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More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

theguardian.com

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Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#141

Post by virgilp »

jlokier wrote: post #93
miked85 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She offered to resign on a particular schedule It is not out of the ordinary at all for companies to walk people out on the day of resignation. The company is not required or even expected to abide by whatever schedule is presented to them.

If the employee says "I'm giving you 1 month formal notice of resignation", and the company responds with "effective immediately you are terminated without pay or benefits", at that point it's not a resignation any more, it's a termination. In most countries (which are not "at will"), I believe if the employee had not breached their contract they could claim wrongful termination in this scenario and likely be awarded…

Employers just need to pay you whatever period is written in your contract (which may be longer or shorter than 1 month). Which may very well be what happened here - nobody claimed she's no longer paid a dime, just that she no longer has access to Google resources.

You can't just say "i'm giving you 1 month of formal notice of resignation" and expect the company to be bound to that month... otherwise, to take it to extremes, what's stopping you from giving them a 20years formal notice of resignation?

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#142

Post by jollofricepeas »

tertius wrote: post #107
jollofricepeas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I think its important to leave a link to the paper here for HN. Please read it or at least its intro & conclusion. https://gofile.io/d/WfcxoF After reading, it seems very much in line with her role as an ethicist. She merely states that there are various risks associated with processing large datasets. Its a bit sad that they attempted to censure such an innocuous paper that without malice states “there a…

> She merely states that there are various risks associated with processing large datasets. What's the strongest argument against her "merely" doing this?

The strongest argument for Google is it not wanting people to know that there are risks, no?

The strongest argument for her not doing it is keeping her job vs maintaining her professional responsibility as an ethicist, no?

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#143

Post by metabagel »

pmoriarty wrote: post #98
InTheArena wrote: post #57

Google is an company that demands extraordinarily high ideological conformance from its workers. Unfortunately for Google it new longer controls the exact specification of what is and is not acceptable thought at Google, and much like the French revolution it’s being pushed into directions that is management may or may not agree with. What should be a fairly reasonable question – is this person a good employee or not…

"What should be a fairly reasonable question – is this person a good employee or not is immediately contaminated by questions they have nothing to do with job performance." There are all sorts of non-performance considerations that are important, not just at Google, but at pretty much every other company. One of those considerations is ethics. Another is legality. Another is public relations. Which of these do you th…

I thought those are also job performance considerations?

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#144

Post by sam0x17 »

miked85 wrote: post #13

She gave her employer an ultimatum, threatening to quit if she didn't get her way. They called her bluff. I don't see how that is the same as being fired. At that point she was on her way out, one way or another; most employers would rather not work with people like this.

She said "at a later date" leaving it up to her discretion. Google accepted a resignation that didn't exist, and will probably be liable for it in some way.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#145

Post by spacekitcat »

_y5hn wrote: post #127
spacekitcat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we agree.

Yeah, but "The Middle Path" is a hard sell to the masses.

I think there's a weird seam of irrational rage around the mere suggestion that tech isn't some utopian meritocracy.

I find it jarring.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#146

Post by paperdropper »

kevingadd wrote: post #111
idk_bro_idk wrote: post #46

All those 1200 should threaten to go on strike and hit Google's profits.

1200 employees going on strike will literally have no negative impact on Google's bottom line, at least not unless they do it for a long time period. A lot of the money that comes in is basically automatic, it's being produced by ad sells and stuff like that. You'd need a massive subset of the company's staff to go on strike (not just 1200) before that would have any impact on whether the money-making machine continu…

> Maybe if the entire SRE department went on strike and stopped maintaining the datacenters that would put a dent in the numbers due to degraded service, but something like that would probably just doom the company entirely even if they went back to work after a bit.

It's the threat of being able to strike and potentially cause that much damage to the business that makes it powerful.

No-one really wants to strike, actually going through with it is the final step when the company fails to meet the workers' demands - no point in making a threat if you don't demonstrate it when the circumstances arise, it's toothless otherwise.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#147

Post by telltruth »

dmarchand90 wrote: post #18
miked85 wrote: post #13

She gave her employer an ultimatum, threatening to quit if she didn't get her way. They called her bluff. I don't see how that is the same as being fired. At that point she was on her way out, one way or another; most employers would rather not work with people like this.

I think the subtle, yet important, difference is that she said she would quit by a certain date and they terminated her immediately. Given her role is likely just for PR it seems rather foolish not to at least give her two weeks notice or something.

If employee is found using company resources inappropriately (in this case, mailing list to rant) then you can't give that employee 2 weeks notice. Google will then have to consider possibility that she will abuse their mailing lists.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#148

Post by LatteLazy »

It's sort of meta but...

The article repeatedly mentions Gebru's race and sex and includes it for the only Google employee quoted. Why does that matter? Is she more reliable because of her skin colour? Is he less reliable because of his genitals?

The cynic in me feels like I'm being subtly trolled. Or maybe I'm just oversensitive? :)

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#149

Post by baud147258 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #88
w1ntermute wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just another example of the “participation culture” that modern parenting and social media have made commonplace. Who needs to do anything real when you can just upvote or retweet? You get the same sort of participation trophy that you’ve been taught to aim for since childhood.

>"that modern parenting" Back in my days we would chop off heads and assisinate politicans! These kids can't do anything right!

> Back in my days we would chop off heads and assisinate politicans!

back in my days, we would unionize and block the factories until the company died or we got what we wanted

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#150

Post by whynotminot »

cataphract wrote: post #118
commandlinefan wrote: post #3

But how many applaud it? (In secret because supporting this is something you might get fired for...)

Judging from the comments from some of her ex-colleagues, she was not exactly an easy person to deal with: > The GPT-3 thread you describe was my first exposure to Timnit. Watching that thread unfold left me feeling upset, frustrated, and disappointed. > I was so excited in anticipation of other Googler's reactions and insights about GPT-3, but that thread got immediately derailed by Timnit into claims of racism, not…

I'm still trying to gather more insight into what actually happened here. But you have to know upper management calculated there'd be blowback for firing someone of her stature, position, background, race, gender, etc. They did it anyway. That to me says that keeping her around was worse than the storm they knew they'd generate by firing her.
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