Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#181

Post by bArray »

> Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone.

If you want to justify your position, I would suggest highlighting the positive changes you _did_ make, rather than the positive changes you _intended_ to make. If you didn't make any notable positive changes over the time you worked there, that might explain why you no longer do work there.

'Ethical AI' in my opinion is essentially the AI version of 'positive discrimination', i.e. they will keep biasing the inputs and outputs until the algorithm yields the desired result. In this case the desired result in not equality, but "corrected equality". Don't get me wrong, biased and misleading training sets are a problem, but the AI itself is not unethical.

Also I would like to know whether algorithm transparency included blue check-marks (that were obviously biased), or government take-down requests, or the promotion of completely random people for no apparent reason? There was never any intention for algorithm transparency, this is Twitter's 'secret sauce' after all.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#182

Post by srvmshr »

xiphias2 wrote: post #4

,,The ML Ethics, Transparency, & Accountability team was one of a kind'' Sure, something nobody has heared of and nobody knows why it should be at a company like Twitter.

'Ethics, Transparency and Accountability' is a decently important part of any data warehousing company.

If you are going to be hosting petabytes of data and in the business of showing advertisment, a lot of recommendation algorithms work in the background. A lot of times they aren't perfect and end up showing information which could be very high correlated but culturally sensitive, offensive or avoidable. People working in fairness and accountability run a lot of experiments to make sure biases don't get amplified in service offerings.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#183

Post by SavageBeast »

pjc50 wrote: post #125
SavageBeast wrote: post #91

Now is a good time for us all to chill, take inventory as the year draws to an end and uncertain economic conditions have us all a little on edge. Change happens, it's uncomfortable at first but it can be made to work for you too. Change isn't always bad. Can anyone look at Twitters performance as a public company and say that no changes were warranted? Twitters "mission" wasn't exactly being well executed either. So…

> More or less he's put a big chunk of his lifes work on the line over a silly tweet about buying Twitter. It's a forty-four billion dollar drunk ebay purchase. But it comes after previous occasions when he'd been told by the SEC to stop making stock-price-moving announcements on twitter. It's just astonishingly irresponsible of him to have got in this position in the first place.

> It's a forty-four billion dollar drunk ebay purchase.

ROFL!!! Well said! Very succinctly put.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#184

Post by lagolinguini »

bArray wrote: post #181

> Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone. If you want to justify your position, I would suggest highlighting the positive changes you _did_ make, rather than the positive changes you _intende…

> If you want to justify your position, I would suggest highlighting the positive changes you _did_ make, rather than the positive changes you _intended_ to make.

Imagine where the world would be if bell labs didn't invest all that money into positive changes that people _intended_ to make.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#185

Post by [deleted] »

beardedman wrote: post #101
taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

> in the US and less civilized countries Going to have a hard time finding some goodwill when you refer to other countries as "less civilized". A tad hypocritical.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#186

Post by PM_me_your_math »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #18

What a contrast in leadership when you compare the way Twitter is doing this (rumor is right before bonus/stock vesting and cold impersonal email) and how Stripe is conducting their layoffs (empathy, 14 weeks severance, bonus payouts, etc.) Which company is going to have an easier time hiring after the dust settles and they have a growth stage again?

Has stripe lost billions of dollars for 8 out of the last 10 years?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#187

Post by Waterluvian »

bArray wrote: post #181

> Yep, the team is gone. The team that was researching and pushing for algorithmic transparency and algorithmic choice. The team that was studying algorithmic amplification. The team that was inventing and building ethical AI tooling and methodologies. All that is gone. If you want to justify your position, I would suggest highlighting the positive changes you _did_ make, rather than the positive changes you _intende…

I’ve worked at companies that had entire teams that did a lot of fancy-sounding nothing.

Based on these details, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a team like that.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#188

Post by cafard »

somedude895 wrote: post #115
taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

It's okay to feel bad for people who lose their jobs. But business cycles are important for a healthy economy. Unsustainable ventures need to die or be pruned at some point if you want to generate lasting prosperity. Whether this specific instance actually serves to create a more productive and more dynamic company remains to be seen, and it sucks for the people affected, but if they're skilled and useful – as every…

In this case, though, we aren't talking about the business cycle, are we?

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#189

Post by s1k3 »

spamizbad wrote: post #171
taurath wrote: post #89

Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at…

I feel like Musk is making a spectacle of Twitter layoffs as a way to curry favor with those who very vocally disliked Twitter’s moderation policies, most of whom were just social media clout chaser types. Makers getting sacrificed to please the attention-seeking “professionals”

Has musk publicly flouted the layoffs? Isn’t this all tech journalists reporting on it?

Sounds like he’s trying to cut to profitability to me… after spending 44 billions dollars.

Re: Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun

#190

Post by s1k3 »

jdub wrote: post #76

Musk is capricious, cruel, and clueless. Whether or not you liked Twitter, it's a culturally significant platform, and Musk has almost certainly destroyed any hope it had of surviving. In barely a week. Hopefully it destroys him, too.

Alright folks you heard it here first. jdub has assured us Twitter is going down!
Post reply on HN