Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher • Hacker News Board

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#101

Post by whatshisface » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

teen wrote: post #76

tmotwu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If she was truly removed for her abrasiveness, we would have a completely separate discussion entirely. What transpired, from both her disclosures and Google's leaderships response, has justifiably reigned in a lot of concern and skeptism from the broader research community.

She was, they said her email was not befitting of a manager. Which is clearly true

The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her. I know none of the facts and am perfectly ignorant about this situation, but I have seen people get kicked out for semi-justifiable surface reasons that were totally unrelated to why their superiors didn't like them. So a-priori, the theory that the difference between someone's not-so-significant faults being tolerated or not being tolerated, is their willingness to comply with the goals that for whatever reason the leadership doesn't feel they can make explicit, is a reasonable suggestion.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#102

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

harrisonjackson wrote: post #94

whimsicalism wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't "accept someone's resignation" and then add terms to it and actually "resign" them a little sooner than they were going to resign. That's called firing.

That's exactly what a lot of companies do when someone gives 2 weeks notice. Send them home right away and pay them for the 2 weeks so you can keep them from filing unemployment and have them on the hook for any exit interview / handoff questions etc. They always want you to sign "something" as part of the process, too.

Yes, I'm aware of how FB&Google work.

> when someone gives 2 weeks notice.

But she didn't give 2 weeks notice. This seems to be the key detail.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#103

Post by tmpz22 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #57

elefanten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.

> divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy. Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor during the peak of the civil rights movement. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.

Relating GP to a '60s era segregation apologist for offering a dissenting opinion is proving their point.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#104

Post by pontus » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

tmotwu wrote: post #18

It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there…

I think that even if her work was spot on, Google has every right to have her retract her research. You can say that this is hypocritical of Google, which I actually don't really agree with.

Even if we take it as fact that she was somehow going to be releasing something very damaging and that Google was weary of that (which I already think is quite generous to her), I would imagine that her role as a researcher is not to be an in-house whistleblower but rather to be someone who helps Google mitigate the biases etc that they may be perpetuating. If that's the case, her first job is to serve Google and help them address these shortcomings and her second role (if there even is one) would be to publish this for the community at large.

Most companies will not let people publish their findings at all, and I think this is something that sets Google and a few other companies apart from the pack. The fact that there even is a mechanism to share results outside of your employer is really rare.

So, even if Google said "wow, this is spot on and will make us look terrible", they should be 100% able to tell her "don't publish this, instead let's work to fix this and then possibly publish a post mortem".

Google is ultimately a company, not a democracy.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#105

Post by contemporary343 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

snendroid-ai wrote: post #100

contemporary343 wrote: post #37

Google (and Google Brain in particular) benefited immensely from Gebru's work, and her being affiliated with them. This can be seen in how often they (including Jeff Dean) pointed to her work to show they were taking questions of fairness and bias in AI algorithms seriously. The flip side is that you have to respect the researcher, who frankly has more credibility than you do as an organization in this space. Even to…

> Google (and Google Brain in particular) benefited immensely from Gebru's work Explain

As one example, Dean references her work here: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46999443

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#106

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #24

p49k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numerator is such a small percentage because so many fear losing their jobs for speaking out. In that context, this number is quite significant. Even if you disagree with their stance, you have to admit that it takes courage to speak up in these kinds of situations.

This argument can be made about any unpopular subject. Americans really want full-blown Communism, but are too afraid of speaking out for fear of retaliation from jack-booted capitalist thugs. Prove me wrong.

This argument would work better if your hypothetical weren't obviously true.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#107

Post by xibalba » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

samizdis wrote: post #8

Statement posted by staff, signed by many Googlers and also academics, industry experts etc: https://googlewalkout.medium.com/standing-with-dr-timnit-geb...

It looks like the majority of signees are not Googlers.

Even if they were, their number would comprise a rounding error of Google's total head count.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#108

Post by drewcoo » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

Someone calling for a big corp to be ethical is branded toxic. Is this "toxic" the same thing that happened with "literally" a decade or so ago?

Just checking to make sure my lexicon's up to date.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#109

Post by aspaceman » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

tmotwu wrote: post #18

It is unfortunate that way too many commenters on a prior threads dismissed her as a some twitter personality and trivialized her body of work in spite of the fact that she is well regarded and reputable in the ML community. It's becoming clear a rising number of her colleagues are in support of what she was seeking to publish. A reviewer on reddit mentioned the authors have plenty of time to make revisions if there…

The comments are so implicitly skeptical I find it hard to take this site seriously.

Re: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher

#110

Post by ivalm » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #91

actuator wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her spat against Yann LeCun felt very wrong to me. That is not how fellow academics/researchers should treat each other. Maybe Yann LeCun was wrong, the way she conveyed the message disregarding any knowledge he might have on this was definitely not civil. She could have chosen a different way to address the complaints here, not by getting overtly confrontational. Maybe the review group got it wrong, maybe they were…

> definitely not civil. I agree that people should try to be kind and charitable to each other, and this conversation didn't show that. That said, I think we also have to be cognizant of the way "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo. It might not have been very "civil" for instance when Google employees walked out of the offi…

What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.