About Google's approach to research publication – Jeff Dean • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #170

usmannk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read it sounds like Timnit cleared the general idea of the paper 2 months before. The paper itself seems to have been submitted for approval 1 day prior to the deadline. Another HN commenter says that submitting papers for approval "hours" before the deadline is common at Google.

Thank you. I’m not sure what to think. It seemed absurd to submit a paper for internal academic review one day prior to a major deadline. Yet today we’re hearing that it’s common (I can believe that; standard big company stuff) and that Google hasn’t been doing academic reviews at all until very recently / possibly this incident. So it feels like, suddenly, the cornerstones of the arguments against her are vaporizing…

> It seemed absurd to submit a paper for internal academic review one day prior to a major deadline

I think that there isn't internal academic review of the sort implied by Jeff at Google.

Timnit seems pretty clearly in the right here. As an AI researcher at a competitor, this impacts my desire to join Google in the future. I imagine these sort of PR disasters hurt their standing in the academic labor market.

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

#222

Post by wpietri » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #181

vecter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make ultimatums unless you're ready to accept the consequences of those ultimatums.

> ...if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. To be fair it doesn't sound like her ultimatum was "I'll leave immediately"— that was forced on her by Google, and is an important detail.

Definitely. "If we don't fix this I don't think I can continue working here" is not a resignation, it's a negotiating position.

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

#223

Post by lallysingh » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

gcr wrote: post #8

drfuchs wrote: post #6

My researcher acquaintances at industry labs at IBM, Microsoft, HP, Xerox, ATT, Bell, DEC, Compaq, etc. never have had to have their papers reviewed internally before submitting them to conferences or journals. What's up with Google?

Until now, nobody on my previous team at Google had to have their papers reviewed internally for scientific rigour either. (We have a publication approval process, but its purpose is to prevent IP leaks and maybe shield liability, not uphold scientific rigour standards)

This is the AI Ethics team in a company betting their future on AI.

They know they have a bubbling ethics problem and they've screwed over their best chance to do anything other than completely fuck it up.

In history, this will be a wtf double facepalm moment.

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

#224

Post by nickff » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #109

orsenthil wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, put more simply, they pushed out someone in their Ethical AI department because they did not soften critiques against AI enough. I didn't read that. I read the person _demanded_ who said a particular critical feedback, or questioned the approaches instead of addressing them. The person gave the ultimatum to resign if details were not shared.

If your work is suddenly and unexpected roadblocked at the last second by internal review, the only way to make changes that prevent that from happening in the future is to clearly understand the situations and criticisms that led to the roadblock. This is why understanding who raised these concerns is important. Anonymous feedback blowing up a project at the final moments is sure to frustrate anybody. If what she ha…

As a manager, if someone gives an ultimatum, you basically have to fire them. There's no real option; Ben Horowitz covered it somewhere, but the bottom line is that if you yield, you've given up all control.

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

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

siliconmountain wrote: post #149

UncleMeat wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your work is suddenly and unexpected roadblocked at the last second by internal review, the only way to make changes that prevent that from happening in the future is to clearly understand the situations and criticisms that led to the roadblock. This is why understanding who raised these concerns is important. Anonymous feedback blowing up a project at the final moments is sure to frustrate anybody. If what she ha…

Isn't the academic journal peer review process generally an anonymous feedback mechanism? Why does this need to be different?

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

calf wrote: post #134

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…

The key sentence is the bullshit about a paper not offering mitigation as not helping. Since when is a scientific paper required to do that.

When I was in academia, it was not unusual for the referees to reject a paper for this reason. Of course, you are informed of that and always have the option to rewrite the paper to include that information.

In some cases, though, it's not simply a matter of listing it as other work in the Intro - you may need to incorporate it into your models, etc.

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

#227

Post by dzdt » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

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…

Yes it is disingenuous for Dean to pretend that this was a normal process applied to a normal situation. Clearly whatever happened on that team, this latest round was not the beginning or even most important part. Gebru's letter mentions her threatening to sue Google previously, for instance. [1] The discussion about rigour in a conference paper or internal review is obviously a pretense.

[1] https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...

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

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Post by UncleMeat » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

gcr wrote: post #76

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my impression as well. Having said that, if Jeff were to make public the paper, criticisms of the paper, and improvements made to address the problems described in the paper, that could go a long way towards clearing the air.

oh yes absolutely, i would love for timmit or jeff to release this paper as-is so we can see what happened. could be a good read.

The draft is rolling around the web already.

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

#229

Post by pseudalopex » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

that_guy_iain wrote: post #125

nebulous1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone says "Do X or I'll quit" when you're not going to do X, it is a resigination I mean, whether or not this stands up legally isn't worth discussing but I don't think this is typically how an ultimatum goes. Rather it's more along the lines of "this or I'll quit", "okay, we're not doing this", "right, I quit". It's not called calling your bluff for nothing. I agree that her email to the Brain group makes he…

> However, it might make her choose not to fight them on the resignation. How can she fight? Just curious, the US is almost completely an at will employment. Fighting to get your name dirted that you didn't resign but were fired, seems odd. Google seems to saving face for her if anything.

Resigning means giving up unemployment benefits or suing for unfair dismissal.

Resigning sounds better than being fired when no other details are available. It's irrelevant when the parties publish their sides of the story.

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

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Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, Dec 04, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

bnj wrote: post #112

that_guy_iain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I’m a spectator to this unfolding story and am reacting to a pretty cursory overview of what happened, this has the distinct feeling that Google thought they were moving in for a checkmate by, in their words, “accepting a resignation”, only to have it — very predictably? - blow up in their faces completely. I wouldn't say this has blown up in their face. But to be honest, I've not seen that much drama about i…

I don’t think you’re incorrect on any particular point. Just anecdotally, I don’t think a man sending a “do x or I’ll quit” email would be met with the same response. I think issues of race and gender are playing a role here, and that’s a shame, because while firing (accepting this resignation) of this researcher might make short term business sense, it seems like it does harm to Google’s long term credibility in try…

> I don’t think a man sending a “do x or I’ll quit” email would be met with the same response.

Ugh, this is a bit infuriating to me. I think there are a ton of parallels in this whole situation to the James Damore memo issue, and IIRC Damore was fired pretty quickly: Google employee sends out an email to a wide distribution, and while that email may make some valid points, the overall tone of the post guarantees it to be a net negative to the company, and then when the employee is let go, they bitch and moan about how there is some sort of conspiracy in the company against them.

I believe firing Damore was the right decision and I believe Google was right to accept Gebru's resignation.