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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#371

Post by doublekill »

choppaface wrote: post #341
2-tpg wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She didn’t sneak the paper, and the committee was trying to block it for BS reasons like the committee member wanted his work cited. Jeff Dean is a billion-dollar employee who has evidently extremely weak people skills. He was in way over his head in this one and he made the exceptionally bad choice of continuing the argument. Moreover he knew Gebru was consulting a lawyer, so his actions are de facto retaliation for…

She tried to bypass internal review. She knew that internal review was part of the process. She auhored a paper under the Google banner, not making note of her colleagues' work which combat the bias she was decrying. Then she submitted it for internal review the day of the submission deadline. After internal review was done and suggestions to improve were made (valuable time from your peers!) the paper was already accepted by external reviewers. She was then miffed having to update or retract the paper.

Jeff Dean is an absolute saint and ally for the cause. For sure he has better people skills than Gebru. Jeff was over his head with the Twitter mob, which would mess with anyone, no matter how famous.

Google fired Gebru not for retaliation, or for critical science, or for being Black, or for advocating diversity, or for Dean having bad people skills. She was fired for being insufferable.

Only astroturfing Ive seen is from activists claiming racism or Jeff Dean autism / white privilege.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#372

Post by ksec »

jamesmishra wrote: post #347
throwaway3699 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> News flash: if even Jeff Dean thinks you're an unbearable asshole, you got some issues. Wait, does Jeff have a reputation for being an "asshole" or something?

No, the opposite. Jeff Dean is known for exceptional kindness and humility. He is the kind of person that wouldn't have a problem with a researcher standing up for ethics. Therefore, the implication is that anybody Jeff Dean cannot bear is an unbearable asshole.

>Therefore, the implication is that anybody Jeff Dean cannot bear is an unbearable asshole.

And yet Internet / News Media seems to take it another way. I will have to wait for Google's PR machine to do their work.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#373

Post by HunterWare »

pseudalopex wrote: post #286
sillysaurusx wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I don’t get this. Google’s words are that she exfiltrated company documents. She either did or didn’t do this. And is google going to risk making this into a much bigger story by committing libel against a former employee? Or should AI…

Google didn't say where she sent the documents. Forwarding emails to her own employment lawyers would be exfiltrating company documents technically.

Isn’t that “actually” exfiltrating company documents? Not Google, but I don’t remember any of my NDAs mentioning that I couldn’t share confidential/privileged/company information unless I really wanted to with my lawyer...

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#374

Post by thundergolfer »

mc32 wrote: post #195
thundergolfer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate?

Not the OP but I’d say reporting a company for breaking the law isn’t political even though laws stem from the political process.

Thanks for reply. I can see where you're coming from I think, but reporting or not reporting the law being broken is political exactly because, as you say, laws stem from the political process, but also because law enforcement is a socio-political activity.

I do see what though, as it's supposed to be accepted as a basic premise of society that we set laws and follow them, and all accept the responsibility of ensuring that those laws are followed.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#375

Post by joshuamorton »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #280
joshuamorton wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are now resorting to calling Google gaslighting for replacing Gebru with a Black person. The complaint isn't what they did, it's what they didn't do. There were no substantive policy changes that could address the underlying issues. Tokenism without change isn't improvement.

What are the underlying issues?

Broadly there were two complaints:

1. Concerns about censorship of research critical of Google.

2. Concerns about diversity efforts within the Research organization.

Replacing someone with a proven track record of being above-average on diversity work, even to his own detriment, and who was willing to fight for his reports when they were censored by higher ups (Samy) with someone who is at best an unknown quantity (Marian) does not instill confidence.

Further, the claimed changes don't really do much. Supposedly, failures of DEI will be more impactful on perf for executives. Does that mean that the executives involved in this sequence of events will be dinged for mishandling this? My impression is no, or if anyone is, it'll be Samy.

As a sidebar, there's also the more nefarious thought that if you're being judged on the diversity of your org, firing a black woman and then bringing in a black woman executive means you won't get dinged for DE&I failures. Hence: tokenism without addressing the underlying issues, which might be summed up as many of the employees have no confidence in management.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#376

Post by skissane »

pseudalopex wrote: post #286
sillysaurusx wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I don’t get this. Google’s words are that she exfiltrated company documents. She either did or didn’t do this. And is google going to risk making this into a much bigger story by committing libel against a former employee? Or should AI…

Google didn't say where she sent the documents. Forwarding emails to her own employment lawyers would be exfiltrating company documents technically.

I don't know, but I think it is much more likely that she is being fired for sharing internal info with journalists, outside activists, or former employees, than for sharing it with her own counsel.

Your employer might not like you sharing their internal info with your own attorney (under attorney-client privilege), but if they fire you for it, they potentially expose themselves to significant legal risk. Maybe you are planning to file a complaint or lawsuit about discrimination or harassment, or considering reporting your employer to some regulatory agency, and firing you for sharing evidence with your own attorney could legally be retaliation and viewed poorly by the legal system.

Now, if you share internal info with someone else's lawyer, or if you ask your own lawyer to share that info with third parties (other than regulatory agencies), different story – I think your employer is on much firmer legal grounds in those cases.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#377

Post by wpietri »

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…

I suppose that depends on whether you think an "Ethical AI" group's job is as window dressing or to actually make an ethical impact.

If the former, then they probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place; PR people are cheaper and more tractable. If the latter, then there's only so long you can ask good people to stay quiet. Enabling ethical failure is also an ethical failure.

Your analogies don't really work, I'm afraid. The job of corporate lawyers isn't to force some sort of ethical or legal standard. It's to give confidential advice so a company can do what it wants without anybody going to jail. Accountants do maintain a standard that is quasi-ethical, but they do it by controlling their own work. Auditors are closer to the Ethical AI relationship, but they're specifically external, so as to avoid the conflicts of interest in Google trying to police itself. And both accountants and auditors drop a dime on people all the time, and even have protection under law for doing so: https://www.accountingtoday.com/whistleblower

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#378

Post by beckman466 »

“We all live in the digital poorhouse. We have always lived in the world we built for the poor. We create a society that has no use for the disabled or the elderly, and then are cast aside when we are hurt or grow old. We measure human worth based only on the ability to earn a wage, and suffer in a world that undervalues care and community. We base our economy on exploiting the labor of racial and ethnic minorities, and watch lasting inequities snuff out human potential. We see the world as inevitably riven by bloody competition and are left unable to recognize the many ways we cooperate and lift each other up.

But only the poor lived in the common dorms of the county poorhouse. Only the poor were put under the diagnostic microscope of scientific clarity. Today, we all live among the digital traps we have laid for the destitute.“

- Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#379

Post by sangnoir »

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…

> In short, she was getting paid handsomely while calling out her bosses by name and taking them through the dirt

I think their job was just that: call out the company (and others) on AI ethics issues - I don't see how it comes as a surprise to you that a person in such a role is also concerned about ethics in general, or the ethics of AI ethics at Google, so to speak.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#380

Post by grumple »

wbl wrote: post #332
renewiltord wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have ham at Christmas. Now I've got this weird feeling I've been doing something that's a faux pas but I can't find a reference on the Internet anywhere. Why will people complain about the ham sandwiches?

Jews do not eat ham. They also don't celebrate Christmas. Having an office Christmas party and serving mostly ham is a great way to drive home exclusion. Or e.g. demanding people work late Fridays. Observant Jews absolutely, positively have to get home by sundown on Friday.

Many Jews (like me) will eat ham and happily celebrate at your Christmas party though. You’ll never please everyone.
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