To prevent talented people from developing tech elsewhere.
MSR seemed like it had a similar underlying purpose (or at least nice side effect).
Why did Google Brain exist?
81–90 of 328 posts
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#82> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…
I'm really baffled by how many people think a job is more than a job and there's some ownership over the employee's critical thinking capabilities during the job and after it ends. While I agree the OP is "going for internet brownie points" (or probably a bit butthurt from being laid off from a certifiably top-5 cushiest job in the United States) the article doesn't include anything even remotely trade secret and is…
> a company has to pay extra
Part of my problem is that Google (and similar companies) are already paying insane (in the best way possible) amounts of money, and when you sign the agreement to take said money, you explicitly promise you won't talk about company internals.
To me this is quite simple: if you accept what winds up being millions of dollars in cash+equity, and you give your word that you'll keep your mouth shut as one of the conditions for that pile of money... then you shut keep your mouth shut.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#83because once Jeff Dean had solved Google's maslow problems (scaling web search, making ads profitable, developing high performance machine learning systems) he wanted to return to doing academic-style research, but with the benefit of Google's technical and monetary resources, and not part of X, which never produces anything of long-term value. I know for sure he wanted to make an impact in medical AI and felt that b…
I agree that the OP makes a bunch of interesting points, but I think historically Brain really grew out of what Dean wanted to do and the fact that he wanted it to be full-stack, e.g. including the TPU. Also, crucially, Brain would use Google data and contribute back to Ads/Search directly versus Google X which was supposed to be more of an incubator.
But it's also notable how the perspective of an ex-Brain employee might differ from what sparked the Brain founders in the first place.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Controvery of what? Did you read Gebru's paper? For instance, her calculation of carbon footprint of training BERT assumes that companies will train BERT 24x7. Gebru is a disgrace to the community because she always, I mean literally always, attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white male…
Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field and the important role people like Gebru played in extending the political and status of minorities is ok to extinguish? We need more than just white male / Chinese male / Indian male monoculture “STEM lords”. This is already recognized in fields like medicine, where minorities treating minorities results in better outcomes and the greater push to open posit…
I personally believe that racial or diversity quotas are even more racist or sexist. We should expect minorities to develop their own culture of intellectual excellence. After all, they are no longer children. Giving them a shortcut is a form of insult. Providing someone an advantage based on their race or sex at the expense of someone else who is more qualified due to their race or sex is nonsensical. Companies may fail as a result of such practices. Ultimately, what truly matters is how innovative and efficient a company is.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because application and research are quite different. If one does a PhD in ML they learn how to research ML. Someone with a PhD in chemistry learns how to research chemistry, they only need to apply ML to that research
Well I think the issue is more of if you’re Genentech and you need ML people and can’t afford to pay them you’re probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs.
What if they don’t need “ML people”? Computational biology has been a thing for a while.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#86> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…
How do you know he was paid to keep all internal details private after he leaves? Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us? All he says is his concern about "optics", which has nothing to do with contract. If Google has a problem with his post, they can go after him, but that's an issue between Google and him, not with you or me or the rest of the internet. I'm def…
> Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us?
I actually could dig up my own contract from years ago (ugh, the effort though) but Confidentiality clause is in there, and it was made clear during on-boarding what is expected from employees: don't share any internal info unless you're an authorized company representative.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#87> The next obvious reason for Google to invest in pure research is for the breakthrough discoveries it has yielded and can continue to yield. As a rudimentary brag sheet, Brain gave Google TensorFlow, TPUs, significantly improved Translate, JAX, and Transformers. Except that these advances have made other companies an existential threat for Google. 2 years ago it was hard to imagine what could topple Google. Now a lo…
Google never talked much about it externally, but Google Research (the predecessor to Brain) had a single project which almost entirely funded the entire division- a growth-oriented machine learnign system called Sibyl. What was sibyl used for? Growing youtube and google play and other products by making the more addictive. Sibyl wasn't a very good system (I've never seen a product that had more technical debt) but i…
In case anyone is wondering what Sibyl is all about, here's a video
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#88> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…
I've never worked at Google Brain, but I've been a research manager in tech for a decade, and nothing here seems surprising to me. It discusses the archetype of the well funded industry lab that is too academic and ultimately winds down.
The post makes sensible but generic statements based on the view of an IC. It tries to work back from the conclusion (Google struggles to move academic research into product) and produces plausible but hardly definitive explanations, with no ranking, primarily because there's no discussion of the thinking, actions and promises made at the executive level that kept the lab funded for all these years.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#89> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…
I read the article and thought he did a fine job of not spilling too many secrets - I'm curious what you thought he said that crossed the line? I'm not personally aware of signing something that says "I'll keep all internal details private" though I agree I'd be highly unlikely to refer to anyone below the SVP level by name -- but I think that's exactly what OP did?
True, this wasn't the most egregious. But the principle still applies. He said himself he held this back until his final check cleared.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I think the issue is more of if you’re Genentech and you need ML people and can’t afford to pay them you’re probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs.
What if they don’t need “ML people”? Computational biology has been a thing for a while.
Well they had a whole suite of presentations at NeurIPS that suggests they hired a bunch.