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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

#411

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

roenxi wrote: post #354
acoard wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, put more simply, they pushed out someone in their Ethical AI department because they did not soften critiques against AI enough. They couch these in terms of rigour, but the substance of the problem has to do with her criticisms against AI. Ultimately it makes the whole Ethical AI department look more like a rubber stamp for Google.

Big oil companies don't pump out damning studies on oil use, big tech companies won't pump out research damning the use of their tech. If people have an expectation of Google to turn out academically pure research then I certainly respect the position and encourage it in reality. But thinking like that means life is going to contain a bunch of surprises that really shouldn't be surprising. Google is simply not going…

I think the difference here is that the research may have shown that Google was unintentionally breaking the law, and after Google realized this, they used an existing review process in a way they don't normally use it to block publication.

The possibly shady part is that they could be suppressing evidence that they broke the law, but, like your said, they can decide how to run their own business. I'm not even sure if the researcher would be a whistleblower if they didn't intend to report something illegal.

To makes matters worse, in this case at least, the law or laws they may be breaking were established to protect a class of people the researcher is a member of.

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

#412

Post by albatruss »

free_rms wrote: post #353
albatruss wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that there have been many iterations of normative standards, but that does not imply that all situations, ideologies, positions and so on are equally correct. It does not mean that we should stop trying to do better, nor that we have made no progress made through these efforts toward a better world.

No, they're describing a particular scenario where the Political Officers of those norms wind up being a sick joke of careerism and weaponized ideology. The Soviet Union was about equality for workers. Who could be against that?

I think you replied to the wrong comment. You start off by disagreeing with something but it does not seem to be anything I wrote in this thread.

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

#413

Post by friedman23 »

guantanamo_bob wrote: post #371
asfadfdsa wrote: post #46

There are a lot of people commenting that she didn't actually resign. I agree, but it sounds like the conversation went like this: employee: I'm not happy about x, y and z. If you don't do those, I'm going to quit. manager: well we are not going to do those, so thank you for your time. We accept your resignation and would like it to start immediately (i.e. you're fired). If you are gonna tell your manager that you pl…

This debate over whether she was fired or resigned is distracting from the real issue. Why isn’t Google willing to listen and work with Timnit? What are the issues she’s raising? These are more important questions, fired/resigned is just an easy thing to be outraged or give leeway over.

> Why isn’t Google willing to listen and work with Timnit?

Maybe she isn't that important for the company? Why bother working with someone making demands if they aren't worth your time. Google might have actually thought she was detrimental to the company and wanted an excuse to fire her and she gave it.

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

#414

Post by frongpik »

goutsuffer wrote: post #342

I am more concerned whether she is really a good researcher or not. If she is, just continue her great work and contribute real good stuff in the field. BTW, what exactly is Ethical AI?

With her credentials, no less than "a famous scientist that's authored landmark papers in AI research", she could easily start her own AI company, or at least a top-tier consultancy, to advance the AI research frontier at the unprecedented pace. She could even hire the top notch researchers from the SJW community and show Jeff what the real science looks like. I'm sure VCs will line up to fund her novel ideas.

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

#415

Post by tomp »

htrp wrote: post #199
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…

>Now might be a good time to remind everyone that the easiest way to discriminate is to make stringent rules, then to decide when and for whom to enforce them. --Nicolas Le Roux

I mean this sounds deep and sensible and I support the underlying sentiment when it comes to laws and government force, but it's not so black-and-white in social situations..

Someone farts once - no big deal. Someone farts all the time => they're quitting or I am.

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

#416

Post by free_rms »

saagarjha wrote: post #401
nickff wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the company is in slightly different position from the manager. They can abrogate the manager's authority, but that would permanently undermine that individual. On the other hand, they can also choose to accept the subordinate's resignation. They could try to transfer the subordinate somewhere else, but that's also risky, and wouldn't really address the ultimatum in this case. Accepting a resignation achieves t…

I think you're coming at the ultimatum from some sort of strange power dynamic perspective, where an employee who successfully gets their ultimatum approved somehow disenfranchises their manager of their authority, enabling future employees to…what? Vie for the managerial position? This has a "crush dissent" kind of vibe. In every employment contract there is a balance of things and employee is willing to do and an e…

Critical race/gender theory is all about power dynamics permeating every interaction.

You might think that's exhausting, I certainly do, but that's what we're dealing with here.

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

#417

Post by angry_octet »

mattdeboard wrote: post #310
angry_octet wrote: post #218

After reading Jeff Dean's response, I can only come to the conclusion that Timnit Gebru acted like a primadonna. It is completely normal to have to obtain prepublication signoff on material before it is submitted to a conference (and manager signoff even before abstract submission). Given the breadth of experience at Google, it seems strange not to avail yourself of this. Demanding to know the identity of reviewers i…

I think, given the top comment on this post, your comment is far too credulous about Google's incentives being aligned with scientific rigor alone.

To be sure, Google has other objectives. But the people in this area are essentially academics, and I'd expect them to have a similar process given their backgrounds. The papers from Google are routinely of high calibre.

The non-research motive is arguably to control the narrative about using ML (I admit I still choke at calling it AI) and big data techniques. I fail to see how this is advanced by having a very public spat.

I've no doubt some senior exec decided she had to go, but I don't think it is because of any intersectional reason, or to cover up any particular publication, but that she wasn't seen as an asset to the company. Strategies for negotiating exercise of power are very different at Google to social sciences academia (or twitter, which is engorged with righteousness over this), which she seems not to have grasped. There are few enfants terribles in corporate tech that don't have controlling stock.

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

#418

Post by btilly »

oh_sigh wrote: post #350
eachro wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this scenario, shielding Google from liability is actually a primary concern given that Timnit is discussing ethics/bias. A paper on say novel transformer architecture, the lottery ticket hypothesis in a new setting, a new RL benchmark suite, etc is not going to expose Google to legal risk the way ethical AI research often can.

How would publishing a paper open a 3rd party up to legal risk? Research papers aren't laws, and it is chronologically impossible for a research paper to influence already on the book laws.

A paper from Google saying that Google knows that its systems discriminate against minority groups can open Google up to liability for a class action lawsuit from said minority groups against Google. And the fact that Google knows increases the damages that they can look for.

The same paper from outside of Google also creates liability, but now the argument for increased damages becomes about whether Google knew.

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

#419

Post by oh_sigh »

btilly wrote: post #418
oh_sigh wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would publishing a paper open a 3rd party up to legal risk? Research papers aren't laws, and it is chronologically impossible for a research paper to influence already on the book laws.

A paper from Google saying that Google knows that its systems discriminate against minority groups can open Google up to liability for a class action lawsuit from said minority groups against Google. And the fact that Google knows increases the damages that they can look for. The same paper from outside of Google also creates liability, but now the argument for increased damages becomes about whether Google knew.

That would be more of a journalistic paper than a research paper then. Timnit's research, at least in the past, is along the lines of "Hey, this is not actually benign"

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

#420

Post by justinclift »

roenxi wrote: post #354
acoard wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, put more simply, they pushed out someone in their Ethical AI department because they did not soften critiques against AI enough. They couch these in terms of rigour, but the substance of the problem has to do with her criticisms against AI. Ultimately it makes the whole Ethical AI department look more like a rubber stamp for Google.

Big oil companies don't pump out damning studies on oil use, big tech companies won't pump out research damning the use of their tech. If people have an expectation of Google to turn out academically pure research then I certainly respect the position and encourage it in reality. But thinking like that means life is going to contain a bunch of surprises that really shouldn't be surprising. Google is simply not going…

> If you expect tolerance of radicals and debate, look to the universities.

Universities used to tolerate radicals and debate. But going by the copious media reports of the last few years, that doesn't seem to be how they operate any more.

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