831–840 of 864 posts
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Is "no e filtration of company data" an arbitrary "gotcha" policy?
Did you ever leave a notebook that had work notes at home or in your car? Ever gotten an e-mail on your work account that should have gone to a personal one? Use any SaaS service that would get access to company data?
I think your question is ridiculous.
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Except you can't do that. The problem is Google has no idea that this is where the documents/e-mails went. All they can see is that a large number of documents and e-mails were sent outside of Google. I can't imagine Google would say, well it's okay if you take the law into your own hands. Any lawyer should be able to send a note telling Google to preserve the files for potential litigation. And given that she seems…
Legal counsel is a common exception to NDAs. Different jurisdictions have different specific rules. And most people would have tried to hide it. But saying you can't do that isn't true categorically. She could have taken files that weren't material. But that's just speculation. Google claimed the documents went to multiple external accounts. So they must know which accounts. So Mitchell could say who owned them. And…
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Except you can't do that. The problem is Google has no idea that this is where the documents/e-mails went. All they can see is that a large number of documents and e-mails were sent outside of Google. I can't imagine Google would say, well it's okay if you take the law into your own hands. Any lawyer should be able to send a note telling Google to preserve the files for potential litigation. And given that she seems…
If emails are taken out of context, then Google is free to provide context. An employee's working conditions are not company secrets. They have a legal right to discuss them.
I'm also not sure what you mean by employees are allowed to discuss working conditions. Are you assuming that the only e-mails/documents that she took are related to working conditions? There is no current evidence that is what she took. Or do you mean something else? Because the only public statement from Google alleges she took a large number of e-mails/documents from Google, not that she was fired for discussing working conditions. We'll have to wait for a lawsuit from her to find out further details though.
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Unless we are talking about a job with inherently long term health risk and/or ilegal activity with prosecution risk I would be willing to put up a year or two in order to secure a life long financial independence. 2M USD is enough to confortable spend the rest of your life doing what you really want to do. But hey, maybe is me
Depends on where you want to live and the lifestyle you want. Personally for me, it’s not enough. I’d need $10mil+ to retire. Even then, I don’t want to retire. I’d prefer to keep learning and growing. I have goals of eventually running a large organization or doing my own startup. Also, again, you’re literally trading years of your life away.
And yeah lets clarify that I don't mean retiring when I said you can do what you want, and I was not thinking that you may not have any other income for the remainder of your life. For me is having the freedom to work on what interest you, with people that is interesting and not having to suffer any fools never again in order to make ends meet. We all trade time for money, I would just preffer the condensed version and be done with it.
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Money isn’t usually enough. I walked away from a job paying more than $1m/yr (to be clear - I am not rich or financially independent, the stock is still illiquid atm and I live in a 400sqft in-law unit). You need satisfaction overall with your environment. I kept asking myself how much a year of my life was worth and it turns out - unless it’s fucking insane money ($10mil+ liquid) then I can’t suffer through somethin…
I should have explained better: why are smart people so bad at navigating the workplace? Gebru’s email was insane.
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Tangential anecdote. I was reading a book about dry stone bridges, and one of the bridges featured was built across a stream in a protected watershed. The builder said he was surprised the permit for it was approved, he told the client to expect it to be rejected. Talking to the government bureaucrats & scientists, he found out that they had to approve a permit every now and then. Not just because of political reason…
This sounds like an interesting read, what's the title of the book?
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How is free speech a moral value? Speaking your mind, honesty, bravery are moral values:-)
Free speech is at it's core dangerous speech. It's speech in favor of trans rights when nobody supports it. It's speech calling attention to inequality nobody wants to hear. It's speech that's unfavorable to the government and our neighbors. Safe speech isn't free speech. Free speech is the engine of change for things like trans rights, same sex marriage, equal protection under the law and even evolution being taught…
Why exactly is free speech something important in the private arena?
I still don't think it's a moral value on its own.
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Say you hire Troy Hunt to do an audit (security, IG, finance, anything), then repeatedly block them from accessing the information they need. They then email you saying "I need access to this data to be able to do my job, otherwise there's no point me being here and I should move on to something else" Another example. You hire a sales person on commission, but then deliberately stall the payment of commissions for ca…
That's not quite comparable though. More like storming in and demanding "either you give me root access to all systems, and the building to myself, and a promotion, or i quit!" It's a grey area, and I agree there are cases that are not de facto resignations. But Gebru's demands were absolutely not of the compromising kind. She was effectively demanding dictator powers. And if "i can't do my job if i can't run the com…
To the company, every demand is unreasonable...
And every negotiation/collective bargaining begins with overstated demands, that's hardly unusual.
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Google created these jobs and deemed them important. Like I agree, if AI ethics researchers are doing their job correctly Google will be unhappy with them, but this is really what Google offered, lots of freedom. You can be as cynical as you want but the fact Google fired them with little rhyme or reason and destroyed their team is BAD thing, we should be upset at Google for it.
I don't think that's true. AI ethic researchers should provide solutions, rather than simply pointing out problems, especially for companies. You need to provide solutions how things can move forward, that's your job.
I hace no expertise in the field of AI ethics, and I'm not sure what to think about the Timnit drama in general, but I don't think what you're saying here is really accurate. There can be a lot of value in pointing out problems even if you're not the one who can provide a solution. If no-one else has spotted the problem then pointing it out can draw the attention of those who might know how to fix it before things get worse.
If you can say "hey, there's a flaw in the design of this rocket that means it'll explode if we launch it, wasting millions of dollars" then that's valuable to your company, even if you don't know how to design a rocket that works.
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It's so vague it's hard to draw any conclusion without specifics. "Exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents" could be nefariously downloading proprietary research for personal gain... or innocently downloading a Slides presentation to your personal phone as a PDF in preparation for a client meeting in case it's impossible to connect to their Wi-Fi. Or saving e-mail communications with your manager in…
Yeah I have a friend who essentially got fired for the same thing. His crime? Putting some icons he designed for the company on his personal portfolio website. They never used the icons FYI.
For designers or artists of any kind, the general accepted pratice is that you're allowed to display/use pubicly released (even if sold e.g. in a book, TV show, etc.) work you've created for others for purposes of a portfolio, or that you've been given permission to. It's a kind of fair use.
On the other hand, if the material was never released, you don't EVER show it unless you have permission. Because that leaks potential future ideas, different directions that are inconsistent with their branding/image that they don't want public, "mistakes" they made, etc.
You absolutely should NEVER post stuff to a personal website you did for work that was never publicly released, unless you have explicit permission.