We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by easytiger » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:00 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #204

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…

I am honestly disappointed to see this kind of response at the top of comments here. Every time we have some sort of social issue come up people here come in to pick apart the person involved, and I think it’s one of the bigger reasons why some maintain a generally negative view of Hacker News. Can you imagine being Timnit and stopping by this thread, where the top comment, in colorful language, reduces you to a soci…

> Can you imagine being Timnit and stopping by this thread, where the top comment, in colorful language, reduces you to a social activist fraud?

If it is accurate what does it matter?

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

#292

Post by jhowell » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:00 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #228

saagarjha wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you feel we have not heard enough of her side of the story yet?

It's clear all off the facts are not available, and likely never will be, experiences are subjective.

It's also clear that before learning of this event, we had 0% knowledge of the situation.

Between 0 and where we are now with both sides expressing their point of view to some degree, people on HN began making up their mind in the absence of complete information. There is no requirement or urgency that we come to some inconsequential conclusion of our own.

My bias is that it seems difficult to obtain the position the researcher held at Google. How can I be willing to believe the engineer has the ability to navigate the subject matter and its application without being able to navigate this employment scenario. It feels as though I am required to accept the engineers brilliance while calling them dumb at the same time. That feels like a larger handwave than considering the known actions of Google and questioning the few assertions they are willing, but not required truthfully or untruthfully to provide.

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

#293

Post by mustuhfa » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:00 PM UTC

tmotwu wrote: post #277

mustuhfa wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her behavior is clear evidence of how she interacts with people. You can be a brilliant jerk and still get along with some people. In a team environment however, there is no place for this. Her exchange with Lecun, her threatening words and many of the way she puts forward her arguments. Even if she was in the right here, she can easily deal with it without doing what she did here. So yes, there is more evidence for…

Again, I repeat, if her team had issues with her, her direct report would know and her team wouldn't be harping constant praise towards her. The people who removed her are executives several skips above her. That is unusual. You keep bringing up LeCun, but LeCun did not get harmed as you imagine - he only conceded to her point because she was frankly the expert in the topic of discussion and he finally acknowledged t…

Can you link to your conclusions?

Because thats not how I have seen it. She threatened to leave. If any of my team had an issue, and their response 'Do X, Y, X or ill leave', even if they are in the right, I would not align with them purely out of the fact that that is not the right behavior. You can still leave any company with out threats.

Also we have not seen the email to the brain group. I wonder how that compared to her exchange with Lecun and her threatening nature.

Lecun was not harmed? How did she contribute to a healthy debate there? Please also link me. Because all I saw were aggressive tones towards someone she disagreed with (even if she was in the right). Again, he behavior (not if she was right or not) is the problem here. You can be right, but still be an asshole.

Also, how do you know some people in her team didnt have problems with her? Do you have here perf reports? I believe her direct manager is not the only person that can fire her. She can be ok good terms with her direct manager and still behave unacceptably towards higher ups

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

#294

Post by frobozz » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

0-_-0 wrote: post #152

frobozz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If face detection defines them as not a person, then things that rely on there being a person in the field of vision will not work for them. (Like the racist soap dispenser that went viral a few years ago) If face recognition makes the old racist "they all look the same to me" declaration, then peaceful protestors get arrested for looking like criminals.

That's a straw man though, no classification system assigns a "criminal" score. Here's another quote that points out exactly what I was talking about: “There are two ways that this technology can hurt people,” says Raji who worked with Buolamwini and Gebru on Gender Shades. “One way is by not working: by virtue of having higher error rates for people of color, it puts them at greater risk. The second situation is whe…

I don't mean physiognomy, though such things periodically arise and are roundly and rightly ridiculed.

I mean "Our computer says we have footage of you robbing a supermarket" (higher error rates)

Another way for issues to arise (your easily weaponised point, above) is if you need a separate system for recognising people from certain groups. If it's all the same system, it's harder to argue that you are acting in good faith when you only follow up on matches on marginalised groups.

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

#295

Post by viktorcode » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:02 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #66

hezag wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was little disappointed in the quality of this research But the research is not even published yet

Kinda the point though isn't it? We're only reading a summary of the paper because apparently the authors aren't confident enough in its quality to release it publicly. You can't claim that Google dismissed this paper out-of-hand while simultaneously saying "oh, but it's too much of a draft to release publicly". Uh, if it was too much of a draft for the public why shouldn't it be too drafty for Google? Are we really…

That, or Google is censoring the paper because of the conclusion it comes to, which doesn't align with their business interests.

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

#296

Post by bartread » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #280

bartread wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is not normal for (a) contracts to not have notice periods and (b) for companies to not honour them. Nobody's talking about the contract not having a notice period, much less about not honouring the notice period. I'm talking about (metaphorically these days) getting you out of the building and stopping you from potentially causing damage. I'm not sure about the US but here in the UK your notice period will stil…

The effective date of a resignation is when the employee is officially no longer employed. Not when they're put on gardening leave. Google doesn't pay people past the effective date normally.

Thank you. That's helpful to know and clearly illustrates the difference in practice across different countries (they wouldn't be able to do that in the UK unless it was a firing).

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

#297

Post by lsiebert » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

mustuhfa wrote: post #267

lsiebert wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean when Lecun left Twitter explicitly saying people should stop critiquing Gebru? https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1277372578231996424 saying: "Following my posts of the last week, I'd like to ask everyone to please stop attacking each other via Twitter or other means. In particular, I'd like everyone to please stop attacking @timnitGebru and everyone who has been critical of my posts."

Was I pointing out what Lecun said or her specific way of handling that interaction? Its the latter thats toxic. If people were attacking Timnit for that interaction why is that? Clearly she did not handle that very well.

I think if she is to be judged on whether she was being toxic to Lecun or not, Lecun's opinion is relevant. Why do you feel it's not? And if his opinion isn't relevant, why should we care about yours?

I also find your question about why people attacked her, as if people in the internet always have good reasons to attack others, is an incredibly silly attempt to appeal to the Bandwagon fallacy.

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

#298

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:05 PM UTC

viktorcode wrote: post #259

bartread wrote: post #158

Good grief - this terrible clickbaity headline writing: "We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says" The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she…

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. We all would love to see an evidence of it.

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by IanCal » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:07 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #211

bartread wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure. As I pointed out in the…

I've only heard of unethical companies firing people immediately without honouring the notice period. It's definitely not common place and should not be encouraged except under severe circumstances e.g. violence, criminality etc.

Are they not being paid for their notice period? Usually the way this works is "gardening leave" where you're paid and are not supposed to come into work.

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

#300

Post by lsiebert » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 12:07 PM UTC

silveroriole wrote: post #263

lsiebert wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

If a megafarm hires you to write papers for the Ethical Milk Production team, any modicum of social awareness will tell you that they don’t actually want you to write a paper about the ethics of animal products.

If you, a large corproation working in AI, hire a prominent and vocal AI ethicist, any modicum of awareness should tell you that they may actually have a sense of ethics.