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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

#241

Post by zimpenfish »

rualca wrote: post #210
threeseed wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you accuse someone of pretending to be an "AI ethics researcher" you are stating that they lack the qualifications to hold that title. Pretty obtuse to suggest otherwise.

> When you accuse someone of pretending to be an "AI ethics researcher" (...) You would do well to work on your literacy and reading comprehension skills. To start off, be aware that "a bullshit social engineer masquerading as a AI research" does not, by any means, mean the author is "pretending to be an AI researcher".

Keen to understand what "masquerading as" is doing in that sentence if it's not meant to imply "pretending to be"?

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

#242

Post by mustuhfa »

akie wrote: post #230
mikaeluman wrote: post #219

The problem I find with this has much to do with character. I will not comment on the research (because I do not know the field) but rather comment on why character matters and why motivation is important. Having read her email and tweets; it is quite clear that she is as much a political activist for a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and…

> a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and free speech. WTF dude. The core argument as to what you say is a "woke" interpretation of the world is to reshape the world in such a way that inherent privilege (for example being rich, being white, being male) does not completely predetermine anyone's outcomes. So that you can still "make it" even…

Umm, I think you need to do more research. Have you seen the toxic behavior she has demonstrated against respected people in the industry? She maybe is smart and pushing for good things, her approach of how she goes about it, especially with people she disagrees with is toxic and she did this to her self.

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

#243

Post by curiousgal »

akie wrote: post #230
mikaeluman wrote: post #219

The problem I find with this has much to do with character. I will not comment on the research (because I do not know the field) but rather comment on why character matters and why motivation is important. Having read her email and tweets; it is quite clear that she is as much a political activist for a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and…

> a far-left “woke” interpretation of the world that I view as of immediate threat to our way of living, democracy and free speech. WTF dude. The core argument as to what you say is a "woke" interpretation of the world is to reshape the world in such a way that inherent privilege (for example being rich, being white, being male) does not completely predetermine anyone's outcomes. So that you can still "make it" even…

As a woman of color I see it as self-serving bullshit. I too can cry discrimination whenever someone disagrees with me and pretend to be working to make the world more fair. But the truth is, people in Ethiopia (where she was born) for instance give jackshit about AI and bias in facial recognition systems. If these people were so woke and concerned about underprivileged communities, they would tackle the problem at its root, not pick the easy fruit that is SV tech boys being scared that they would offend someone.

TL;DR: For someone relying so heavily on their race and where they came from, she is as privileged as the people she's criticizing.

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

#244

Post by drawfloat »

rualca wrote: post #210
threeseed wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you accuse someone of pretending to be an "AI ethics researcher" you are stating that they lack the qualifications to hold that title. Pretty obtuse to suggest otherwise.

> When you accuse someone of pretending to be an "AI ethics researcher" (...) You would do well to work on your literacy and reading comprehension skills. To start off, be aware that "a bullshit social engineer masquerading as a AI research" does not, by any means, mean the author is "pretending to be an AI researcher".

masquerade /ˌmɑːskəˈreɪd,ˌmaskəˈreɪd/

pretend to be someone one is not.

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

#246

Post by bzb6 »

threeseed wrote: post #203
StavrosK wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Her work on identifying bias in facial recognition has won quite a number of awards. Ground-breaking might be a strong word but it does move the industry forward.

Awards given by leftist organisations such as VentureBeat to leftist activists are not really worth much.

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

#247

Post by rualca »

saagarjha wrote: post #182
the-dude wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you dispute her ultimatum and/or offer to resign?

Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer? No. But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position from which she felt her only way to exercise her leverage was to make such a proposition, then pretend like they’re blameless by “choosing a provided option” of terminating her without look…

> Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer?

Ok so it's established that she threatened her managers and employer to either comply with her personal wishes or she would "exercise her leverage" to cause the company harm.

And in the end, as their managers didn't caved into her threats, she decided to pull the trigger.

> But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position (...) ?

So she threatened someone, her target didn't caved in, and thus she proceeded to execute her threat.

And somehow the responsibility of her executing her threat is supposed to be on her target?

This sounds a lot like victim blaming.

"Look what you made me do! Are you happy now?"

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

#248

Post by lsiebert »

curiousgal wrote: post #231
lsiebert wrote: post #224

Ultimately this reads as straight censorship by Google. Or if not by Google, by Google employees, with the tacit approval of their higher ups. They didn't like the viewpoint she expressed, didn't like the criticisms she raised, so they blocked her (well her and 7 co-author's) paper. When she said that was unacceptable and stood her ground, they badmouthed her and fired her. You don't have to agree with the paper's cr…

> Censorship Man, people really do want to have their cake and eat it too. If you want to publish research freely join an academic research lab, if you value money join an industry lab. You can't have both of those things.

She was the technical co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team, publishing papers like this was exactly what she was hired to do.

Here's Google's Principles for Artificial Intelligence https://ai.google/principles/

From the second paragraph of item 6:

"We will work with a range of stakeholders to promote thoughtful leadership in this area, drawing on scientifically rigorous and multidisciplinary approaches. And we will responsibly share AI knowledge by publishing educational materials, best practices, and research that enable more people to develop useful AI applications."

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

#249

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

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…

> This is turning true ai research into a masquerade to push certain political agendas.

Spot on. Naive scientism is used as cloak to advance political agendas, instead of searching for truth:

"When a domain becomes respected source of Truth, there is incentive for hijackers. There is a huge window of opportunity (from decades to centuries) until the public opinion figures it out. Many (not all) still trust Harvard credentials, as Cardinal credentials in the past." [0]

This is the trend for "Believe in Science", a magical catchphrase evoked to put trust in frauds like Steven Pinker and Paul Krugman:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=believe+in+sci...

[0] https://twitter.com/_benoux_/status/1335175823620497413

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

#250

Post by mustuhfa »

lsiebert wrote: post #234
mustuhfa wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen or read her toxic behavior online?

If her behavior is "toxic", who has it harmed?

Have you read her exchange with Lecun and the impact it had? Edit - Also, if her behavior online is like that, imagine what its like inside Google? Have you thought about that? Clearly her email to the brain group was an issue here, i wonder how it compared to her exchange with lecun?

One final edit, even her co-authors were not ready for publishing the paper (per article), so why is the reason of censorship, supression etc even being discussed. This whole thing has been blown out of proportion and Google likely did the right thing, purely based on her behavior

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