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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#581

Post by chris11 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #299
thirtyseven wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Why hire an Ethics team if you won't let them interrogate unethical behavior? The same reason to hire a token minority in a position of on-paper significance: something to point to for PR purposes. But, with an ethics team, there's also another advantage; if you get strong people who would be contributing to the field anyway and constrain their output to suit your interests, you reduce the degree to which areas you…

Also, artificial intelligence is dealing with a lot of controversial issues. Things like privacy, data ownership, and discrimination. Government is getting involved. SF banned facial recognition, and both progressives and conservatives are accusing big tech platforms of bias. Having an internal ethics team they can claim is independent would probably be helpful politically.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#582

Post by JumpCrisscross »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #319
kamranjon wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's exactly what happened. From my understanding she was backing up emails that served as evidence to support the claim that Google had treated Timnit Gebru unfairly during their termination. Not sure where that legally falls but I wouldn't exactly paint it in the light you did here.

The legal way to handle that is for Dr. Gebru to sue Google and get the emails through discovery. (If Google didn't do anything that Gebru can/is willing to sue over, well, she doesn't have any legal right to the emails.) Exfiltrating confidential documents will get you fired, and saying you did it to assist a friend in badmouthing your employer on Twitter is not going to help matters.

> legal way to handle that is for Dr. Gebru to sue Google and get the emails through discovery

The not-quite-legal but defensible way might also involve openly forwarding those emails to her lawyer. Sending them anywhere else removes the shadow of doubt one needs when strategically but willfully violating a contract.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#583

Post by [deleted] »

kleer001 wrote: post #336
2-tpg wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political activist collective is slowly falling apart. If you get blamed for racism when firing an employee for telling colleagues not to pursue KPIs, there is not much you can do to continue placating these professional victims. They are now resorting to calling Google gaslighting for replacing Gebru with a Black person. It is low-brow ugly neo-racism, but then again, I don't really want Google AI in charge of A…

> The political activist collective is slowly falling apart. In my heart and heart and dream of dreams, yes I wish that to be true. However my intuition tells me another generation with the same persona will pick up the banner again in a few years.

[deleted]

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#584

Post by knorker »

bg24 wrote: post #540
Crash0v3rid3 wrote: post #387

“After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. This feels pretty cut and dry to me. Meg exported business material from the company. That a fire-abl…

What is a business-sensitive data? If I am working on my laptop and download a 1GB customer orders CSV to my laptop for analysis, is that sensitive data? Who does not do it? Private data for other employees - is that like downloading the accessible intranet profile of an user (say in the HR portal), or hacking into HR portal to download their private info? In a 1k+ employee company, who does not look up employee deta…

Your personal laptop?

Well, first of all how do you have access to bulk download PII?

Second, yes at FANG this meant you not only had to go around policy, but also technical means. And there's lots of training saying "don't do that".

At smaller companies it's ok to let PII flow. At FANG not so much. They really want to stop having EU fines and be dragged in front of congress.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#585

Post by knorker »

tdeck wrote: post #507
manfredo wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't very misleading. Giving an ultimatum on threat of resignation is more or less entails giving your resignation if the company doesn't accept. My understanding is that the conversation more or less went: Gebru: "Don't make me retract the paper and give me the names of the reviewers or I'll resign." Google: "We're not doing that. We accept and respect your decision to resign from Google."

Google has a specific process for resigning and writing a resignation letter. Saying "if you don't do this let's talk about my end date" isn't it. When the company decides you're not working there anymore and tells you so, it's a firing. That shouldn't be hard to grasp.

True. But it's also true that giving an ultimatum raises the stakes.

Like it's not asking for o divorce to have an affair, but it does make it a reasonable next step for the other party.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#586

Post by chris11 »

calylex wrote: post #530

This sounds like a poem she wrote https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_mitchell_how_we_can_build... How does one get to lead such a high caliber team at Google AI with background in Linguistics of all things? What are some of accomplishments this person has achieved, beyond being from one or many oppressed victim group(s) that Google needed to hire to fend off lack of diversity claims?

That's an easy question to answer. She has a cs related masters and Phd. And she has done research at Johns Hopkins and Microsoft.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#587

Post by knorker »

monocasa wrote: post #450
notsureaboutpg wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the things to argue about how that incident went down, this is the worst. She sent an email with a list of demands saying if they weren't met, she'd work on an exit date with the company. The company couldn't meet those demands. By her own words she would be exiting the company, they worked out that exit date with her in that email: right now

The State of California is very clear that the sequence you've outlined is a firing. An employee needs to be the sole one setting the last date for it not to be a firing.

This is just arguing semantics.

It can both be true that she was the initiator of her departure, and legally it's a firing.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#588

Post by ksec »

ALittleLight wrote: post #571
ksec wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Does Google have a particularly effective PR machine? I think people like Google because of things like search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Android, etc. - not because they are some PR wizard.

They dont :), but unless someone is willing to take the risk themselves and stand up to defend Google, what is reported in the press will then be simply known as "truth". And it is their PR's job to do something about it. Although arguably not doing something about it is also a variable option.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#589

Post by [deleted] »

ggm wrote: post #330
spoonjim wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]
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