The complaint is that he was being dismissive of racism in the field by saying it's just the training data. Technically correct, but missing the larger picture

The complaint is that he was being dismissive of racism in the field by saying it's just the training data. Technically correct, but missing the larger picture - who is generating this training data? Doesn't his comment subtly attempt dismiss the issue entirely? Deployed ML systems are notorious for these kinds of biases. He was offloading the criticism to engineers building these data sets, as though he could not have any possible role to play as a researcher. He was thus shot down for a seemingly innocuous comment that is set against a very large backdrop of racism that tends to get ignored. Haven't you read White Fragility three times over by now?? /s On the one hand this guy was pushed off twitter for a seemingly innocuous comment - one that some people just happened to take as insensitive. The type of comment that, in fact, increasingly large numbers of people seek out to take offense at - so it seems like an overreaction. On the other hand this is twitter, exactly where these types of narratives play out, he was unable to defend his position competently or even acknowledge the criticisms against him, gave up, and walked off.