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Says she deliberately attempts to cast LeCunn as a racist is a very uncharitable framing, but putting that aside, it doesn’t actually seem reasonable to assume

Says she deliberately attempts to cast LeCunn as a racist is a very uncharitable framing, but putting that aside, it doesn’t actually seem reasonable to assume she picked a fight. We have no idea what was in the email.

throwaway-kmc 6y ago
How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain his position, only to be virtually shouted over about he wasn’t listening to people of color because he pointed out that a model trained on White people learned to produce images of White people, and that if it had been trained on Black people it would produce images of Black people. It was a research paper, not a production system, and Gebru and her acolytes were much more interested in scoring cheap points than in having a serious conversation about either ML fairness or the merits of this particular paper. Seriously, the primary sources can be read by anyone.
- astrange 6y ago
  > LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. But this claim is certainly not necessarily correct, and he shouldn't have been so confident about it. Any part of a system can contribute to bias and that includes the model design, not just the data. If they want the system to work then they need to actually demonstrate it works, not just say it could with X change without testing that. Though I remember people arguing it didn't work properly at the same time they were saying it was evil (because it contributed to surveillance). Which is odd because if you don't want it to exist, you shouldn't want it to work either.
  - fullstackPM 6y ago
    Wouldn't that go both ways though? Why was Gebru so confident that the bias is because of something else other than the training dataset? She immediately assumed that there are other items contributing to the bias and devolved the quality of the conversation as well by making those claims in a frustrated/exasperated tone. The most obvious and easiest way to clear this up would be for the original researches to train the model on a "Senegal" dataset as mentioned by LeCunn and see what the results are.
    - compycom 6y ago
      The whole point is that it never is trained on a "Senegal" dataset, is it? Why do we always see these errors where white-centric datasets produce white-centric results? While it would be a symmetric situation a vacuum, we do not live in a vacuum. And acknowledging dataset bias by itself doesn't address the bias meaningfully. In practice, we often treat the bias as an exogenous factor when it is not, moving it outside the scope of our responsibility. But it is very much the product of our work, a reflection of our choices, values, and beliefs about what to prioritize. We can't abdicate our responsibility for it; the stakes are too high.
      - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
        Does exogenous vs endogenous work in a vacuum either? It’s exogenous with respect to some things and endogenous with respect to others.
      - fullstackPM 6y ago
        Well that is the whole point. The entire controversy could have been cleared up if the original researchers or even Gebru would have trained the model on a "Senegal" dataset, or a dataset diverse enough to their own liking and then make the findings public. That, to me is research. Throwing a fit on twitter because people won't buy that the outcome of this model is racist is not research. I am not sure why the wording around this has to be so abstract.
      - visarga 6y ago
- veridies 6y ago
  I'd never heard of this fight before, so I just looked it up. My interpretation is that he made that claim, Gebru responded by claiming that that was an overly reductionist view of things (given, presumably, the fact that biased assumptions could affect the coded assumptions as well as the training data), he maintained his opinion, and she felt frustrated that she didn't feel she was being listened to. I did not see her call him a racist, and I did not think either person was acting in bad faith; both seemed frustrated and unhappy that there was a disagreement. Am I missing anything?
  - throwaway-kmc 6y ago
    Here’s a good summary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yan... I think it’s clear Gebru was acting in bad faith and LeCunn was baffled and trying to deescalate. Gebru responds to each attempt to deescalate by a reply designed to further rile up Twitter, without actually talking to any of the points LeCunn makes. Virtually all of her replies are some variant of “you are wrong, but I won’t say why” and “listen to me because I am Black”.
    - worker767424 6y ago
      I wouldn't be shocked if Google saw this drama, saw that she was offering to resign, and was like "that's a freebie."
      - thu2111 6y ago
        But that drama was some time ago. She should have been fired on the spot back then, but, at Google women are virtually unfireable, black women doubly so. Whatever she did to get canned like this must have been extreme. Either that or Google is learning how to hold these sorts of employees to the same standards as their less fashionable colleagues. Edit: incorrectly claimed the spat was before 2020, it wasn't. 2020 just feels like an incredibly long year.
        6y ago
thebladerunner 6y ago
She has been advancing her agenda for a while by strategically picking fights, and winning them because she's been on the right side of a political wave and knew how to ride it. Then she got blinded by her own success and overplayed her hand, a classic cautionary tale. Fun fact: many people, not necessarily managers, won't be shedding tears seeing her go.
- jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
  Do you work for Google?

throwaway-kmc 6y ago

How would you describe what happened? LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. He was then excoriated as a racist by this woman and the Twitter mobs she incited, to the point where this Turing Award winner is no longer willing to engage with the public via that medium. LeCunn made repeated attempts to explain his position, only to be virtually shouted over about he wasn’t listening to people of color because he pointed out that a model trained on White people learned to produce images of White people, and that if it had been trained on Black people it would produce images of Black people. It was a research paper, not a production system, and Gebru and her acolytes were much more interested in scoring cheap points than in having a serious conversation about either ML fairness or the merits of this particular paper. Seriously, the primary sources can be read by anyone.

astrange 6y ago
> LeCunn calmly and rationally explained that a particular model produced biased results, and that that this was due to the bias in its training data. But this claim is certainly not necessarily correct, and he shouldn't have been so confident about it. Any part of a system can contribute to bias and that includes the model design, not just the data. If they want the system to work then they need to actually demonstrate it works, not just say it could with X change without testing that. Though I remember people arguing it didn't work properly at the same time they were saying it was evil (because it contributed to surveillance). Which is odd because if you don't want it to exist, you shouldn't want it to work either.
- fullstackPM 6y ago
  Wouldn't that go both ways though? Why was Gebru so confident that the bias is because of something else other than the training dataset? She immediately assumed that there are other items contributing to the bias and devolved the quality of the conversation as well by making those claims in a frustrated/exasperated tone. The most obvious and easiest way to clear this up would be for the original researches to train the model on a "Senegal" dataset as mentioned by LeCunn and see what the results are.
  - compycom 6y ago
    The whole point is that it never is trained on a "Senegal" dataset, is it? Why do we always see these errors where white-centric datasets produce white-centric results? While it would be a symmetric situation a vacuum, we do not live in a vacuum. And acknowledging dataset bias by itself doesn't address the bias meaningfully. In practice, we often treat the bias as an exogenous factor when it is not, moving it outside the scope of our responsibility. But it is very much the product of our work, a reflection of our choices, values, and beliefs about what to prioritize. We can't abdicate our responsibility for it; the stakes are too high.
    - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
      Does exogenous vs endogenous work in a vacuum either? It’s exogenous with respect to some things and endogenous with respect to others.
    - fullstackPM 6y ago
      Well that is the whole point. The entire controversy could have been cleared up if the original researchers or even Gebru would have trained the model on a "Senegal" dataset, or a dataset diverse enough to their own liking and then make the findings public. That, to me is research. Throwing a fit on twitter because people won't buy that the outcome of this model is racist is not research. I am not sure why the wording around this has to be so abstract.
    - visarga 6y ago
veridies 6y ago
I'd never heard of this fight before, so I just looked it up. My interpretation is that he made that claim, Gebru responded by claiming that that was an overly reductionist view of things (given, presumably, the fact that biased assumptions could affect the coded assumptions as well as the training data), he maintained his opinion, and she felt frustrated that she didn't feel she was being listened to. I did not see her call him a racist, and I did not think either person was acting in bad faith; both seemed frustrated and unhappy that there was a disagreement. Am I missing anything?
- throwaway-kmc 6y ago
  Here’s a good summary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yan... I think it’s clear Gebru was acting in bad faith and LeCunn was baffled and trying to deescalate. Gebru responds to each attempt to deescalate by a reply designed to further rile up Twitter, without actually talking to any of the points LeCunn makes. Virtually all of her replies are some variant of “you are wrong, but I won’t say why” and “listen to me because I am Black”.
  - worker767424 6y ago
    I wouldn't be shocked if Google saw this drama, saw that she was offering to resign, and was like "that's a freebie."
    - thu2111 6y ago
      But that drama was some time ago. She should have been fired on the spot back then, but, at Google women are virtually unfireable, black women doubly so. Whatever she did to get canned like this must have been extreme. Either that or Google is learning how to hold these sorts of employees to the same standards as their less fashionable colleagues. Edit: incorrectly claimed the spat was before 2020, it wasn't. 2020 just feels like an incredibly long year.
      - 6y ago

thebladerunner 6y ago

She has been advancing her agenda for a while by strategically picking fights, and winning them because she's been on the right side of a political wave and knew how to ride it. Then she got blinded by her own success and overplayed her hand, a classic cautionary tale. Fun fact: many people, not necessarily managers, won't be shedding tears seeing her go.

jiuahweruihawi 6y ago
Do you work for Google?