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AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

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Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#801

Post by anon7725 »

NationalPark wrote: post #259
greatjack613 wrote: post #48

Unrelated, but hiring by race or gender is inherently racist. We should hire by skill alone whether the person is a Lesbian Black Female, or a White Male

Er, if this is unrelated, why are you commenting something that you must be aware is certain to stir up unproductive, culture-war-y discussion? Anyone who's been within 10 feet of hiring responsibilities knows you can't even think about race and gender when considering a candidate.

Right, you can’t even consider it, just mandate that race and gender factor into the candidates interviewed for every open position, make the diversity of your workforce a performance goal for executives and report the racial and gender makeup of your workforce in quarterly company updates. But no, can’t take it into consideration when hiring, of course not.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#802

Post by anon7725 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #258
greatjack613 wrote: post #48

Unrelated, but hiring by race or gender is inherently racist. We should hire by skill alone whether the person is a Lesbian Black Female, or a White Male

Do you think the predominance of men in tech is "hiring by skill alone" and that it just happens there are almost no skilled women? Do you think it's possible that you can "hire by skill alone" and given two equally skilled people - one man, one woman - always hire the man, and that you could hire some equally skilled women if you randomised or removed whatever male-bias exists in your hiring? Do you think it's possi…

Until recently, men outnumbered women by 10:1 in CS programs. That went on for 30 years or so.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#803

Post by rbanffy »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #617
suifbwish wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am implying that they often scare away their competition by attacking the character of the individuals who they work with, rather than focusing on true accomplishments that would give them legitimate merit for the positions they aspire to. Their supervisors can even be intimidated into promoting them if they have a history of filing complaints of discrimination when things don’t go their way. It’s also possible tha…

I think there’s definitely a dynamic in any dogmatic arena (social justice is dogma heaven) where the most pathological people thrive. In the high-dogma arena there’s incredibly easy and visible signals that give you the ability to appear like “one of the good ones.” I think coincidentally this is highly attractive to elite circles too. Follow all the social justice rituals and shibboleth and you suddenly get the cam…

> Follow all the social justice rituals and shibboleth and you suddenly get the camouflage of an empathetic, good person.

If a person is indistinguishable from a good human being, isn't it actually a good human being?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#804

Post by cirno »

joshuamorton wrote: post #501
refulgentis wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thrust of her thread today is that it is shocking how Google dumped her with no warning - it sounds like, instead, they continued employing her for months and months while her lawyer was threatening to sue the company, and the culminating event was making demands for the company to meet if she was to stay. Declining to accept an employee's set of ultimatums, an employee who already engaged in threatening legal ac…

> instead, they continued employing her for months and months while her lawyer was threatening to sue the company This doesn't at all sound like the case. It sounds like the company did something aggressive, she got representation who threatened to sue, and the company backed off, and all of this happened over a year ago and is essentially a closed chapter.

> all of this happened over a year ago and is essentially a closed chapter.

Very credibly threatening to sue your employer with a legal firm, regardless of whether you were in the right to do so, is never a closed chapter. Companies are made of people, and those people are not going to forget something like that. They're going to be waiting for their first chance to get rid of you.

Right or wrong, justified or not, if you threaten your employer with a lawsuit, you need to be looking for a new employer that very same day. The employment relationship is now irrevocably a hostile one.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#805

Post by anon7725 »

antpls wrote: post #392
mellosouls wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overview here, pasted from another commenter elsewhere in this rabbit hole. https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

TLDR : Yann Lecun tweeted that ML models are biased when the dataset they are trained on is biased. Bunch of people, including Timnit Gebru, replied he is wrong and the biases are every where and systemic. Yann later tweeted again to explain what he meant in the context of deep learning models without hand engineered features, but people ignored him and still replied he was wrong. It looks like they were accusing Yan…

This episode happened during the blood moon of Jacobin Twitter this summer. I saw colleagues denouncing colleagues for “liking” the wrong tweet.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#806

Post by username90 »

rbanffy wrote: post #803
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s definitely a dynamic in any dogmatic arena (social justice is dogma heaven) where the most pathological people thrive. In the high-dogma arena there’s incredibly easy and visible signals that give you the ability to appear like “one of the good ones.” I think coincidentally this is highly attractive to elite circles too. Follow all the social justice rituals and shibboleth and you suddenly get the cam…

> Follow all the social justice rituals and shibboleth and you suddenly get the camouflage of an empathetic, good person. If a person is indistinguishable from a good human being, isn't it actually a good human being?

No, plenty of rapists and abusers etc do all the social justice rituals.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#807

Post by hef19898 »

LordFast wrote: post #736
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…

Me thinks it's a common misconception for strongly opinionated people to believe that companies want to hire them in order for them to "fix things and make the company a better place". In reality, what every company/team/management wants is someone who will give them some constructive criticism on small mistakes here and there that are easy to fix, but ultimately act as a supportive shield for the company against /ot…

Sums it up pretty well. Same reason consultants are hired.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#808

Post by chrisdirkis »

gonehome wrote: post #672
joshuamorton wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever your position, Yann engages on substance, and Timnit is obnoxious: For what it's worth, I and many others disagree with this characterization. I find Yann comes across as incredibly condescending and holier than thou in their interactions. Nor does Yann engage on substance. He refuses to take the time engage with, or even acknowledge that he has read, the relevant academic literature (which Timnit repeated…

People can read the thread for themselves and decide. I see a quote tweet from Timnit with "I'm sick of this framing...listen to us", then misquoting what he said. Ignoring his replies and then following up with "I'm disengaging for my sanity...not worth my time...Maybe your colleagues will try to educate you..." etc. She attacks him (so he replies) and then she ignores him and talks down to him. I don't have a dog i…

Not to get too heated or anything, but the framing of "People can read the thread for themselves and decide." concerns me. Saying "I think A", then responding to people who say "I think ~A" with "hey hey hey, let's let people decide themselves" is pretty stifling. I don't believe that was your intent, but that's one way it reads.

I appreciate that you've explained your reasoning for your position, though.

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#809

Post by mav3rick »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #210
tgv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it commonly accepted that ML systems reflect the bias in the data, and that it's hard to predict and control the bias in advance?

It's "commonly accepted" in that it is a well-known possibility and, therefore, something that practitioners should check for before publishing, using, or selling their models, yes. It's not "commonly accepted" in the sense of throwing one's hands up, saying "there's just no way we could find enough pictures of black people for our AI to no longer confuse them with Apes" and move on.

Sorry from her rebuttal it seemed like there were other ways than just more and better labelled data. Is this correct ?

Re: AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

#810

Post by pwthornton »

idlewords wrote: post #101
jononor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next two tweets contain more: > However, we believe the end of your employment should happen faster than your email reflects because certain aspects of the email you sent last night to non-management employees in the brain group reflect behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager. > As a result, we are accepting your resignation immediately, effective today. We will send your final pay…

No, this is more like giving two weeks' notice and then being asked to leave the building immediately. It's not pleasant but it also isn't the same as being fired. Google called her bluff here.

The Bloomberg model! You put in your two weeks notice and you have two hours to leave the building and never come back.
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