularman wrote: post #78
darkarmani wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#323

Post by ashtonkem »

bpodgursky wrote: post #232
ineedasername wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like she was passing stuff on outside of Google, but then we don't really know the details of those activities to know if it was an inappropriate action.

Passing documents outside of Google is going to get you fired. There are no exceptions, unless you are talking to federal investigators or regulators.

I assume that there are exceptions. Off the top of my head I believe whistleblowing would be a legally protected use of corporate emails. Maybe there are others, I’m not a lawyer. But I definitely accept that in general sharing work emails without authorization is a fireable offense.

Honestly this whole thing strikes me as something more legally complex than engineers can analyze. I for one want to hear an actual expert weigh in on this, once enough facts are known. Anything else has too high a risk of foolish things being said.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#324

Post by croissants »

D13Fd wrote: post #310
thirtyseven wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hire an Ethics team if you won't let them interrogate unethical behavior?

Interrogating corporate behavior and publicly embarrassing the corporation are two totally different things. You can employ someone and have them develop and even publicly espouse ethics principles, while also instructing them to keep their criticism of corporate behavior confidential to the corporation. This is super common in other professions sometimes charged with enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior, i…

> This is super common in other professions sometimes charged with enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior, including law and accounting. It's not a new idea.

I'd be interested in reading about guidelines for people tasked with "enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior" in other industries, do you have any references?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#325

Post by tantalor »

dragonwriter wrote: post #289
aerosmile wrote: post #261

You will learn a lot about Margaret Mitchell's firing by simply reading this piece she shared publicly on Twitter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ERi2crDToYhYjEjxRoOzO-uO... A few punchlines: "Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Geb…

> But if she thought that she was untouchable, She was complaining about her peer and co-lead being fired by top management, going around their shared immediate management, dishonestly and in retaliation for internally highlighting problems. I think the one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that she didn't see herself as invulnerable. > so easily getting caught red-handed “so easily caught red-handed”? It took 5…

> she didn't see herself as invulnerable

Yet:

Dr. Gebru and I had just been promoted to “Staff” Research Scientist, which is meaningful in the world of STEM, with the sort of honor associated with becoming tenured. We had thought it meant a certain amount of job security.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#326

Post by microtherion »

johncena33 wrote: post #63
freeone3000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everytime I see cases like activist employees getting fired for violating company policy, the sentiment seems to be the company is the bad guy. At what point it becomes the fault of the activist employee? At what point we can have an introspective look that are we enabling toxic behavior of people suffering from Messiah Complex? This is my personal anecdote. I had experienced working with an online activist co-worker…

Sure, there are "activist employees", and sometimes companies may be justified in thinking that some of these employees engage in soapboxing to an extent that it's detrimental to the goals of the company or a distraction from their actual jobs, as you say.

But if a company serially butts heads with people whose actual jobs ARE to hold said company accountable in some way, I find it suspicious.

If a company keeps firing accountants "because they kept yapping about GAAP", wouldn't that raise a red flag with you? Or if a company told their auditor's managers that they'd take their business elsewhere unless more reasonable auditing standards were applied — a practice only all too common in the lead up to financial scandals.

If a president keeps firing inspector generals because apparently they are all part of a Grand Conspiracy against America, wouldn't that be a bit suspicious?

So if Google serially fires AI ethicists, some HN commenters keep insisting that all of them must have been uniquely unreasonable and toxic people, but my money would be on Google having increasing issues with being held to certain ethical standards.

As an aside, paradoxically, it may not be a good sign either if such watchdogs stay at a company forever, appear to be perpetually content and grow highly prosperous. The reason why is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#327

Post by thirtyseven »

D13Fd wrote: post #310
thirtyseven wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hire an Ethics team if you won't let them interrogate unethical behavior?

Interrogating corporate behavior and publicly embarrassing the corporation are two totally different things. You can employ someone and have them develop and even publicly espouse ethics principles, while also instructing them to keep their criticism of corporate behavior confidential to the corporation. This is super common in other professions sometimes charged with enforcing ethical and legal corporate behavior, i…

These were researchers though, their jobs were to publish papers externally.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#328

Post by Kranar »

emmelaich wrote: post #152
gowld wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your description of Bret Weinstein and Evergreen is substantially inaccurate, perhaps because you read Bret Weinstein's dishonest description of it (linked below). There was no "no-white-people-on-campus" day. There was an optional off-campus field trip for a seminar aimed at people living with a white perspective. Bret Weinstein was not fired. He resigned with $500K severance as part of a settlement agreement arisin…

quoting from your wikipedia link. ... > the event asked white participants to stay off campus That by itself is illiberal and ludicrous.

Sure, the student organized event asked that white participants who supported this misguided movement stay off campus. Sure, that's a pretty dumb thing to ask of anyone and Bret Weinstein has no obligation to adhere to it, and furthermore adhering to it is pretty dumb...

But that's not the college's doing nor is it the college's responsibility.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#329

Post by croissants »

strangeloops85 wrote: post #139

Somehow Microsoft Research manages to be a much more open place than Google and has researchers publish critical pieces all the time. It's ultimately a bit sad that Google, the company started by two PhD students, is incapable of creating a similar culture to MSR.

> Somehow Microsoft Research manages to be a much more open place than Google and has researchers publish critical pieces all the time.

Can you give examples of these critical pieces? I can't think of any, but MSR publishes a lot of stuff...

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#330

Post by ggm »

spoonjim wrote: post #296
katbyte wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone asked you a question and you belittled them assuming worst intent. Please don't be THAT person. For one not everyone speaks english as a first language, two while i _think_ i understand what your getting at you picked a very obtuse way to phrase it and even i'm uncertain if i understand, three when speaking to a diverse audience from around the globe who probably are not aware of the language used when speaki…

Honestly I’m an extremely proficient English speaker and don’t know what that sentence was referring to, or trying to say.

Google claimed to have higher regard for equity in the workplace and to correcting structural bias at all levels.

The AI ethics people were meeting structural process and behaviour around their own work, which i believe they felt fundamentally contradicts that.

They did not receive support to say it outside the company. Ultimately in at least one case, they probably broke their terms and conditions of employment and have been terminated.

Looking at it from the perspective of what people say they expect from the modern workplace, it wasn't a good alignment. People expect equity. They expect to be able to speak their mind. Within limits people can and do, but some staff have found the informal rules of what you can say about Google were not what they think they wanted.

Fired for cause, and at-will terms of employment are entirely normal. Nobody can seriously say Google broke the law, absent strong evidence. If you hire somebody to occupy a senior role, but constrain their ability to self assert, its a bit contradictory.

What do you think society at large wants, from the entities which now control the vast majority of our private state as individuals?

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