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Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

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Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#111

Post by gjm11 »

tziki wrote: post #39
kristianpaul wrote: post #10

“ Is there hope for Google Brain? One glimmer can be found in the fact that most of the articles I cite here, criticising Google’s overall approach, are written by their own researchers. But the fact that they fired Gebru — the author of at least three of the most insightful articles ever produced by their research department and in modern AI as a whole — is deeply worrying. If the leaders who claim to be representin…

Is this actually from the article? I didn't want to click such a clickbait title, but this would confirm it had nothing to offer.

It is actually from the article.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#112

Post by tiahura »

tinyhouse wrote: post #60
dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

To be fair, the article is not about the firing. In any case, the two researchers who got fired did more harm to Google than good. Internally no one cares they left. AI etichs is an esoteric academic research field.

AI etichs is an esoteric academic research field.

I would argue it’s a Public Relations field.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#113

Post by jgalt212 »

dominotw wrote: post #94
paulsutter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of general interest, Jeff Dean’s comment on why the Gebru paper didn’t meet Google’s publication guidelines: “Highlighting risks without pointing out methods for researchers and developers to understand and mitigate those risks misses the mark on helping with these problems” from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...

Isn't that asking too much. How would a researcher also know how mitigate the problems they identified.

Isn't that what the "directions for future research" section is for?

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#114

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

skywhopper wrote: post #88
dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

You must not have read the article, which isn't about Gebru's (and now Mitchell's) firing. There would be a lot to say about the ongoing credibility of any of Google's statements or research concerning ethical AI at this point, and lots of folks have said those things. This article is an analysis of the extreme weaknesses in the current seemingly-productive approach to ML language model research. The intro anecdote a…

The article discusses some concrete challenges in AI research, but the author's only argument for why Google won't be able to tackle these problems is that they fired Gebru. As he mentions in the article, it's not that the Big AI community has failed to recognize these issues; "40 Google researchers, from throughout the organisation" discussed some of them just a few weeks before the Gebru controversy.

Perhaps equally importantly, the author made a very serious accusation that Google has "deep instutionalised sexism and racism". Are we really intended to just gloss over that, treat it as unimportant filler?

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#115

Post by MontyCarloHall »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #109
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. Intellects aren’t fungible. Even if there are 800 Fabrice Ballard-level minds out there, I doubt most of them have honed their brain on the exact problems he’s worked on. You can’t just find another one-in-ten-million mind and put them to work on the problems of another…

There's a whole set of problems that people can work on. There's solutions for most of them. Some of those solutions aren't very good, but they're the best we have. Fabrice Bellard has worked on a subset of the problems we have. He's created good solutions for them. But if he hadn't, we would have some other, lesser, solution for those problems. Like we do for the problems he hasn't worked on. No, you can't expect co…

> We would have some other, lesser, solution for those problems. [...] No, you can't expect comparable results. But you can expect some results

Which is exactly my point: if you can’t expect comparable results, the person is not replaceable.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#116

Post by throwaway29303 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #67
Rochus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

That's an ego illusion. It hurts to admit that we're not replaceable, but we are. The job might not get done as well, or done in a different way than we'd do it, but it'll still get done.

  The job might not get done as well, or done in a different way than we'd do it, but it'll still get done.
If the job isn't done as well, then no one isn't as replaceable as you put it.

Excellence can't be replaced as easily. Maybe for certain kinds of jobs yes, but for all jobs? No. If that were the case then we'd be inundated with Einsteins, etc. And we aren't.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#117

Post by ctrlp »

Rochus wrote: post #23
dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

Brings to mind De Gaulle saying "the graveyards are filled with indispensable men."

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#118

Post by KineticLensman »

DavidSumpter wrote: post #30
DavidSumpter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the author. I think it is interesting with this "axe to grind" response (there was another above). I am an independent researcher, a professor at a University. And I have absolutely no reason to be disappointed with Google. My knowledge of this subject goes considerably deeper than I write in the article, but it is important to get the points across in an easy to follow manner. Thus I use certain literary device…

Ha ha *no agenda, I mean. ..... Maybe my subconscious has an agenda I don't know about :-)

C.f. Sussman attains enlightenment [0]

[0] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141241

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#119

Post by karmasimida »

danielscrubs wrote: post #48
dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

I believe you, but just for the sake of it: What AI research has had business value from Google in the last years that you could sell?

BERT has been powering all Google's search traffic at this moment:

https://searchengineland.com/google-bert-used-on-almost-ever...

It is THE biggest change that Google's search algorithm had ever been through, I would assume. And to push such a fundamentally different model to ALL their English traffic is pretty telling itself that how much an improvement Google had been seeing.

This is easily billions of ROI for Google, if not tens of billions.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#120

Post by fractionalhare »

Rochus wrote: post #23
dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

Okay, approximately all of us are replaceable. We can agree there is an epsilon of people who are clearly beyond others. However for almost all the work that has to get done, the actual bar is "can you write decent Python?", not "can you design and implement a novel algorithm for computing Pi?"
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