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About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

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Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#201

Post by whimsicalism »

trhway wrote: post #161
albatruss wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a certain narrow, selfish perspective it's reasonable for Google to not want to have an AI ethics department placing a check on their leading edge research at all. Fortunately, we don't live in a world where corporations are the ones to determine right from wrong with total impunity.

> AI ethics department placing a check on their leading edge research that reminds how in USSR each non-miniscule factory, organization, etc. had "the department #1" - it was an ideological check and control department which at sufficiently large/important organizations even included KGB officers.

Even the fact that the USSR had factories at all makes the concept of a factory suspect to me.

Should we really keep manufacturing cars using the same tools that Stalin used?

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#203

Post by trhway »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #126
trhway wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isnt publicly funded academic institution. Whatever they are doing, in particular publishing, is part of the business/PR. So if the management sees something not good for business it is a reasonable that they decided to not do it. If i were a shareholder i can see how i may have questioned why a person being paid $1M+/year (my understanding this is minimum what a manager in AI at Google would be making) for pu…

In most cases, yes. In this case, because the paper was about bias in Google's AI models, it might not be just a business decision because the racial bias described in that paper might result in a disparate impact on users, which could be in violation of state or federal law.

well, imagine a manager in your company publishing a paper stating that your company products are probably violating state or federal laws. All that without raising the issue up the proper management chain, without working through the correct procedure with compliance and legal depts, and without going to law enforcement if the law violation is still continues after all that.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#204

Post by contemporary343 »

gcr wrote: post #2

Maybe different teams are different, but on my previous team within Google AI, we thought the goal of google's pubapproval process was to ensure that internal company IP (eg. details about datasets, details about google compute infra) does not leak to the public, and maybe to shield Google from liability. Nothing more. In all of my time at Google AI, I never heard of pubapproval being used for peer review or to criti…

Ditto in my past experience at Microsoft Research. Never an actual review of paper's merits, just IP and maintaining trade secrets if applicable.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#205

Post by apta »

aylmao wrote: post #178
wilde wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. People bluff in negotiations all the time. A normal response would have been, “I can’t do that. Are you still committed to leaving?” Instead Google went all scorched earth and it’s still unclear why. It also indicates that they don’t particularly value her in progress work in the lab since normally you want the 2 weeks or whatever to squeeze some wrap up work out of folks.

I agree. Worth highlighting: > ...if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date . Google's response to this was not accepting of her terms, it was to force an end-date for her —immediately— and lock her out of their systems ASAP.

Which makes a lot of sense. You don't want to keep an unstable employee around.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#206

Post by whimsicalism »

asciident wrote: post #55
Imnimo wrote: post #21

This reads to me like Google felt that the paper painted some of their other technologies in a poor light, and wanted to insert language that made them look better. The way he describes their objections, they strike me as the sort of thing that is routinely addressed in the camera-ready version of papers by adding a few lines to the related work section. Not the sort of thing that a conference reviewer or an internal…

I've seen these review comments before and I don't know if we can say from our position whether it's corrections that can be made for camera ready or not. If a paper does not analyze the improvements from recent work, and just older work that has been surpassed (deemed inefficient by Dean), the new reanalysis might not be as favorable to the results as the paper proposes which means the paper is moot. Or the second p…

But this review process had never been used for introducing comments of this sort to a paper ever before. Plus, there was no suggestion of change, just retraction.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#207

Post by mrDmrTmrJ »

kaymanb wrote: post #3

> Our aim is to rival peer-reviewed journals in terms of the rigor and thoughtfulness in how we review research before publication. I can see how this might be frustrating for academics working within Google. The field already has systems in place for peer-review. While I admire the idea of Google holding their research to a certain standard, it also provides a mechanism for dismissing research that paints Google (th…

Great question! Here's a scenario, though I don't know if it's the case here:

Image that one set of NDA'd data was included in the paper, that painted Google in a bad light, but a different set of NDA'd data was excluded in paper, that painted Google in a good light.

I have no idea if that's what's going on here. But if some of the people who objected to publishing the paper thought this was happening, it may explain their objections to publishing the work.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#208

Post by apta »

tinyhouse wrote: post #191

In her email she claims that she is constantly being dehumanized. This is unacceptable to someone in her amazing position and to be honest sounds like she is a narcissist. I think Google couldn't wait to get rid of her (cannot blame them, she wanted to sue the company a year prior, also "represented" the company really bad on social media) and her email with demands was their opportunity. I don't think she would surv…

This is the problem with hiring SJWs. They will claim being victimized, racism, etc. the moment they don't have their way. I'm sure many people would have loved to be in her position and have her salary and benefits. Some people can't have enough it seems. "Wokeness" is a disease, the goal is to keep getting more and more power behind the guise of "equality".

Hopefully more employers will reject hiring "woke" people after seeing the trouble they're causing.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#209

Post by sidlls »

lostmsu wrote: post #162
fatbird wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but it's also the norm that peer reviewer's feedback is provided to allow the author the address issues. In Timnit's account, she received neither identities nor the feedback itself.

This is incorrect, she did receive the feedback, then demanded the source to be deanonimized.

Yes, that’s what I understood. It’s a completely inappropriate request really. And a scientist should understand that.

Re: About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean

#210

Post by quest88 »

skissane wrote: post #73
Imnimo wrote: post #21

This reads to me like Google felt that the paper painted some of their other technologies in a poor light, and wanted to insert language that made them look better. The way he describes their objections, they strike me as the sort of thing that is routinely addressed in the camera-ready version of papers by adding a few lines to the related work section. Not the sort of thing that a conference reviewer or an internal…

> they strike me as the sort of thing that is routinely addressed in the camera-ready version of papers by adding a few lines to the related work section What I don't understand is why in the discussion nobody proposed amending the paper rather than withdrawing it. If Dean's issue was it didn't cite papers X,Y and Z, rather than demand a withdrawal, why didn't he just demand "I want you to amend the paper to add cite…

Maybe they did? We know, from Jeff's doc, feedback was given and then demands were made.
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