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Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

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Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#41

Post by dehrmann »

techbusters wrote: post #27
timnit-drama wrote: post #15

The email she posted [1] makes it pretty clear that she sent an email with some demands/conditions (separate from the one "to Brain women and allies") and said that she would resign if they weren't met. Google said they wouldn't agree to them, accepted her threatened resignation, and told her it was effective immediately. Without knowing more context, it sounds like she tried to do some hardball negotiating by threat…

There is still a civil way to accept a resignation, with proper timelines and transfer of responsibilities. She offered to resign in some time due to some demands, and the immediate termination seems to be related to an email unrelated to those demands. This sounds a lot like a sleazy move by Google to couch an immediate firing as a resignation.

If someone says (in nicer words) "Do X or I'll resign" and the company doesn't agree to those terms, it's best to accept the resignation immediately because the employee's interests aren't aligned with the company's.

It's also pretty common in roles like sales and PR to be shown the door the day you give notice, especially if you're going to a competitor.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#42

Post by _y5hn »

unishark wrote: post #33
techbusters wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still a civil way to accept a resignation, with proper timelines and transfer of responsibilities. She offered to resign in some time due to some demands, and the immediate termination seems to be related to an email unrelated to those demands. This sounds a lot like a sleazy move by Google to couch an immediate firing as a resignation.

I'd call it petty more than sleazy. Drama queens on both sides.

Threat of resignation is not a resignation. Either they follow due termination process, or she might still be employed or have good legal case.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#43

Post by durovo »

cyrus20 wrote: post #17

Racism exists. Pay discrimination exists. Yet, you can't go about breaking every norm and rule if you are famous and from an under-represented group. I also saw the tweets at Yann LeCun. I'm not his biggest fan, but that wasn't right. She's hurting minorities for her own agenda. Edit: removed info about myself.

Were you a vendor or did you work in sales/management. I have honestly never seen such a scenario in swes. Would love to know more.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#44

Post by zackchase »

Decker87 wrote: post #35
cyrus20 wrote: post #17

Racism exists. Pay discrimination exists. Yet, you can't go about breaking every norm and rule if you are famous and from an under-represented group. I also saw the tweets at Yann LeCun. I'm not his biggest fan, but that wasn't right. She's hurting minorities for her own agenda. Edit: removed info about myself.

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. With salary bands imposing constraints, it's not even possible for you to have made a third of what someone doing "the same job" made.

That's not quite right. Salary bands tend to be guidelines, not constraints. And in ML there are plenty of people getting paid far out of band.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#45

Post by astrange »

throwaway-kmc wrote: post #10
thundergolfer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says she deliberately attempts to cast LeCunn as a racist is a very uncharitable framing, but putting that aside, it doesn’t actually seem reasonable to assume she picked a fight. We have no idea what was in the email.

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain h…

> LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data.

But this claim is certainly not necessarily correct, and he shouldn't have been so confident about it. Any part of a system can contribute to bias and that includes the model design, not just the data. If they want the system to work then they need to actually demonstrate it works, not just say it could with X change without testing that.

Though I remember people arguing it didn't work properly at the same time they were saying it was evil (because it contributed to surveillance). Which is odd because if you don't want it to exist, you shouldn't want it to work either.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#46

Post by hypervisorxxx »

ramraj07 wrote: post #23
cyrus20 wrote: post #17

Racism exists. Pay discrimination exists. Yet, you can't go about breaking every norm and rule if you are famous and from an under-represented group. I also saw the tweets at Yann LeCun. I'm not his biggest fan, but that wasn't right. She's hurting minorities for her own agenda. Edit: removed info about myself.

I've never heard of a 300% pay gap between people doing the same job, how does that even happen? Were you paid significantly under par or did that other person somehow hit jackpot? And at what level are we talking about?

Lol

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#47

Post by hypervisorxxx »

Decker87 wrote: post #35
cyrus20 wrote: post #17

Racism exists. Pay discrimination exists. Yet, you can't go about breaking every norm and rule if you are famous and from an under-represented group. I also saw the tweets at Yann LeCun. I'm not his biggest fan, but that wasn't right. She's hurting minorities for her own agenda. Edit: removed info about myself.

I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. With salary bands imposing constraints, it's not even possible for you to have made a third of what someone doing "the same job" made.

Lol

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#48

Post by veridies »

throwaway-kmc wrote: post #10
thundergolfer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says she deliberately attempts to cast LeCunn as a racist is a very uncharitable framing, but putting that aside, it doesn’t actually seem reasonable to assume she picked a fight. We have no idea what was in the email.

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain h…

I'd never heard of this fight before, so I just looked it up. My interpretation is that he made that claim, Gebru responded by claiming that that was an overly reductionist view of things (given, presumably, the fact that biased assumptions could affect the coded assumptions as well as the training data), he maintained his opinion, and she felt frustrated that she didn't feel she was being listened to. I did not see her call him a racist, and I did not think either person was acting in bad faith; both seemed frustrated and unhappy that there was a disagreement.

Am I missing anything?

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#49

Post by cyrus20 »

durovo wrote: post #43
cyrus20 wrote: post #17

Racism exists. Pay discrimination exists. Yet, you can't go about breaking every norm and rule if you are famous and from an under-represented group. I also saw the tweets at Yann LeCun. I'm not his biggest fan, but that wasn't right. She's hurting minorities for her own agenda. Edit: removed info about myself.

Were you a vendor or did you work in sales/management. I have honestly never seen such a scenario in swes. Would love to know more.

Both full time SWEs. The gap exists, you can ask around. It's widely known at Google.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#50

Post by rlt »

timnit-drama wrote: post #15

The email she posted [1] makes it pretty clear that she sent an email with some demands/conditions (separate from the one "to Brain women and allies") and said that she would resign if they weren't met. Google said they wouldn't agree to them, accepted her threatened resignation, and told her it was effective immediately. Without knowing more context, it sounds like she tried to do some hardball negotiating by threat…

> Without knowing more context, it sounds like she tried to do some hardball negotiating by threatening to leave, and got her bluff called.

Or she was on her way out anyway (or at least ambivalent about staying, it sounds like) and wanted to provoke Google to fire her. These days getting fired as a female minority is a good way to elevate your reputation among a certain crowd, maybe get a more lucrative offer elsewhere, and possibly get a payday if your employer didn’t have good lawyers.

Just look at her Twitter mentions right now, she’s getting an enormous amount of attention, including job offers and lawyer recommendations.

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