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More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

theguardian.com

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Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#251

Post by thu2111 »

romanoderoma wrote: post #186
yulaow wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can organize a strike BUT this is absolutely not the way you do it. You have to follow strict procedures, work with your union and go into one or more formal negotiating tables with all the representatives of all the interested parts before even thinking about giving an ultimatum like that. And for sure you cannot communicate in that way using directly your work email

But can you or can't you be fired for that? Because in my country you can't be fired for using the work email for that. Communicating with other workers using their work email is absolutely allowed, courts ruled about it several times [1]. I usually receive trade unions (there are several of them) communications on my work email from the unions' work email, because they have been authorized by the company to send the…

In many countries you do need a vote for a strike to be organised. You can't just spam people with a request to stop working. Strikes are a powerful tactic that have evolved a lot of formality around them to try and ensure the outcomes aren't totally destructive. Italy is a rather unusual exception to this. Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#252

Post by thu2111 »

claudeganon wrote: post #219
tertius wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is not uniquely American. Which country are you from that doesn't require employees to act in a way as directed by the company that employs them?

Literally any country with strong laws protecting strikes and work stoppages? In many parts of Europe, I can convince my coworkers that our bosses are treating us unfairly, unsafely, etc, we can walk off the job and not get fired. I doubt any employer would want us to do that, so it would be entirely against their “direction.”

Just to clarify, in many parts of Europe you cannot do that, you would need to be a recognised union and in many cases at least hold a vote of some sort, there would probably also be requirements around negotiations. You would also be restricted in what you do to people who refuse to join your strike.

The UK is an example of a European country with relatively tough union laws. The list of issues that it's legitimate to strike over is restricted, votes are required, the general secretary of the union must authorise the strike and so on. Strikes do happen of course but not because some random middle manager threw a hissy fit about feedback on a paper she wrote.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#253

Post by romanoderoma »

thu2111 wrote: post #251
romanoderoma wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can you or can't you be fired for that? Because in my country you can't be fired for using the work email for that. Communicating with other workers using their work email is absolutely allowed, courts ruled about it several times [1]. I usually receive trade unions (there are several of them) communications on my work email from the unions' work email, because they have been authorized by the company to send the…

In many countries you do need a vote for a strike to be organised. You can't just spam people with a request to stop working. Strikes are a powerful tactic that have evolved a lot of formality around them to try and ensure the outcomes aren't totally destructive. Italy is a rather unusual exception to this. Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy.

> Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy

Perhaps.

But doesn't explain stagnation in Japanese economy where there are no Italian unions.

Or why France did much better despite having even stronger work protections laws than Italy and wilder strikes (the gilet jaunes for example) or those happened last year against the pension reform where the workers of public transportation went on strike - for weeks - without even announcing it.

Even countries like Germany, Singapore, Switzerland and Finland are doing worse than Pakistan in the GDP growth race.

My point was than if there are stronger work protection laws somewhere else and the laws of your country are weaker, they are not very strong, they are moderately strong.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#254

Post by thu2111 »

romanoderoma wrote: post #253
thu2111 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many countries you do need a vote for a strike to be organised. You can't just spam people with a request to stop working. Strikes are a powerful tactic that have evolved a lot of formality around them to try and ensure the outcomes aren't totally destructive. Italy is a rather unusual exception to this. Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy.

> Perhaps it's a contributing factor to the long stagnation of the Italian economy Perhaps. But doesn't explain stagnation in Japanese economy where there are no Italian unions. Or why France did much better despite having even stronger work protections laws than Italy and wilder strikes (the gilet jaunes for example) or those happened last year against the pension reform where the workers of public transportation we…

Re: last point. Fair enough. That point is sound.

Japan seems to have evolved a work culture very similar to strongly unionised societies but without unions. Japanese salaryman culture is famously a culture of employment for life with unusually strong loyalty between employee and employer, hence weird things like "banishment rooms" that you don't find elsewhere. If it's the end results that matter and not the means, Japan might not be a good counter example.

I think French strike law sounds tighter than Italian strike law? The French are famous for striking but strikes must still be a collective decision and related to a specific set of issues, whereas Italian strike law really does sound incredibly broad and vague.

With respect to Pakistan, that's doesn't mean anything, poor countries always have very high GDP growth. It's easy to grow something small and backwards by a lot because you can get a lot of relative growth just by copying what other countries do, and less absolute improvement is needed to get a percentage point of growth to begin with. You can only compare GDP growth rates between countries of a similar level of wealth.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#255

Post by claudeganon »

tertius wrote: post #245
claudeganon wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just blanket appeals to authoritarianism then. Completely rational.

A company is not a government... Yes, someone who owns a company has the legal right to do whatever they want, as long as it's not criminal, with their property. They have complete authority... They don't have to have someone else endow it to them or give it to them... So yes, they are by definition authoritarian. That's one of the cornerstones of being able to own private property.

Other people’s labor is not a company’s private property. That was known as slavery and we have mostly abolished it in the developed world.

But my point is that all of your arguments rest on an unquestioned assumption about how ownership translates to authoritarian control of others without explaining how or by what justification that power is arrived at.

The answer of course is that it’s a social construct enforced by states to varying degrees, present and historically, and thus no way inherent to the thing itself. Appeals to status quo are therefore not justifications for the validity of the relationship, as it has changed over time, proving malleable to all kinds of political and social forces (e.g. the abolition of slavery, the formation of unions, worker collectives). Defending an authoritarian relation to property as it relates to other people’s labor thus require an actual and explicit defense, which you have so far not provided.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#256

Post by raxxorrax »

PunchTornado wrote: post #175
telltruth wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially I took Google's side given Gebru has history of bullying so aggressively and has no qualms to play race/gender cards at every opportunity she gets. But now that more details (including the paper in question) has been revealed, it's hard to stay on Google's side. It is clear that the peer review process that Jeff Dean had described has been optional for all intent and purpose. It says along similar lines tha…

What I do know is that you don't hire a PR team to make you look bad. You hire them to make you look good. You don't hire an ethicist to make you look bad. You hire them to make you look good at what you do: diversity in AI. Gebru failed at her job.

I think you aren't necessarily wrong that internal committees like this are about PR. It is simple industry self-regulation. Expectations should be adjusted accordingly.

But that would also mean Google exploited her for that.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#257

Post by [deleted] »

miked85 wrote: post #22
geofft wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She offered to resign on a particular schedule to work out things with her team if they insisted on retracting the paper. They terminated her employment immediately, while she was on vacation, because of an email she sent to the ERG about it, and they didn't even inform her direct manager. Whatever they accepted, it wasn't the resignation she offered. (And even if they had done so, I expect the folks here to remain u…

> She offered to resign on a particular schedule It is not out of the ordinary at all for companies to walk people out on the day of resignation. The company is not required or even expected to abide by whatever schedule is presented to them.

[deleted]

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#258

Post by freshhawk »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #30
freshhawk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have a stance they chose, that this is some Daily Mail "political correctness gone mad" thing, because SJW cultural domination controls all our lives. They're working through some cognitive dissonance.

It does though. For instance, were any articles framed as [More than X Google workers condemn firing of James Damore], despite that actually being the case? The media, universities and other elite institutions always support the "SJW cultural domination" stance on all these issues and the discussion is always framed from that perspective. You'll find similar framings such as [More than X GitHub workers condemn GitHub…

The cognitive dissonance is that a huge number of highly respected people in the field, and coworkers, said "yeah, this was racist bullshit", and the actual paper in question has been seen by a lot of people by now.

But if you are committed to the stance that racism doesn't exist and this is all a grand SJW conspiracy then you have to grasp at straws to ignore the overwhelming number of experts disagreeing with you.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#259

Post by tertius »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #241
tertius wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I asked. If you can't argue the counter of your own position in the most honest way possible then either you're not prepared or not honest. It's called steel manning.

Let's try applying this, shall we: I believe we should have no curruption in Russia. By your logic, unless I can give a strong argument in favour of corruption, I am not prepared or not honest? Are you prepared to give a rigorous argument in favour of: terrorist attacks, slavery, eugenics, facism, child labour, sexism

This is what I said.

> If you can't argue the counter of your own position in the most honest way possible then either you're not prepared or not honest.

I didn't say that if your position is on the opposite side of child abuse and you don't want to change your position that you aren't honest.

Yes, I'm prepared to try and make the strongest argument possible for things I may not fully understand, until I do. Whatever those things make me feel.

Sometimes the strongest arguments have large flaws (mostly moral with you examples) but sometimes we just don't understand the opposing arguments and then just create strawmen to rage against.

I'm opposed to this type of irrational emotional behaviour. It causes things like mob violence which I'm very familiar with.

So when someone can't articulate the opposing views then they need to be warned or directed to do so. If they refuse and run back to a strawmen then yes they are not honest and obviously not prepared.

uMkhonto we Sizwe was a terrorist organization. But they had a very strong argument for why terrorism was an appropriate action.

I don't say that I agree with their use of violence, but they had an argument that makes blanket statements like "terrorism is evil" harder to make.

Re: More than 1,200 Google workers condemn firing of AI scientist Timnit Gebru

#260

Post by adnzzzzZ »

freshhawk wrote: post #258
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does though. For instance, were any articles framed as [More than X Google workers condemn firing of James Damore], despite that actually being the case? The media, universities and other elite institutions always support the "SJW cultural domination" stance on all these issues and the discussion is always framed from that perspective. You'll find similar framings such as [More than X GitHub workers condemn GitHub…

The cognitive dissonance is that a huge number of highly respected people in the field, and coworkers, said "yeah, this was racist bullshit", and the actual paper in question has been seen by a lot of people by now. But if you are committed to the stance that racism doesn't exist and this is all a grand SJW conspiracy then you have to grasp at straws to ignore the overwhelming number of experts disagreeing with you.

I don't believe in experts. They have no power to change my mind about any social issue whatsoever. So them saying "this is racist" means nothing to me. There is no cognitive dissonance. You're projecting it into me because you think I think like you, that I care about what experts have to say, when I don't.
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