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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

#51

Post by [deleted] »

foota wrote: post #31
throawaydmg wrote: post #24

> Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback It always amazes how blatantly authoritarian these "woke" types are. I would not be surprised if the sole reason she wanted the identities of…

I can imagine she felt helpless when her work was being blocked. Imagine you were going to start a project and was told someone in your org was against it and that you couldn't do it as a result.

[deleted]

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

#52

Post by petulla »

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…

This response really seems like gaslighting. He doesn't address her concerns and glosses over whether she was held to a different standard than others at GR.

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

#54

Post by karmasimida »

bnj wrote: post #5

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. Even if Google is acting presenting the chain of events faithfully, their final move to jump on an opport…

One thing that is missing here is the demands the said researcher had brought up to the leadership. Didn't see either party bring it up in their side of story.

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

#55

Post by asciident »

Imnimo wrote: post #21

This reads to me like Google felt that the paper painted some of their other technologies in a poor light, and wanted to insert language that made them look better. The way he describes their objections, they strike me as the sort of thing that is routinely addressed in the camera-ready version of papers by adding a few lines to the related work section. Not the sort of thing that a conference reviewer or an internal…

I've seen these review comments before and I don't know if we can say from our position whether it's corrections that can be made for camera ready or not.

If a paper does not analyze the improvements from recent work, and just older work that has been surpassed (deemed inefficient by Dean), the new reanalysis might not be as favorable to the results as the paper proposes which means the paper is moot.

Or the second point is about bias in language models, but it sounds like these issues are mitigated in recent research, which means people are already aware and have solved a bulk of the issue being described in the paper.

But certainly it's possible that the paper's contributions stands strong even after accounting for the recent work that Dean mentions. In that case, it could be corrected for camera ready. But my point is that we can't tell right now without seeing the paper, and the relevant research that was omitted.

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

#56

Post by _diq5 »

throawaydmg wrote: post #24

> Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback It always amazes how blatantly authoritarian these "woke" types are. I would not be surprised if the sole reason she wanted the identities of…

I would caution you by saying that no quote, paraphrase, or evidence of exactly what Timnit said.

Since this is Google's side of the story its in their interest to use words that would imply she's overbearing, or otherwise unaccommodating

(for all I know she could be all of those things, but this narration isn't sufficient evidence to prove that)

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

thisgoodlife wrote: post #14
dang wrote: post #7

Previous threads on this ongoing story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445

one link says she resigned. The other one says she was fired. Which one is it then?

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

theobeers wrote: post #33
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…

And the examples of issues flagged in review that Jeff keeps highlighting—like Timnit’s alleged failure to mention recent work to reduce the environmental impact of large models—are themselves a bit worrisome. Jeff gives the impression that they demanded retraction (!) because they wanted Timnit and her coauthors to soften their critique. The more I read about this, the worse it looks.

That was my impression as well.

Having said that, if Jeff were to make public the paper, criticisms of the paper, and improvements made to address the problems described in the paper, that could go a long way towards clearing the air.

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

#60

Post by gundmc »

choppaface wrote: post #30

It's frankly unprofessional for Jeff Dean to post only his email in this document without providing more context. The news media has in cases provided balanced coverage that included the email from Timnit that prompted Google's action: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... This post from Jeff Dean simply underscores that he has failed to balance the need for diplomacy with the research thesi…

It seems reasonable to choose to publish something you wrote yourself (and presumably cleared with legal/PR) and not publish something written by someone else with an intended internal audience. It would be WAY worse if they unilaterally published Timnit's private emails publicly.
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