161–170 of 460 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. What about the paper trail she left on Twitter?
That happened after she was fired. You can't cite that behaviour as a reason for firing her. Violates causality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Google wanted her to reference their efforts to mitigate those things in addition to repeating yet again that they can happen. Self-serving? Sure, but not really censorship. You have a really funny world-view where compelled speech doesn't fall in the censorship bucket.
My employer asks me to change wording or add in bits of marketing fluff to my presentations all the time and I don’t go screaming to the hills for ‘compelled speech’. If you’re producing work on your companies dime it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they want you to represent the company well.
What Google wants to say to the world is "hey, you should totally trust us, we have the best ethical AI people in the field looking over our shoulder!" But now Google can't say that, because the world knows that their experts aren't completely free to exercise judgement or state their opinions. That may only be true to a limited extent, but the damage to Google is larger: mostly because we don't know how limited it is.
Insofar as your employer feels free to add marketing fluff to your presentations, that's because your value to the company is not predicated on your being an independent voice who provides a check on management.
This issue reminds me a lot of what we do in security and privacy, which are ostensibly engineering disciplines, but are really technology governance functions. Ethical AI is also a governance function, and like hackers in security, there is an invisible yet stark limit to the value activists can provide in actual governance roles. Litigating demands is just not how governance gets done. The irony of Google hiring so…
It gave me multiple upsights about how to clean up my approach thinking about the issues here:
+ framing an analogy using technology governance functions - whose functions and values can be clearly quantified and measured by many independently - with a ethical (moral) functions - whose values and results are much more nebulous
+ drawing a parallel between hackers - whom many technologists 'understand'- and value activists - whom many technologists don't 'understand
+ pointing out the now-self-evident axioms that i) activists, like hackers, hold you to 'their' standard, not yours and ii) will fight you 'their' way when you fail to meet those standards
+ the point about academia and corporate leaders needing to act as deans and dealing with navigating conflict resolution in a new 'tribe' they don't understand. Not forgetting they currently deal with multiple other tribes - investors, media, government etc.
I would like to add a couple of small points:
+ Personal risk to executives is the change in the mix with highest impact. This becomes more important as this risk is transferred up the corporate ladder.
So, leaders examining issues, from this 'new' perspective, in a balanced nuanced way while still considering profits, politics, strategy, foresight, ability to manage change ( et al, ad nauseam ) increasingly becomes a key career soft skill. Especially if decisions are delivered in communication styles that are still clearly understood by all relevant other tribes they deal with in situations like this.
+. I would like to suggest that some folks are missing PART of the point (not all of it, just an important small nuance) No single party gets to frame this debate. Ethics is now inside the corp. fence so it has to be heard.
Just consider that every side of the debate has their perspective and the other side is "crazy" from this viewpoint. E.g a key tool for academics with leadership is demanding the removal of leaders with a "or we go " chaser - this is normal in that world and it would be crazy not to use the tool as part of a "normal" negotiation. But it is not normal in the corporate world.
Point being everyone's normal is some version of some other person's crazy.
Well, these folks are from another 'tribe". The way things are done in their world is different'. Corp is the one behaving in a way that "does not make sense" from their perspective.
Just considering that the view from someone else's vantage point could be different would go a long way here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just going by the CNN article and her tweets, which include the response from some manager, Megan: As a result, we are accepting your resignation immediately, effective today. https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364732480958467 Looks like Timnit Gebru made an ultimatum and offered her resignation if the terms of the ultimatum were not met. Google accepted her resignation and chose to have it effective imme…
Google let her go early claiming her actions were "inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager". That is the language used when firing someone for their behavior.
However, we have context. We know that an ultimatum including a resignation threat was given.
Accepting that resignation and making the termination of their employment relationship immediate with some extra "Yeah, this is for the best" language doesn't mean that she was fired.
If you only want to consider the limited context of ignoring that she submitted a resignation ultimatum, aren't you just cherry picking?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't they push back on the publication because the paper was lacking in certain regards? IIRC it failed to take into account relevant recent papers, for example. Which probably could have been fixed if they didn't submit as late as they did.
The paper was submitted on time, other papers at Google were submitted for review after they were released. By Jeff Dean's own admission the paper was approved for release. The demand for retraction was initially given while refusing to state what the reason(s) for the demand were. Only after the meeting where they demanded she retract the paper did they belatedly agree to read her the feedback that they stated as th…
> Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted.
> A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper.
I'm curious: why is ignoring too much relevant research not a good reason to demand retraction? Isn't this one of the most common embarrassing mistakes that inexperienced researchers tend to make? I can fully understand if Google does not want to associate itself with work that might be viewed by the wider research community as shoddy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
She gave a set of conditions and stated that if they couldn't be met, that she would work with Google to schedule a resignation date. Google then cut off her corporate access and terminated her employment immediately, ergo, firing. If someone says, do this or I'll jump, and the other person pushes them, that's not the same thing as the person taking the leap on their own. The result might be the same, but the way the…
As someone who just learned about this kerfuffle a few minutes ago, that doesn't make sense to claim that she was fired. If you offer to resign if new conditions of employment aren't met and the company accepts your resignation without honoring your exact terms of schedule, it sounds like you largely were responsible for terminating your own employment. Claiming that you were "immediately fired" as she tweeted just s…
This isn't just a framing. She was fired. Now you may say "she was asking for it" but that doesn't change the fact that she was fired.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What?? Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.
>Yet when a woman of color does it Maybe the reason it isn't praised in this case isn't due to her being a woman of color but due to other differences in this case and those that are praised?
Perhaps we shouldn't just sweep it under the rug. It seems there is very real merit, this was not just a disgruntled employee. The subject matter is directly related to diversity - to remove race is to, again, cover up the systemic race issues we face as a society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google tried to prevent her from publishing a paper, which is outside of their normal practice, then dissembled about what happened (pretending internal reviewers are anonymous, for example)
Again, I'm not really trying to defend Google one way or the other. At the end of the day it seemed like Gebru published a paper that was quite critical of how Google intends to make a sizable portion of their revenue, and anyone should understand that when you do that in a large company, it's going to get extra scrutiny. And it could very well be that the whole purpose of Google's "ethical AI" team in the first plac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The paper she was fired over was leaked, though, and it's.. not novel. It's the same things everyone else has been saying for years (global warming bad, also don't build a racist speech reproducer), and Google wanted her to reference their efforts to mitigate those things in addition to repeating yet again that they can happen. Self-serving? Sure, but not really censorship and honestly would make the paper better to…
But Google didn't ask her to add the references, they demanded she retract the paper. In the meeting when they demanded the retraction they refused to even explain why. If those references to recent developments were the real issue, it seems very odd that Google responded that way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea why this matters. Timnit gave an ultimatum (i.e. do this or I'll leave). Google agreed to her condition of parting way. This is like I go to my boss and ask for a $1 billion dollars. Otherwise, I'll leave. Then, my boss decides that I should leave since the boss can't give me $1b. Then, I keep telling my friends that "well, I'm actually fired.". huh?
I understand it as the issue is whether this was constructive dismissal, a form of firing where the employee is forced to resign. Not sure if constructive dismissal is a thing in the US but it is in the UK.