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Why did Google Brain exist?

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Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#61

Post by sudosysgen »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #51
jeffbee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically nothing has spun out of it to benefit Google Quite a ridiculous statement. Google has inserted ML all over their products. Maybe you just don't notice, to their credit. But for example the fact that YouTube can automatically generate subtitles for any written language from any spoken language is a direct outcome of Google ML research. There are lots of machine-inferred search ranking signals. Google Sheet…

> Quite a ridiculous statement. Google has inserted ML all over their products. Maybe you just don't notice, to their credit. But for example the fact that YouTube can automatically generate subtitles for any written language from any spoken language is a direct outcome of Google ML research. There are lots of machine-inferred search ranking signals. Google Sheets will automatically fill in your formulas, that's in-h…

Automatic subtitles and translation is actually a huge feature which is very useful to the many people that don't speak English. It definitely did provide Google with a lot of value.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#62

Post by q845712 »

khazhoux wrote: post #59

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…

I read the article and thought he did a fine job of not spilling too many secrets - I'm curious what you thought he said that crossed the line?

I'm not personally aware of signing something that says "I'll keep all internal details private" though I agree I'd be highly unlikely to refer to anyone below the SVP level by name -- but I think that's exactly what OP did?

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#63

Post by snapcaster »

asdfman123 wrote: post #40
light_hue_1 wrote: post #3

> The next obvious reason for Google to invest in pure research is for the breakthrough discoveries it has yielded and can continue to yield. As a rudimentary brag sheet, Brain gave Google TensorFlow, TPUs, significantly improved Translate, JAX, and Transformers. Except that these advances have made other companies an existential threat for Google. 2 years ago it was hard to imagine what could topple Google. Now a lo…

Google has very good LLMs. It just let OpenAI beat them to the punch by releasing them earlier. As an established business, Google felt it had a lot to lose by releasing "unsafe" AI into the world. But OpenAI doesn't have a money printing machine, and it's sink-or-swim for them.

I keep hearing this, but Bard sucks so badly when i've tried to use it like GPT-4 or compare results its like night and day. What makes you so confident they have "secret" LLMs that are superior?

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#64

Post by qumpis »

erenyeager wrote: post #60
hintymad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controvery of what? Did you read Gebru's paper? For instance, her calculation of carbon footprint of training BERT assumes that companies will train BERT 24x7. Gebru is a disgrace to the community because she always, I mean literally always, attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white male…

Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field and the important role people like Gebru played in extending the political and status of minorities is ok to extinguish? We need more than just white male / Chinese male / Indian male monoculture “STEM lords”. This is already recognized in fields like medicine, where minorities treating minorities results in better outcomes and the greater push to open posit…

Yes, uplifting minorities is great, but anyone should be accountable equally when it comes to workplace conduct

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#65

Post by DavidSJ »

brilee wrote: post #47
Scea91 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more than a nitpick to me. I find the essay interesting but this line raised some distrust in me. How can someone have these deep insights into Google's ML strategy and the evolution of the field and simultaneously think LSTMs were invented by Google in 2014?

sorry, I had a mind fart. I was thinking of seq2seq https://research.google/pubs/pub43155/ Pushing the fix now...

seq2seq was indeed a big deal.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#66

Post by selimthegrim »

kevviiinn wrote: post #25
qumpis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm yet to see an ML PhD be required to learn chemistry to a similar extent that chemists would need to doing ML (especially at research level)

That's because application and research are quite different. If one does a PhD in ML they learn how to research ML. Someone with a PhD in chemistry learns how to research chemistry, they only need to apply ML to that research

Well I think the issue is more of if you’re Genentech and you need ML people and can’t afford to pay them you’re probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#67

Post by logicchains »

erenyeager wrote: post #60
hintymad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controvery of what? Did you read Gebru's paper? For instance, her calculation of carbon footprint of training BERT assumes that companies will train BERT 24x7. Gebru is a disgrace to the community because she always, I mean literally always, attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white male…

Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field and the important role people like Gebru played in extending the political and status of minorities is ok to extinguish? We need more than just white male / Chinese male / Indian male monoculture “STEM lords”. This is already recognized in fields like medicine, where minorities treating minorities results in better outcomes and the greater push to open posit…

>Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field and the important role people like Gebru played in extending the political and status of minorities is ok to extinguish?

Yes it's okay to extinguish it if hiring underrepresented minorities means hiring bad actors like her who contribute nothing of value. Scientific truth is scientific truth; if you hire people for the color of their skin or their sexuality instead of their ability to produce truth, you slow the progress of science and make the world worse for everyone.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#68

Post by TaylorAlexander »

khazhoux wrote: post #59

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…

What did he sign? And what are the relevant laws?

You have to be careful thinking you owe your employer everything they would wish to have. Disclosing the inner workings is extremely helpful to people trying to figure out where to work, and how their current employer compares to others. I got a job at Google X Robotics in 2017 in large part because the place was so secret and I always wanted to know what happened there. It was quite an interesting experience, but I do wonder how I would have felt if someone like me working there had written something like this before I made the decision.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#70

Post by belval »

erenyeager wrote: post #60
hintymad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controvery of what? Did you read Gebru's paper? For instance, her calculation of carbon footprint of training BERT assumes that companies will train BERT 24x7. Gebru is a disgrace to the community because she always, I mean literally always, attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white male…

Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field and the important role people like Gebru played in extending the political and status of minorities is ok to extinguish? We need more than just white male / Chinese male / Indian male monoculture “STEM lords”. This is already recognized in fields like medicine, where minorities treating minorities results in better outcomes and the greater push to open posit…

This seems like a pretty bad faith argument that illustrates exactly the point the parent comment was making. Firing Gebru for insubordination is not "extinguishing" anything, it's getting rid of an employee that was actively taking pot shots at the company in her paper and somehow equated getting fired with anti-minority bias. In practice, Google is already much more tolerant of activism than the average tech company and she was unable to play by the corporate rules.
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