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Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

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Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#841

Post by whoooooo123 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #496
monocasa wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lawsuit where they lied about firing someone is much worse PR and then the truth about why they fired her would get out and it would be much worse. We already know they lied about firing Gebru. > Also she hasn't denied the accusation. The fact that she's not blasting the press yet isn't a point against her.

Did google lie about a verifiable fact in the Gebru firing? I would doubt that. If you could find something like that I would seriously reconsider how I viewed Google's statements. But right now what we have is Google: we fired her for exfiltrating data Source close to meg as reported by newspaper: she wrote a script to exfiltrate data related Gebru Meg: no comment And your conclusion from this is Google is lying and…

I think the following things are facts:

1. Gebru said "do this or I'll resign"

2. Google said "okay, we accept your resignation with immediate effect"

3. Under California law this is considered a firing, not a resignation (at least according to the discussion elsewhere in this thread).

Does this mean that Google lied when they said she resigned? I don't think so. Facts 1 and 2 are sufficient to establish that she "resigned" by anyone's typical understanding of the term. Fact #3 strikes me as little more than a legal technicality. She might not have "resigned" from a legal pov but we don't have to restrict our understanding of that word to the precise semantics of California employment law - just like it might be truthful to say that someone (OJ?) is "guilty" of a crime even if a California court deemed them to be "not guilty".

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#842

Post by whoooooo123 »

konjin wrote: post #274
rayiner wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to ask: is it always a good idea to make marginalized groups more visible? Whom does it benefit? No it doesn’t. And I wish people would stop experimenting with this sort of thing and treating it as some sort of fad. I grew up, as an immigrant from a Muslim country, in a white Republican suburb in the 1990s. And it was great. I can’t imagine what life would have been like today - constant reminders of the fa…

You think your kids won't be white? My father wasn't white when he came here 30 years ago. Somehow magically I am. The same thing will happen to you too. I call it Schrodinger's whiteness. You are white enough to be blamed for right wing racism yet not white enough to not be the target of it.

> My father wasn't white when he came here 30 years ago. Somehow magically I am.

This is interesting. Can I ask what your ethnic background is?

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#843

Post by whoooooo123 »

asabjorn wrote: post #151
yk wrote: post #121

It seems the tobacco industry had more luck with their scientific advisors.

The firing seem related to a conflict between CRT morals and normative western moral systems. The ethics researcher in question seem to subscribe to the Critical Race Theory way of looking at the problem, "it's not a question if X is present, but how it manifest", which is in direct opposition with normative western morals.

Then we should celebrate her firing, because the future of civilization depends on keeping CRT out of our institutions, Google included.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#844

Post by tptacek »

vorpalhex wrote: post #828
tptacek wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first things the founders did was to pass the Sedition Act of 1798, so whatever the moral component of the First Amendment is, it wasn't as clear as it's made out to be today.

Bill of Rights was 1791. That's like judging Obama era policies based on Trump changing them.

I don't understand that you're trying to say, but of course my point is that the authors and ratifiers of the bill of rights immediately turned around and abrogated them.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#845

Post by sangnoir »

PeterisP wrote: post #613
sangnoir wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In short, she was getting paid handsomely while calling out her bosses by name and taking them through the dirt I think their job was just that: call out the company (and others) on AI ethics issues - I don't see how it comes as a surprise to you that a person in such a role is also concerned about ethics in general, or the ethics of AI ethics at Google, so to speak.

The way I see it, so much about this hassle seems to point towards some fundamental misunderstanding about what their job was - that perhaps they believed, like you say, that their job was to call out the company and others on AI ethics issues, but that the management who formed and funded that team believed that their job was something else - I think that what Google wanted from that team was to do research on appli…

The unit was full of Academic researchers, who regularly published papers and collaborated with others on papers; the whole kerfuffle started with Google's uncharacteristic request to put a lid on Dr. Timnit Gebru's paper. To me, that doesn't sound like a team that expects, or is expected to just work quietly on internal - likely confidential - projects.

I suspect Google leadership were on board, and wasn't even aware of the misalignment until Dr. Gebru declined to pull a paper that raised questions on a crown-jewels-level, Jeff-Dean-supported AI model that materially impacts Google's finances (and likely some leaders' bonuses too).

Now that Google leadership is aware of the misalignment, I think its actions show the direction they are taking going forward.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#846

Post by idlewords »

tptacek wrote: post #813
rayiner wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also learned about “First Amendment values” in law school. This idea that there is no moral component associated with the First Amendment is a new and weird one.

One of the first things the founders did was to pass the Sedition Act of 1798, so whatever the moral component of the First Amendment is, it wasn't as clear as it's made out to be today.

It was the Alien and Sedition act and closely tied to a fear of foreigners, and of national collapse in general, before the country had had time to gel. You can squint and hold it up to the light and see it as a principled diagreement over free expression, but that's pretty ahistorical.

The important point here is that limits on speech and free expression in American discourse have traditionally gone hand in hand with a fear of foreign influence. If anything, that gives more of a moral edge to the argument over free speech, not less.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#847

Post by notSupplied »

randycupertino wrote: post #651
totalZero wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these "AI ethics researchers" seem like wingnuts, and their profession appears to serve more of a PR purpose than a business purpose. What am I missing? Why are they so essential? Are these people the canaries in the coal mine, or do they simply exist because of paranoia and political correctness?

So, I work in medical research and was headhunted by (but turned down) Juul to work on sponsored trials and research related to smoking cessation and health improvement in patients who are switching to pods. Per the article, "Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering…

They wanted both the FAANG level compensation AND the academic freedom. They ought to know their role in this machine is akin to Big Sugar tricking the country into believing that fat was the real evil for 5 decades.

My wish is for companies to stop outputting "research" and researchers to work for the correctly aligned institutions...and accept the pay cut that comes with it.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#848

Post by tptacek »

idlewords wrote: post #846
tptacek wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first things the founders did was to pass the Sedition Act of 1798, so whatever the moral component of the First Amendment is, it wasn't as clear as it's made out to be today.

It was the Alien and Sedition act and closely tied to a fear of foreigners, and of national collapse in general, before the country had had time to gel. You can squint and hold it up to the light and see it as a principled diagreement over free expression, but that's pretty ahistorical. The important point here is that limits on speech and free expression in American discourse have traditionally gone hand in hand wit…

Yeah, I'm referring specifically to the Sedition Act of 1798 (one of 4 "A&S" acts), which was not principally used against foreigners --- and, in fact, was exploited by its opponents (notably Jefferson) to persecute political adversaries.

"Are we bound hand and foot that we must be witnesses to these deadly thrusts at our liberty?" (The thrusts were words on paper.) "Are these approaches to revolution and Jacobinic domination to be observed with the eye of meek submission? No, sir, they are indeed terrible; they are calculated to freeze the very blood in our veins. Such liberty of the press and of opinion is calculated to destroy all confidence between man and man."

The target of this speech, by a proponent of the Sedition act, was Benjamin Franklin Bache, a printer and native son of Pennsylvania.

My point is just that I'm deeply skeptical of moral principles encoded in the Constitution. I think it's a good system, a set of functional and useful institutions, not something I would want to fuck with, &c. Maybe not my moral north star, though.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#849

Post by pclmulqdq »

Aunche wrote: post #763
logicchains wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Go woke, go broke"

All the world's trillion-dollar companies have gone woke, so I'd wager it's quite profitable. It may not seem like it to you because you're not the intended audience.

They have usually gotten woke after becoming multi-billion-dollar companies. Being woke seems to be a luxury available when you have the money to spend on it.

Re: Margaret Mitchell fired from Google

#850

Post by GavinMcG »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #826
GavinMcG wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one guess, off the top of my head: what actions have you taken to reduce the likelihood that police in your community will kill a black person unnecessarily? Cause as much as I care about that issue, I never reached out to leaders in my community to encourage hiring more police and reducing overtime, for example. I didn't join any protest. I have been completely passive, standing by, waiting for someone else t…

I could save a lot more lives per dollar/hour by working on antimalarial treatments in Africa. There's countless things we're not doing so save lives. That does not mean we're relentlessly evil. If you aren't working to save every life, you're basically Godwin's Law.

You're strawmanning. I didn't call anyone relentlessly evil—the whole point is that complicity is woven into our daily lives in a way that's banal and easily ignored.

You could direct more resources this way or that. Do you? What about your time? Do you invite others in your life to do so as well?

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