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Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

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Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#71

Post by brimble »

dehrmann wrote: post #54
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

Obviously don't know the full context of why Satrajit Chatterjee was fired, but I can say that I followed the Timnit Gebru story quite closely, and there was a gigantic chasm, IMO, between what actually happened (and by "what actually happened" I mean that I'm conservatively just considering Gebru's own statements and tweets) and how things were reported in the wider press. The press will always be incentivized to re…

I'm surprised news outlets still report that Timnit Gebru was fired. It's at best disputed. This case looks much clearer; he was terminated with cause.

That's... still a firing, no? What it's not, is a lay-off.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#72

Post by 21723 »

dehrmann wrote: post #54
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

Obviously don't know the full context of why Satrajit Chatterjee was fired, but I can say that I followed the Timnit Gebru story quite closely, and there was a gigantic chasm, IMO, between what actually happened (and by "what actually happened" I mean that I'm conservatively just considering Gebru's own statements and tweets) and how things were reported in the wider press. The press will always be incentivized to re…

I'm surprised news outlets still report that Timnit Gebru was fired. It's at best disputed. This case looks much clearer; he was terminated with cause.

No post body was provided.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#73

Post by andromeduck »

canaus wrote: post #56
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

Obviously don't know the full context of why Satrajit Chatterjee was fired, but I can say that I followed the Timnit Gebru story quite closely, and there was a gigantic chasm, IMO, between what actually happened (and by "what actually happened" I mean that I'm conservatively just considering Gebru's own statements and tweets) and how things were reported in the wider press. The press will always be incentivized to re…

Can you give some example Tweets to where you concluded that these (Gebru in this example) are some of the most toxic individuals you could imagine? All of my searches are of random topics.

There was a huge divide between r/machinelearning threads and twitter. I'd start with the megathread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#74

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

Obviously don't know the full context of why Satrajit Chatterjee was fired, but I can say that I followed the Timnit Gebru story quite closely, and there was a gigantic chasm, IMO, between what actually happened (and by "what actually happened" I mean that I'm conservatively just considering Gebru's own statements and tweets) and how things were reported in the wider press. The press will always be incentivized to re…

No post body was provided.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#75

Post by dekhn »

muh_gradle wrote: post #7
tedivm wrote: post #4

What really kills me is that Google claimed previous papers weren't up to their standard, but then ended up citing them in later papers that they've had press events around. It's really unfortunate that so much of our science is being done at large companies rather than universities, since the companies have a bias towards their bottom line which keeps them from publishing things that might damage that.

Which papers are you referring to?

https://www.techrxiv.org/articles/preprint/The_Carbon_Footpr... cites Bender, E.M., et al., 2021, On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?. ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

In short, Jeff Dean (and others at Google) cited the finally published (not by Google) version of the Parrots paper. The citation [20] is in the context of the paper:

"The opening quote in Section 1 is based on a 2019 study from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) that estimated the environmental impact of training [2]. More than 1000 papers cite this paper as the source for the impact on carbon emissions of ML models, e.g., [1,6,7,17,18,19,20]."

in which the authors of this paper point out that the Parrots paper used what is likely a large overestimate of the carbon emissions from training. This is consistent with my understanding (that the power/emissions part of the Parrots paper isn't well backed by evidence).

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#76

Post by lupire »

dekhn wrote: post #63
21723 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're alleging that Timnit Gebru (whom I've never met, but who seems like a fine person from what I have read) is "toxic" and that working with her would be "a nightmare" to you. Am I correct in inferring this?

I'd have a hard time working with her because she says that the techbros of silicon valley are eugenicists. timnit's repsonse to https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/22/1050394/artifici... was "this was a beautiful article to read after spending all weekend reading about the modern day eugenics movement underlying much of the whole AGI stuff." She sort of godwins her arguments.

No post body was provided.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#77

Post by throwawaygh »

dekhn wrote: post #63
21723 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're alleging that Timnit Gebru (whom I've never met, but who seems like a fine person from what I have read) is "toxic" and that working with her would be "a nightmare" to you. Am I correct in inferring this?

I'd have a hard time working with her because she says that the techbros of silicon valley are eugenicists. timnit's repsonse to https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/22/1050394/artifici... was "this was a beautiful article to read after spending all weekend reading about the modern day eugenics movement underlying much of the whole AGI stuff." She sort of godwins her arguments.

The AGI safety stuff is weird and silly. AFAICT that community is mostly filled with philosophy types anthropomorphizing ML models that they don't understand. It's a waste of time and money. But then, I feel the same way about like 80% of what NSF CISE funds and there's plenty of toxic types in academia. At least the AGI safety stuff is all private money. My whole reaction to that community is mostly "weird and not worth my time".

Timmit et al.'s reaction to the AGI/existential safety stuff is also weird. I don't even disagree, but I'm not sure why this topic in particular is such a lightening rod.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#78

Post by lupire »

canaus wrote: post #20
skoskie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are there any institutions that meets a “pure” research standard? NIST? Or is that standard unattainable because undue influence exists everywhere?

Influence exists everywhere because without influence the studies wouldn't exist in the first place.

Unless you have a wealthy aristocracy and some of them are bored so they create a lot of the major science of past couple of centuries.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#79

Post by lupire »

rank0 wrote: post #36
guhidalg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a private wealthy benefactor that likes your work, then you can avoid undue influence.

Now the influence just comes from the wealthy benefactor and his interests

Works best when the benefactor is your dead parents.

Re: Google fires another AI researcher who reportedly challenged findings

#80

Post by lupire »

true_religion wrote: post #21
tedivm wrote: post #4

What really kills me is that Google claimed previous papers weren't up to their standard, but then ended up citing them in later papers that they've had press events around. It's really unfortunate that so much of our science is being done at large companies rather than universities, since the companies have a bias towards their bottom line which keeps them from publishing things that might damage that.

Can't you cite things that you disagree with? Or cite background material that you feel is subpar? That would be the norm especially if your research paper is focused on new technology. For example you would write Herbet et co, in Journal Blah found results of X with method Y. However method Y has flaws of A, B, and C... Even if a pervious study was utterly stupid in your opinion, if it's been widely publicized you s…

You are right but the implication was that the citations were not rebuttals.
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