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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#191

Post by siliconmountain »

contemporary343 wrote: post #156
no-dr-onboard wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations by like minded publications hardly constitutes impact. Contrary to what most academics believe, impact isn't measured between the ears of individuals in academia.

Uh, what? She's a researcher and this is a Google research division. A 1000 citations is a large number for any single paper, even in ML. And yes, even inside Google research, this aspect of impact plays a big role in evaluation of researchers.

1000 citations is A LOT. I think the person you're responding to is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Popular people get quoted regardless if their paper is actually impactful and that it's, unfortunately, often a popularity contest. People are lazy and only read/cite popular papers

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#192

Post by Copenjin »

bitshift010 wrote: post #13

Chief AI Scientist at Facebook, Yann Lecun, quit Twitter after a back and forth with this particular AI researcher - https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter... >I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which K…

> This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google

Self entitlement or she forgot she was just an employee, and not some sort of independent tribal leader fighting google from the inside.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#193

Post by prionassembly »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #81
prionassembly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of her replies is regrettable: Yann: “ML systems are biased when data is biased" Timnit: “I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. Many people have tried to explain, many scholars. Listen to us. You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias. Even amidst of world wide protests people don’t hear our voices and try to learn from us, they assume they’re experts in everything. Let us lead her and you fol…

I find it strange to take issue with the "I'm so tired" line. It would seem to be entirely appropriate for circumstances where you see an argument that you have replied to many times but that completely ignores your reply. It also just doesn't strike me as particularly hostile or profane. Quitting twitter and making a show of it strikes me as a far more emotional reaction, but nobody here seems to take any issue with…

> so... I guess you're tired of it?

I'm not.

Many other rhetorical moves have a lot of politics to muddle through / implicit assumptions that can be disavowed in bad faith, etc. I don't like to engage in that kind of discussion at all.

But the "I'm so tired" bit is both condescending (and it takes... something... to condescend to Yan LeCunn) and evasive. The end result is authoritarian -- look man, this is decided and settled, you haven't kept up.

Calling this out is interesting because it evidences on the contrary that the discussion isn't settled at all, and that she's unable or unwilling to frame it in a convivial manner that's conducive to progress.

I sit out of conversations I'm tired about.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#194

Post by oh_sigh »

twic wrote: post #150
jseliger wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently re-read Noah Smith's essay "Leaders Who Act Like Outsiders Invite Trouble" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/leader... . It's not directly on point, but one concept is: "This extraordinary trend of rank-and-file members challenging the leaders of their organizations goes beyond simple populism. There may be no word for this trend in the English language. But there is one in Japanese: ge…

> There may be no word for this trend in the English language. But there is one in Japanese: gekokujo. Isn't the word "mutiny"?

Or insubordination.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#195

Post by mellosouls »

namesbc wrote: post #184
high_derivative wrote: post #90

These things seem to play out like clockwork. Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles, let them hire their activist friends, shower them with fast track careers and promotions. It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to…

As soon as someone uses the phrase "social justice warriors" you know they the rest of the argument isn't going to have any substance.

No, you know they come from a certain viewpoint that has increasing common cause with people fed up with the excesses of the left.

They may be wrong, but it's a valid coinage that has worryingly become mainstream enough to be both a cliche and indicative of something deeply wrong with our society.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#196

Post by uoaei »

lowercase1 wrote: post #144

Too many comments focused on whether Google was justified in firing her/the appropriateness of the email and not enough on the impact/veracity allegations. Much more interesting questions that might get revealed a bit: Does Google treat minorities appropriately? Is Google covering up ai ethics research? Does Google care about AI ethics/bias?

I know folks in the AI ethics team.

The only reason that department exists is because it was regulated into existence.

So, no, Google does not particularly care about AI ethics. They care about not getting harangued by the US government.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#197

Post by notsureaboutpg »

curiousllama wrote: post #127
high_derivative wrote: post #90

These things seem to play out like clockwork. Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles, let them hire their activist friends, shower them with fast track careers and promotions. It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to…

> Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value "As far as I can tell" is doing a lot of work here. I can confirm this is untrue. I worked with someone like Gebru (definitely an activist researcher) at a non-FAANG and AI ethics drove 3 multimillion dollar deals. Was a better business case than most I built over that time. Besides, saying they don't drive revenue is a criti…

It's surprising to many but there's a HUGE market for green-stamping and pink-stamping certain projects, by which I mean corporations can tout environmental certifications or credentials or social justice certifications and credentials to their customers and clients.

If SC Johnson, for example, can claim that they are helping the environment and they are 100% offsetting all their carbon waste or something like this, and some hi-fi firm in SF is willing to certify them with a bunch of credentialed researchers, it has huge rewards for the company. I'm willing to bet the same is true for "equity" and other things under the umbrella of AI Ethics.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#198

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

antiquark wrote: post #120
prionassembly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of her replies is regrettable: Yann: “ML systems are biased when data is biased" Timnit: “I’m sick of this framing. Tired of it. Many people have tried to explain, many scholars. Listen to us. You can’t just reduce harms caused by ML to dataset bias. Even amidst of world wide protests people don’t hear our voices and try to learn from us, they assume they’re experts in everything. Let us lead her and you fol…

> "I'm so tired" bit Yeah, it sort of implies that, yes, you're angry about something, but actually have no constructive advice or solutions, other than to accuse someone of being a bad person or even a racist. The "I'm so tired" bit is similar to the "I'm not here to teach you" bit. Maybe someone can't teach you because they actually have nothing to teach.

No, "I'm so tired" means that it's an argument they have replied to before. She has written dozens of research papers, some of which probably contained arguments other than repetition of "you're a racist and a bad person".

You of course know about this, or would now about this considering she is called an "AI researcher at Google" in the title of this tread. So the only lazy and un-constructive criticism is to assume she has not made any arguments beyond your one-line caricature of what you believe her to be.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#199

Post by tehjoker »

bwestergard wrote: post #98
nickff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA.

"Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA." You're telling much less than half the story, and taking the latter half of the twentieth century in isolation without considering what came before. U.S. unions with communist and socialist leadership were universally anti-racist in word and very often in deed. Employers often interfered with employee choice of leader…

I'm just so happy that HN has lost its hard edged anarcho-captialist bent. T_T

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#200

Post by sudosysgen »

wil421 wrote: post #128
sudosysgen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, reading the thread, it's pretty clear that she was correct. There is a second step of metaoptimization which incentives the researchers to encode algorithms to produce algorithms that more easily bias along a certain way. And she is correct that benchmarking models against biased datasets can lead researchers to bias for architectures that are in turn more likely to have a certain bias. I'm sure LeCun knows thi…

TBH it doesn’t matter if she is right or wrong. Her tone and angry writing is pretty harsh. The Twitter replies read a lot like her Google message thing. She’s got a lot of good things to say but needs to work on the delivery. I think she’s playing the victim and race card a lot more than she should. She’s got all the ammo she needs to make her arguments without the angry victim tone.

I agree that her tone is not good, indeed. It's true that this is a big problem on Twitter especially. I still think it is an interesting and under-discussed point, though.
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