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Google did the right thing and they were civil. She made some pretty serious demands, not having been met, with such politicization there's no reasonable way t

by jariel 6y ago

Google did the right thing and they were civil. She made some pretty serious demands, not having been met, with such politicization there's no reasonable way to accommodate a longer handoff, and she knew that. Waaay too much risk there. She set her own terms, they accepted, that's it. She should have been more transparent in this, because in her Tweets she wasn't forthcoming that it was her terms. There are a ton of people who are sympathetic to those who are oppressed, but misrepresentations, cancelling etc. on the wrong terms are going to lose general sympathy very quickly. None of this should be construed as a measure of whether or not Google is 'Good or Bad' or whatever, all these things are individual situations, with their own unique circumstances.

apsec112 6y ago
Do you know what the demands were? I don't think anyone has published them yet.
jonathankoren 6y ago
Do we even know what her demands were? I haven’t seen them posted anywhere. That said, it’s not behooven on either party to be transparent — to the public, or even other employees — because that’s just lawsuit bait. All we know is that she gave a hardball ultimatum, and Google accepted option 2. I don’t know enough about what’s going on, but if you say “Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show you the door immediately. That’s how at-will employment works.
- jariel 6y ago
  It doesn't matter really what they were other than we know she offered to resign if they were not met. "“Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show you the door immediately. That’s how at-will employment works." That's pretty much it. She must be smart enough to know better and possibly she was looking for an exit of some kind.
- visarga 6y ago
  Some third hand hearsay mention: > In the letter she criticised the use of pre trained language models in Google's products (e.g., BERT is now used for most searches, machine translation, etc.). Apparently, the two conditions she mentioned concern how Google goes forward in deploying these models despite the warning of (their own) AI ethics researchers about biases that are manifested in these models.
  - kenjackson 6y ago
    That seems like its not only reasonable, but what her job was. Now if she said, "Do this or I quit" then that is on her. But if she criticized them harshly then that seems completely appropriate.
    - jariel 6y ago
      "That seems like its not only reasonable" Is it though? There is bias in everything. There is bias in Googles original search - it crawled content. That content will be biased. Google search has been biased since the start. It has nothing to do with AI. Biased is also contextual: what does it mean for all of us non-Americans to see tons of American content in everything - the 'American bias' is overwhelmingly the strongest bias, where are the concerns about that? And how does bias imply a 'lack of ethics'? The entire consideration is ridiculous: 1) AI is not special and odes not deserve it's own ethical oversight. Every social tech has issues and it all needs to be thought about. 2) Someone with no real training in the issue may very well merely be injecting their own politics into the situation, and possibly overstating issuses. 3) There's nothing objective about morality or ethnics, so it's really hard to even find such at thing as 'objective'. What the company needs is a clean, comprehensive framework for the issue, and probably some independent oversight that can given them private assessments of where there are red flags. Not individuals who want to make a name for themselves on the issue publicly, and who might be part of some kind of ideological movement.
      - kenjackson 6y ago
        There is bias in everything -- that is why you need ethics. You need to determine which biases are problematic and which aren't. If Google search favored Chinese government results in the US you'd probably say, "that seems biased in a bad way". Your disagreement seems less to do with that and more to do that you disagree with where her ethics rest. I think the reason why she pushes for marginalized groups is that those are the groups that are less likely to be able to stand for themselves and thus become the victims of the bias. A bias against corporate or powerful interests will likely be rectified relatively quickly.
- eyevpoison 6y ago
  https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Not sure how genuine this email is, but its all we have
- PeterisP 6y ago
  At least one of the demands was, quoting Jeff Dean's email, "revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback."

by jariel 6y ago

apsec112 6y ago

Do you know what the demands were? I don't think anyone has published them yet.

jonathankoren 6y ago

Do we even know what her demands were? I haven’t seen them posted anywhere. That said, it’s not behooven on either party to be transparent — to the public, or even other employees — because that’s just lawsuit bait. All we know is that she gave a hardball ultimatum, and Google accepted option 2. I don’t know enough about what’s going on, but if you say “Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show you the door immediately. That’s how at-will employment works.

jariel 6y ago
It doesn't matter really what they were other than we know she offered to resign if they were not met. "“Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show you the door immediately. That’s how at-will employment works." That's pretty much it. She must be smart enough to know better and possibly she was looking for an exit of some kind.
visarga 6y ago
Some third hand hearsay mention: > In the letter she criticised the use of pre trained language models in Google's products (e.g., BERT is now used for most searches, machine translation, etc.). Apparently, the two conditions she mentioned concern how Google goes forward in deploying these models despite the warning of (their own) AI ethics researchers about biases that are manifested in these models.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  That seems like its not only reasonable, but what her job was. Now if she said, "Do this or I quit" then that is on her. But if she criticized them harshly then that seems completely appropriate.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "That seems like its not only reasonable" Is it though? There is bias in everything. There is bias in Googles original search - it crawled content. That content will be biased. Google search has been biased since the start. It has nothing to do with AI. Biased is also contextual: what does it mean for all of us non-Americans to see tons of American content in everything - the 'American bias' is overwhelmingly the strongest bias, where are the concerns about that? And how does bias imply a 'lack of ethics'? The entire consideration is ridiculous: 1) AI is not special and odes not deserve it's own ethical oversight. Every social tech has issues and it all needs to be thought about. 2) Someone with no real training in the issue may very well merely be injecting their own politics into the situation, and possibly overstating issuses. 3) There's nothing objective about morality or ethnics, so it's really hard to even find such at thing as 'objective'. What the company needs is a clean, comprehensive framework for the issue, and probably some independent oversight that can given them private assessments of where there are red flags. Not individuals who want to make a name for themselves on the issue publicly, and who might be part of some kind of ideological movement.
    - kenjackson 6y ago
      There is bias in everything -- that is why you need ethics. You need to determine which biases are problematic and which aren't. If Google search favored Chinese government results in the US you'd probably say, "that seems biased in a bad way". Your disagreement seems less to do with that and more to do that you disagree with where her ethics rest. I think the reason why she pushes for marginalized groups is that those are the groups that are less likely to be able to stand for themselves and thus become the victims of the bias. A bias against corporate or powerful interests will likely be rectified relatively quickly.
eyevpoison 6y ago
https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Not sure how genuine this email is, but its all we have
PeterisP 6y ago
At least one of the demands was, quoting Jeff Dean's email, "revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback."