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We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

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Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#171

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ardit33 wrote: post #140
CyberRabbi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it seems like her paper was light in technical substance and high in social justice activism. Pointing out that google emits carbon is worth consideration in the appropriate venues but it doesn’t really advance the state of the art.

You have to point the alternative costs though.... if non AI trained search, returned worse results, would that waste more energy? She didn't... which are the hallmark of bad research.

How do you know?

You're reading a non technical summary of an article, and taking it as gospel.

I think I'm going to wait to see the paper before deciding whether or not it's good.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#172

Post by Dylan16807 »

threatofrain wrote: post #144
0-_-0 wrote: post #135

"...is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them" Wait, isn't that the other way around? If it can't recognize people of some category then it can't be used to discriminate against them, e.g. the police can't use it to identify peaceful protesters with those charac…

When police error in identification can mean getting shot, black people deserve to be identified as accurately as individuals of any other race.

That depends enormously on the type of error, so you can't say that as a blanket statement at all.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#173

Post by bartread »

saagarjha wrote: post #164
bartread wrote: post #158

Good grief - this terrible clickbaity headline writing: "We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says" The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she…

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way. This sounds a lot like taking what Goo…

> This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view.

Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure.

As I pointed out in the previous discussion she may have faced some sort of disciplinary action upon her return from vacation due to the content of her message to the brain group.

However, when she resigned what Google managers did (and this is no great leap of logic) is figure out that if they made her work her notice period she'd probably only cause more trouble in the meantime, so they brought it forward and made it effective immediately.

This might or might not be unusual behaviour for handling a resignation at Google, but it is fairly common practice amongst different organisations for a variety of different reasons that usually boil down to mitigating some kimd of risk to the organisation.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#174

Post by StavrosK »

foota wrote: post #139
ardit33 wrote: post #125

Ok, so basically she is a bullshit social engineer, masquerading as an 'AI ethics researcher' "Gebru’s draft paper points out that the sheer resources required to build and sustain such large AI models means they tend to benefit wealthy organizations, while climate change hits marginalized communities hardest. “It is past time for researchers to prioritize energy efficiency and cost to reduce negative environmental i…

Her previous papers look pretty serious to me, along with her resume. I see nothing to suggest she's not qualified. https://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/

What do you mean by pretty serious? I looked at three, two are about better documenting ML models/data, and one is about inferring the political leanings of an area by what type of cars are parked in it. None seem particularly groundbreaking to me...

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#175

Post by MperorM »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #116

Despite what both sides claim, IMHO papers like this are primarily PR, ideology, and politics, rather than science and technology. This is akin to a speech writer working for a politician, writing a piece that disagrees with the party platform, and refusing to fix it when asked.

To her defense, she was working on ethics in AI. What ethics to adopt inherently comes down to ideology.

While I don't really understand the emissions argument, the rest strikes me as very defensible. If the best language models need giant datasets to excel, it is very difficult to ensure your AI is trained on reasonable data.

I wouldn't want an AI therapist to be trained on 4chan. Now obviously nobody would be that stupid, but unfortunately it seems we are not far from it.

Unless we build models that rely on less data, it will be difficult to prevent problematic biases in the AI we put into production.

If that is the argument Timnit makes, I think that's the exact type of work I would expect from an AI ethics department. And good work at that.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#177

Post by rualca »

Jabbles wrote: post #153
ardit33 wrote: post #125

Ok, so basically she is a bullshit social engineer, masquerading as an 'AI ethics researcher' "Gebru’s draft paper points out that the sheer resources required to build and sustain such large AI models means they tend to benefit wealthy organizations, while climate change hits marginalized communities hardest. “It is past time for researchers to prioritize energy efficiency and cost to reduce negative environmental i…

Has she calculated the oposite alternatives? They didn't say they shouldn't make them, they said "prioritize energy efficiency". normal language, that people use As they said, language changes. Do we want a model that acts like the average person of the last 20 years? Or do we want a model that acts like a person who has just been through 2020?

> Do we want a model that acts like the average person of the last 20 years? Or do we want a model that acts like a person who has just been through 2020?

You're free to use the model you believe is best for your goals.

I you use real world data from the last 20 years to generate the model then your model will reflect an amalgamation of the real world data collected in the last 20 years.

If you prefer to focus on last month then go ahead. You'll have less real world data and seasonal patterns will have a deeper impact and the model will be less robust, but go right ahead.

If, instead, you want a model that is not generated from real world data and instead just uses your own artificial data that is blatantly and openly manipulated to reflect your personal biases and political preferences then just call the spade a spade.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#178

Post by [deleted] »

blueblisters wrote: post #157
jskajakzkjx wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re making a weaker version of this argument than you need to, because you’re framing it in terms that oppose the politics of half of the public, when you really only need to argue against a much more specific set of ideas. For example: > Ok, basically she is pissed as AI is picking normal language, that people use, and not using the vocabulary that is in vogue on certain political circles. Basically censu…

> Furthermore, even if humans are constantly updating an expert system, the biases inherent in the composition of the company-hired set of experts will limit the representation of minority trends in the data. Exactly this. Framing it in terms of alternate options makes AI the more reasonable choice. Google AI appears to have drawn unnecessary attention to themselves for relatively benign paper. Most of the arguments…

[deleted]

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#179

Post by Dylan16807 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
mlyle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're agreeing with someone being sarcastic. But it is text, so one can't be sure.

The problem with sarcasm on this issue (beyond the inherent ambiguity of plain text sarcasm) is that this is something you can see people saying literally (or, at least, as what they see as only a slightly hyperbolic description of a real trend that they are complaining about.)

I call BS. "Every single"? Come on.

Re: We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google

#180

Post by saagarjha »

bartread wrote: post #173
saagarjha wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way. This sounds a lot like taking what Goo…

> This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure. As I pointed out in the…

…and? Did you not consider it useful to mention at all? Do you think you’ve already included what she mentioned?
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