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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#621

Post by antiquark »

kristjansson wrote: post #585
antiquark wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Yann LeCun is a neural network expert. Should it be his job to tackle social/systemic/institutional problems? What if he doesn't want to?

I think the point was reciting the (true!) 'biased datasets create biased models' argument at best avoids, and at worst actively undermines those bigger questions. Someone in another thread on this had IMO a great comment[1] summarizing the sentiment: > If you are going to say "Well, garbage-in, garbage-out!", why do you keep putting the racist garbage in? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25286446

It's really a stretch to call the Flickr-Faces-HQ Dataset "racist garbage."

It's a collection of images uploaded by random flickr users with permissive licenses.

https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#622

Post by Kalium »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #376
VHRanger wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They submitted thee paper for internal review one day before their external deadline. They set themselves up for failure regardless of the paper's content.

Their paper was accepted by the conference's peer review system. Google, not researchers in the community, wanted it retracted. The only logical explanation is that it was good science that did not put Google is a positive light.

What's your experience with corporate internal processes been? Mine has been that they often exhibit an extreme disinterest in the judgment of external parties that are not part of the internal process. Whether or not the external group accepts the paper was likely irrelevant to what would be internally seen as a breach of process.

Generally "It worked out, everything's fine" is not a line that flies.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#623

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

m00x wrote: post #599
ianbicking wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, reading the article ( https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter... ) and the thread I also don't see how one puts this on Timnit. Coming back to the original tweet: if you changed the training data have more black people instead of white, would it perform the same but with inverted racial biases? Maybe? You really can't know without doing it. It might generate faces with a dark complexion…

> Ultimately the engineers and other humans behind the scenes are the ultimate arbiters of success, loss functions are chosen by humans, and swapping training data on the same model won't change those early decisions How would changing loss functions alter this? This makes no sense. Hyperparameter tuning is done iteratively, and used get the best score on the test dataset. Do you really believe the engineers hand pic…

Learning conditional mean vs conditional median for superresolution might be differently affected by a large chunk of outgroup. That was what I remember folks talking about during this twitter feud. Or, like with word embeddings, where people have added some balance penalties to the loss function to make it unbiased in the presence of biased data. Dataset bias caused this, but dataset bias can sometimes be well mitigated.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#624

Post by victor106 »

mstg wrote: post #576
stevecalifornia wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." ~ The Social Network A good number of social activists are rude and abrasive and then blame how people react as racism/sexism. No one wants to be…

I totally agree with you. Screaming racism/sexism/marginalisation every time someone disagrees with you is annoying and tiring. I am a second degree immigrant in Norway and I always see this behaviour in people who blame society when they don't get their way when in reality people rarely get their way all the time. I hope the level of stupid activism does not reach Norway although we do copy many stupidities of the U…

Falsely screaming racism and sexism at everything hurts people who are actually impacted.

This behavior also enables racists and sexists.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#625

Post by 1024core »

wonnage wrote: post #608
hpoe wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I don't know enough to make a well informed opinion; however it seems part of the aggreivement on her part is that she was not given the names of those who peer reviewed her paper. If internally she has a history of bringing race or sex into every discussion I could see why they'd rather be anonymous. Even being accused of being racist can ruin someone's career in this current climate.

You're commenting on an article where a person was fired due to being a racial/gender justice advocate, and you're worried about "Even being accused of being racist can ruin someone's career in this current climate" ???

> a person was fired due to being a racial/gender justice advocate

Nope, they were fired for being a douche.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#626

Post by 1024core »

fantod wrote: post #561
GVIrish wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't even share with her the feedback on her paper to give her the opportunity to fix it. They didn't have to say who the feedback was from, but they could've at least told her the substance of the feedback.

From Dean's email: "A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns…

Would you share the identities of the reviewers, if the author has a history of attacking anyone who disagrees with them??

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#627

Post by golergka »

stevecalifornia wrote: post #519
1024core wrote: post #449

This person forced Yann LeCun (one of the top 3 AI/ML researchers today, head of Facebook AI, and an ML researcher since the 80s) to give up on Twitter after she took exception to this tweet of his: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 She lives her life attacking people who she disagrees with, and brings in race/gender into any conflict where she's involved. I am surprised Google had hired her, beca…

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." ~ The Social Network A good number of social activists are rude and abrasive and then blame how people react as racism/sexism. No one wants to be…

Key & Peele had an excellent sketch about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#628

Post by Hnrobert42 »

wonnage wrote: post #606
hardwaregeek wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know the details of this case and I can't speak to the subject's character. However I can't help but note that people who study the effects of race and gender tend to bring race/gender into anything and everything, because well, that's their job. If your response is that race and gender should be brought into only the areas where race and gender are relevant, I'd respond that the prevailing opinion among gen…

Please share why you think a person who was hired to address race/gender bias in AI writing a paper about race/gender bias in AI is tending to "bring race/gender into anything and everything"? Or let's cut to the chase, you saw the headline, and your immediate conclusion was this was a raging SJW. Why did you jump to that conclusion?

I am trying to get away from mind reading and assuming I know why others say and do things. Would you be interested in joining me in that?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#630

Post by FartyMcFarter »

splaytreemap wrote: post #443
Copenjin wrote: post #183

I wonder why these privileged people (I don't have her huge salary, I don't live in the us or work for a FAANG) keeps forgetting that after all they are just _employees_.

I think the fact that she had a huge salary is why she feels comfortable doing this. The average person needs their job to pay the bills so they don't want to rock the boat. She's already set for life so she doesn't care who she offends because getting fired is not a big deal for her.

Set for life? How much do you think a staff scientist is paid?
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