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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

#321

Post by cmsj »

nickff wrote: post #224
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…

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.

I understand some of the reasons why some managers think that way, but you can't have such simplistic rules.

An ultimatum like this is an opportunity for a responsible manager to talk and rethink, but it seems like Google jumped at the opportunity to double-down on their mistake and then send out cowardly emails claiming the employee had actually resigned.

If I were to apply a simplistic rule here, I would actually invert it - if you get to a point where you are sufficiently undervalued that you feel the need to issue an ultimatum, you basically have to resign.

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

#322

Post by justicezyx »

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.

If you are actually an academic researchers in an academia institution, and are exposed to a large scope of the dealings of the community, then you might find that professional academia is as political as corporations, if not more so...

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

#323

Post by QuesnayJr »

neltnerb wrote: post #294
nickff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uh, or you could compromise with them and act like two adults? This isn't a zero sum game.

It's also not a static one-period game. You can ask them to reconsider.

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

#324

Post by asciident »

xiphias2 wrote: post #211
aphyr wrote: post #111

Dean writes: Our aim is to rival peer-reviewed journals in terms of the rigor and thoughtfulness in how we review research before publication. But Gebru writes that HR and her management chain delivered her feedback in a surprise meeting where she was not allowed to read the actual feedback, understand the process which generated it, or engage in a dialogue about it: Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback”…

I think the person who submitted feedback in privileged and confidential way made a great choice. I expect more people taking this route in the future actually, people are scared in the current political athmosphere. Look at what Jeff Dean is getting, even though he didn’t do anything bad. A manager in ethics shouldn’t ask Google to break the law by not providing confidientality that was requested.

I would certainly be fearful of providing an honest review of a paper championed by such a powerful figure at Google who could get me fired and unemployable with a tweet. Revealing the reviewers and throwing them under the bus would have been the end of any honest reviewing at Google. Dean made the right move here.

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

#326

Post by pseudalopex »

lokar wrote: post #244
whimsicalism wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I think that there isn't internal academic review of the sort implied by Jeff at Google. Why do you think that?

"My submissions were always checked for disclosure of sensitive material, never for the quality of the literature review."[1]

"In all of my time at Google AI, I never heard of pubapproval being used for peer review or to critique the scientific rigor of the work. It was never used as a journal, it was an afterthought that folks on my team would usually clear only hours before important deadlines. We like to leave peer review to the conferences/journals' existing process to weed out bad papers; why duplicate that work internally?"[2]

[1] https://twitter.com/le_roux_nicolas/status/13346019609729064...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307456

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

#327

Post by IshKebab »

wpietri wrote: post #222
aylmao wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

It sounds like she said "I demand that you do X Y Z or I must resign" and they said "Very well we regrettably accept your resignation. No backsies." and she was like "You're firing me??!"

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

#328

Post by cmsj »

mistermann wrote: post #262
nickff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but the bottom line is that if you yield, you've given up all control. This doesn't seem logical to me. I don't doubt there are indeed scenarios where this is true, but as an absolute, this doesn't resemble my real world experience at all. It seems like kind of the opposite of how human interaction should work.

Indeed. The very idea of using words like "yield" or "control" belies a fundamental weakness - managers who are so insecure that they can't ever change their minds in case someone figures out how mediocre they are (when in fact the opposite is true - listening to your expert employees and allowing them to change your opinions is seen by them as a sign of strength).

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

#329

Post by pseudalopex »

lokar wrote: post #236
whimsicalism wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"My submissions were always checked for disclosure of sensitive material, never for the quality of the literature review."[1]

"In all of my time at Google AI, I never heard of pubapproval being used for peer review or to critique the scientific rigor of the work. It was never used as a journal, it was an afterthought that folks on my team would usually clear only hours before important deadlines. We like to leave peer review to the conferences/journals' existing process to weed out bad papers; why duplicate that work internally?"[2]

[1] https://twitter.com/le_roux_nicolas/status/13346019609729064...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307456

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

#330

Post by fooker »

zaksoup wrote: post #61
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…

If somebody used HR as the mechanism to communicate feedback on the scientific rigor of research I was leading I would also find that concerning and objectionable. Human Resources is not peer review.

I would have routed feedback through HR if and only if I would have feared retaliation.
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