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“Luke Stark declined a $60,000 research award from Google in support of the ousted leaders of its ethical AI group.” Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.
“Luke Stark declined a $60,000 research award from Google in support of the ousted leaders of its ethical AI group.” Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.
People prioritize lots of stuff. It’s funny to me when people stand up for dumb causes, but to each their own as what seems dumb to me is important for another.
Also, let's be clear here on who bears the brunt of these actions - when a lab is short on funding, it's the grad students who lose out first. Vijay tweeted as much, saying he'd rather his grad students need to TA an extra semester or two rather than take Google's money.
“Luke Stark declined a $60,000 research award from Google in support of the ousted leaders of its ethical AI group.” Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.
“Luke Stark declined a $60,000 research award from Google in support of the ousted leaders of its ethical AI group.” Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.
He's an assistant professor, so although he's probably not rich , I imagine he has pretty good career prospects in general, and is probably financially secure already. I'm sure he could use the $60,000 (he was applying for it in the first place after all!) but I suspect that getting or not-getting that money isn't going to be really life-changing for him. So it doesn't seem so foolish to me. Besides, what's the point…
I respect the gesture but I think it would be more useful if accompanied with some plan of action for improving the current state of ethics in CS. It's a field-wide problem, not a Google specific problem. Also, let's be clear here on who bears the brunt of these actions - when a lab is short on funding, it's the grad students who lose out first. Vijay tweeted as much, saying he'd rather his grad students need to TA a…
From my understanding of the events, there was not really anything wrong with the way Google handled the AI Ethics researchers it fired. One threatened to quit unless a long list of demands were met. The other was exfiltrating company data. Why would this guy give up real money to defend them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's an assistant professor, so although he's probably not rich , I imagine he has pretty good career prospects in general, and is probably financially secure already. I'm sure he could use the $60,000 (he was applying for it in the first place after all!) but I suspect that getting or not-getting that money isn't going to be really life-changing for him. So it doesn't seem so foolish to me. Besides, what's the point…
Money is to fund research, not personal use. Job security highly dependent on bringing in grants.
[1] https://research.google/outreach/research-scholar-program/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People prioritize lots of stuff. It’s funny to me when people stand up for dumb causes, but to each their own as what seems dumb to me is important for another.
Sometimes taking money from someone hurts your reputation or public identity, then it makes sense to decline... but this particular case is hard to relate to.
That said, he's already gotten the PhD and the professorship, so a lot of those are sunk costs at this point. Incrementally, this is cheap. And it might not be worth backing out of his dead end.