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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#761

Post by loeg »

parliament32 wrote: post #26

I don't think "fired" is the right choice of words -- she gave an ultimatum offering to resign, and they accepted her resignation. Is accepting a resignation the same as firing someone? > Thanks for making your conditions clear. We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting. We respect your decision to leave Google as a result, and we are accepting your resignation. https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364…

Accepting a resignation means Google doesn't have to pay unemployment benefits. But ultimately, it was their choice to let her go. And the immediateness of the decision and revocation of all access smells like how you treat an employee you're firing.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#762

Post by that_guy_iain »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #640
that_guy_iain wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read her email and all I could read was her privilege and her entitlement. I think she knows there is racism and sexism in play but thinks everything is about that. The feedback going to HR was probably because they didn’t feel comfortable telling her it direct for fear of reprisals from her.

One unusual privilege that she has is the ability to describe her experience of racism and sexism and expect to be listened to - her e-mail here speaks mostly on this point. Her e-mail identifies that you can speak on racism and sexism as much as you want, but all of your speech will be routed to /dev/null.

> Her e-mail identifies that you can speak on racism and sexism as much as you want, but all of your speech will be routed to /dev/null.

I think the fact people need to go through HR to give Feedback means the speech isn't going to /dev/null. People seem to take her speech very seriously and don't want to feel her wrath.

In fact, Google even appeared to take her concerns onboard after she got a lawyer and only threatened to sue. She just seems to expect more which is the entitlement I was talking about.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#763

Post by BlueTemplar »

hintymad wrote: post #544
elevenoh wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. Curious: How did she 'force him to give up on twitter'? There's a lotta companies who've hired ticking time bombs like this. They don't get why they were truly hired.

Easy. Just call that person a racist, a bigot, or an oppressor without a shred of evidence. > A person: I think bias in machine learning is caused by bias in training data. > Me: Why are you ignoring all I've been saying? You're a racist. You're a white man who oppresses. I'm not going to talk to a bigot like you. Repeat this a few times, the attacked will be punished both online and offline. Justice served.

"SJW"'s are racist and sexist. (AmIdoingitright?)

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#764

Post by alpb »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #555
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…

That's a little ungenerous. Social activists may go over the line and be rude or abrasive, but unfortunately it's impossible to be a polite social activist. Activism fundamentally requires telling people that their actions should be modified, that their beliefs may be flawed, that their systems have problems. It's really hard to do that and be a likeable person. Of course social activists may at times cross the line…

Ever heard of Noam Chomsky? Not sure if he’d agree with you.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#765

Post by BlueTemplar »

gonehome wrote: post #633
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…

This is the thread (it was a retweet with comment, naturally). https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1275162528511860737 Whatever your position, Yann engages on substance, and Timnit is obnoxious: https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1275191341455048704?s... https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1275191515380215808?s... Basically the worst of online discourse, but in this case one-sided. Yann is discussing in good fai…

Can someone explain to me why people are still taking tweets seriously?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#766

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #733
jsmith45 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like Google has a policy that papers must be internally reviewed before they can be "published". She understood publish in the academic sense, while Google views sending the paper out for conference review as publishing. The paper ends up failing internal review, so per policy it must be promptly retracted. This is confusing to the academic who expects to get access to the raw review responses so that…

I don't think it's miscommunication in anyway. Timnit had submitted dozens of papers before and unless the process requirements are completely new, she would be well aware of them. This seems more of a case of selective enforcement, where she had been allowed to go around the process in the past (or felt that she has enough leverage to be able to do so now) and then not being allowed to do so this time. This feels li…

> classic privileged tantrum

just... wow. Can anyone point to a man ever being labelled in such a way on HN?

Edit: comparing the number of comment hits for " his tantrum" vs " her tantrum" to the relative numbers for " his " and " her " shows that "tantrum" is, indeed, used 2.5 times as often to describe women as it is for men.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#767

Post by anonvenger »

sorenjan wrote: post #510
Upvoter33 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but it still bothers me that people like this get highly paid positions to point out problems seemingly without any technical knowledge" You are making a lot of (wrong) assumptions here. Not too many Stanford PhDs are graduating without technical knowledge

Ok, I read her Wikipedia entry and apparently she has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford. Those are probably fairly standardized, so I'll concede that she does have some technical knowledge. I have however seen way to many doctorates that seem technical while they're not. There's a common theme in her career, and it's not necessarily technical knowledge. She worked at Microsoft re…

Her technical work and credentials are solid. Working on better datasets is valuable and important. What is questionable is acting as if every dataset out there that can be found to have one dimension with any bias against some race/gender deemed underprivileged is a malicious crime against humanity. When there are many many biases, cutting both ways in those datasets. When there are many many alternate explanations to this state of affairs besides malicious discrimination and oppression. When reasonable courses of action include the constructive contribution of building and using better datasets.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#768

Post by yongjik »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #766
rishav_sharan wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's miscommunication in anyway. Timnit had submitted dozens of papers before and unless the process requirements are completely new, she would be well aware of them. This seems more of a case of selective enforcement, where she had been allowed to go around the process in the past (or felt that she has enough leverage to be able to do so now) and then not being allowed to do so this time. This feels li…

> classic privileged tantrum just... wow. Can anyone point to a man ever being labelled in such a way on HN? Edit: comparing the number of comment hits for " his tantrum" vs " her tantrum" to the relative numbers for " his " and " her " shows that "tantrum" is, indeed, used 2.5 times as often to describe women as it is for men.

FWIW, searching for "musk tantrum" gives 24 comments. (Musk is a known nutcase, though, so it may be an unfair comparison.)

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#769

Post by ganafagol »

deanCommie wrote: post #450
parliament32 wrote: post #26

I don't think "fired" is the right choice of words -- she gave an ultimatum offering to resign, and they accepted her resignation. Is accepting a resignation the same as firing someone? > Thanks for making your conditions clear. We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting. We respect your decision to leave Google as a result, and we are accepting your resignation. https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364…

Wife says to her programmer husband, "Go to the store and buy a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, buy a dozen." Husband returns with 12 loaves of bread. Most software engineers can read the above joke, and laugh at themselves, then go ahead and upvote your comment not realizing that it is EXACTLY THE SAME THING. Employee: "This is extremely important to me. If you can't address what is important to me, then I can't w…

Sorry, one can't go make a black-or-white threat and then expect people to not take it at face value. She literally wrote "if you don't do this-and-that then I can't work here anymore". If people then act on that then she can't go complain that they did. It's not a meaningful defense to claim well employees are just people. She should not say such a thing if she does not mean it. Words and actions have consequences.

Even pull the victim card, blast it all over social media. Sorry, that's a major disservice to everybody _actually_ being dehumanized. She's just dissatisfied with her employer and wants to make the biggest possible splash now.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#770

Post by dang »

anonvenger wrote: post #748
dang wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideological battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Would you please elaborate?

This is ideological battle boilerplate of the sort that contradicts the mandate of this site and which users were therefore right to flag:

This is the fundamental victim mindset of the social media woke: any setback is chalked up to identity based oppression. Reality check: everybody has setbacks, most of them unfair, or at least easily perceived as unfair, and definitely frustrating. Most have the decency to deal with it,

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