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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

#231

Post by zemo »

google234123 wrote: post #194
qppo wrote: post #25

Yesterday the conversation was all over the tone of the email exchange, and my gut was regardless of the research it discussed that Google was probably alright to choose to accept that researcher's resignation. Now I think I was wrong, Google looks like they're full of crap. If the research doesn't pass muster I'd like to read it and pass my own judgement. I'm guessing the tone was justified.

If oyu are paid by Google, Google has a right to vet your external work related to your position.

ok google234123

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

#232

Post by visarga »

javajosh wrote: post #100
qppo wrote: post #25

Yesterday the conversation was all over the tone of the email exchange, and my gut was regardless of the research it discussed that Google was probably alright to choose to accept that researcher's resignation. Now I think I was wrong, Google looks like they're full of crap. If the research doesn't pass muster I'd like to read it and pass my own judgement. I'm guessing the tone was justified.

What's even worse is that Google ignored Timnit's attempts to figure out what went wrong, handing down a decision by fiat. I am surprised that this doesn't violate Google's standards! It would certainly violate mine. OTOH Timnit sounds like a down-the-middle SJW type, which means that every conflict is about identity, privilege, and so on, which honestly hurts her message. To me, its enough that Google shut her paper…

> ignored Timnit's attempts to figure out what went wrong, handing down a decision by fiat

Funny, because she mobbed Yann LeCun and after she obtained a forced apology from him and an invitation to a civilised and serious discussion she said "this is not worth my time".

Maybe it wasn't worth their time.

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

#233

Post by dekhn »

mpihaditfirst wrote: post #187
hartator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did: http://cacs.usc.edu/education/cs653/Dean-MapReduce-CACM08.pd...

The key ideas were part of the MPI interface for a decade before Jeff came along and applied the new branding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface

MapReduce and MPI are very different. MapReduce doesn't use message passing- the map phase reads inputs from sharded files in a separate disk system, applies map to the inputs, and writes out the mapped outputs to temp sort files on a seperate disk system. Then the shuffler sorts those and writes the outputs to the appropriate destination output shards in a seperate disk system, at which point the reducer reads them, applies reduce, and writes the final outputs, sharded by key to a seperate disk system.

The mappers, shufflers, and reducers are all independent of each other, reading and writing from the filesystem, and managed by a coordinator. There's nothing like MPI, other than the use of the Stubby RPC system, which sort of resembles MPI but has completely different distributed communication semantics.

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

#234

Post by jariel »

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…

"Pubapproval hasn't been used to silence uncomfortable minority viewpoints until now."

This is sad gaslighting of a reasonable concern the team had.

Having to endure some external review for what could otherwise be sensitive material.

The inability for the SJW crowd to work reasonably within very reasonable terms, to then resort to aggressive tactics such as 'demand the names and opinions of everyone on the board' and then publicly misrepresenting the situation is going to lose you a lot of favour.

Every time I read one of these stories I immediately feel sympathetic to the individual, but then upon learning more, I feel duped and maligned for having been effectively lied to.

The doors are wide open for progress, those who take it to micro-totalitarian lengths are not doing anyone any favours.

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

#235

Post by macmac »

aylmao wrote: post #165
Dig1t wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do X or I'll quit" is a childish way to negotiate, its akin to a child throwing a tantrum if they don't get their way. It's extremely unprofessional and not something a team player would do. I think its clear why they took her up on her offer.

> "Do X or I'll quit" is a childish way to negotiate I disagree with this. It's really the only way to negotiate, pretty common. The wording is important here. If you word it as "Do X or I'll quit" it sounds childish, if you word it as "I believe the company should X, otherwise I can't see myself working here comfortably and will have to consider my resignation" it sounds professional, but the idea is the exact same.

I would respectfully recommend that you read "Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury. Effective negotiation is often about expressing interests, not specific actions or ultimative positions.

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

#236

Post by lokar »

whimsicalism wrote: post #206
asciident wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But this review process had never been used for introducing comments of this sort to a paper ever before

How do you know that?

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

#237

Post by jkbhzsdfkhjnzs »

> "So if you would like to change things, I suggest focusing on leadership accountability and thinking through what types of pressures can also be applied from the outside. For instance, I believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is the entity that started forcing tech companies to report their diversity numbers. Writing more documents and saying things over and over again will tire you out but no one will listen."

People are forgetting about the part where she basically encourages her colleagues to talk to congress, at a time when tech CEOs are regularly being hauled in front of congressional committees. At the point when that is written, this clearly is an adversarial relationship between her and Google. And it wasn't Google that made it adversarial

I couldn't imagine writing something like that and keeping my job

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

#238

Post by vecter »

hobofan wrote: post #196
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.

> Google went all scorched earth and it’s still unclear why Possibly because she made a personal problem into a team/department problem by asking their colleagues to stop working ("stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference"). I couldn't imagine a company where such a call for work refusal wouldn't immediately lose you a ton of goodwill.

It's so obvious that she was "negotiating" in bad faith by threatening to quit if she didn't get what she wanted (i.e. throwing a tantrum) that I'm surprised that other people are surprised at Google's response.

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

#239

Post by aylmao »

trhway wrote: post #72
theobeers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the examples of issues flagged in review that Jeff keeps highlighting—like Timnit’s alleged failure to mention recent work to reduce the environmental impact of large models—are themselves a bit worrisome. Jeff gives the impression that they demanded retraction (!) because they wanted Timnit and her coauthors to soften their critique. The more I read about this, the worse it looks.

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…

> 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 publicly disparaging Google.

Salary aside (because I do doubt she earned $1M+/year, my guess is probably more on the ballpark of $300k~$500k and either way not really denting Google's finances), you are not wrong, but also it's worth understanding here we're entering the realm of the notion that companies can (and for many reasons should) be about more than maximizing shareholder value.

Also, if I'm being completely honest, from a PR perspective this could be worse than Timnit's paper might've been just given how public it has become and the people involved. People internally are perhaps more comfortable having that paper not be published and not having Timnit in their ranks, but as far as PR for Google goes this isn't great.

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

#240

Post by chris11 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #113
bnj wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it pretty normal to ask to “face your accuser” and engage with feedback specifically, instead of an anonymous and unassailable red stamp?

It is. It's not a request you're ever going to get when you're dealing with the HR department, though. Which puts you in a no-win situation when you suspect that HR is doing shady stuff against you...

I agree with that. But it would be strange for HR to be handling peer review for scientific papers.
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