47 ms·

AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google

• GVIrish 6y ago
  This isn't the email that she sent with conditions she wanted met. Apparently she said she would resign if those conditions were not met, and the response to that email is that she was fired.
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    Purely speculating, but if I were her, those demands would boil down to "If you go f* yourself, I'll quit" Maybe she's more mature than me, but they're probably not going to end up being super relevant.
    • unknownkadath 6y ago
      Yeah, I immediately started humming along with Johnny Paycheck. Imagine being a senior researcher at the peak of your career, working for 6 months to a year on a paper, submitting it to a top tier conference, getting accepted, then getting the pointy haired boss do-what-I-said-peasant treatment. Big nope.
  • drenvuk 6y ago
    Where is the email with the conditions? It sounds like she gave a stupid ultimatum but until it's public it's hard to know.
• black_puppydog 6y ago
  I think this is actually the better link to be discussing, rather than the twitter threads shared before. The most relevant parts (in terms of back story) should be this: > A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it has been decided” that you need to retract this paper by next week, Nov. 27, the week when almost everyone would be out (and a date which has nothing to do with the conference process). You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognized by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organizations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company. > Then, you ask for more information. What specific feedback exists? Who is it coming from? Why now? Why not before? Can you go back and forth with anyone? Can you understand what exactly is problematic and what can be changed? > And you are told after a while, that your manager can read you a privileged and confidential document and you’re not supposed to even know who contributed to this document, who wrote this feedback, what process was followed or anything. You write a detailed document discussing whatever pieces of feedback you can find, asking for questions and clarifications, and it is completely ignored. And you’re met with, once again, an order to retract the paper with no engagement whatsoever.
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    I really want to read that paper. Can't wait til it's published. Presuming it'll be at FAccT*...
    • black_puppydog 6y ago
      Underrated post. Would be interesting indeed.
      • curiousllama 6y ago
        Pure speculation, but it's gotta be criticizing Google, right? What else could they _possibly_ have been so concerned about that they were willing to fire the researcher over it?
        • black_puppydog 6y ago
          That would be the nail in the coffin of "we do AI ethics at Google." Gonna have to wait and see I guess.
          • ConceptJunkie 6y ago
            Google? Ethics?
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      And, when reading it, I want to remember the backstory - that (if we can believe her story) Google went to unreasonable lengths to try to block the paper. Maybe someone could post it here when it's published?
    • yaoxx151 6y ago
      It might not be FAccT. The deadline was a month ago but it seems she submitted the paper recently.
  • Bukhmanizer 6y ago
• Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I'm confused, where are the "Demand #1" and "Demand #2" that were referenced in the reply to her email?
  • apsec112 6y ago
    That was a separate email - there were two emails, this one was sent first to a large group and then a second one was sent later to her manager
  • gundmc 6y ago
    The email from Jeff Dean in the article describes one of them - to ubmask all of the anonymous feedback provided on her paper and list everyone who was consulted on the decision to prevent publication.
• tehjoker 6y ago
  Corporations and their managers care only about making money and maintaining good vibes to produce a positive business environment. Only unions engaging in strikes and outside pressure can force them to change materially. All these internal committees and such are just PR. By the way, that part about unions and strikes also applies to the joined at the hip government as well.
  • nickff 6y ago
    Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > Unions have historically been some of the most racist and discriminatory organizations in the USA. The USA has been pretty racist in discriminatory, and I think it's disingenuous to single out unions for that history. I mean, who instituted Jim Crow and profited from slavery? White voters, government officials, and private enterprise. Unions were definitely not leading that.
      • nickff 6y ago
        Private enterprise was usually castigated for not being racist enough. Economics was the 'dismal science' because it didn't support racism, segregation, and slavery.
        • ardy42 6y ago
          > Private enterprise was usually castigated for not being racist enough. Economics was the 'dismal science' because it didn't support racism, segregation, and slavery. I had slavery in mind with the private enterprise comment. But it's not like businesses are actually run by perfectly rational automatons according to textbook economics. They're run by owners and managers who can be just as racist as the surrounding community, and who can very well prioritize prejudice over a little more profit.
• fatnoah 6y ago
  > And you are told after a while, that your manager can read you a privileged and confidential document and you’re not supposed to even know who contributed to this document, who wrote this feedback, what process was followed or anything Interesting. Having been on the receiving end of a (later proven to be bogus) HR complaint, this is exactly how it was handled. I was forced to respond to allegations where neither the allegations nor source were ever shared with me.
  • jeffbee 6y ago
    That's how it is supposed to work. If you complain to HR about your manager how can they reveal your identity when your manager controls your performance review and compensation?
    • tomp 6y ago
      > That's how it is supposed to work. Are you sure? Even primary school bullying is better, at least you can see the abuser.
      • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        Except she is the abuser.
        • tomp 6y ago
          She is accused of being an abuser. I think we've seen enough fake accusations of various kinds of abuse (i.e. crimes without proof, one person's word vs another's) in the past few years to know better.
          • dash2 6y ago
            Has anyone (except grandparent) accused her of being an abuser? I don't think that is what Google claimed.
          • UncleOxidant 6y ago
• jatsign 6y ago
  I wonder what the paper was about? Maybe she'll publish it anyway, or at least make it public?
• suyash 6y ago
  As per her Tweet Jeff Dean at Google is who decided to fire her https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952?s=20 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952?s...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • 3ball 6y ago
    sounds like a racist and toxic manager
    • johncena33 6y ago
      Dang, can we please adddress this Twitter-style outrage and attacking people without any substance here?
  • sixo 6y ago
    Clarified later in the thread: > This is the exact email I received from Megan who reports to Jeff > Who I can't imagine would do this without consulting and clearing with him of course
  • room500 6y ago
    Later in the tweet: "This is the exact email I received from Megan who reports to Jeff. Who I can't imagine would do this without consulting and clearing with him of course." I am sure Jeff Dean was made aware of the situation given the PR impact. But it is a stretch to say that Jeff Dean personally decided to fire her against her manager's wishes. Allegations like that need evidence.
  • nilkn 6y ago
    Speaking as someone who is a senior manager/director, my experience is dismissals of high-profile employees usually have a ton of complexity under the hood, and whatever information is publicly available is often the tip of the iceberg. Out of respect for the folks involved, the full details of the lead-up to the dismissal are almost never released even internally in the company. This information asymmetry makes it relatively easy for a sufficiently vocal dismissed party to control the public narrative even if their internal behavior at the company was extraordinarily problematic. These dismissal decisions are not made lightly and I would wager there was a long history of events leading up to this. You usually only see the straw that broke the camel's back.
• chunkyks 6y ago
  Being fired for this sort of thing sucks. This also sounds like an opportunity for an awesome person to spread their wings now they're out from under what sounds like a pretty oppressive system
  • aparsons 6y ago
    She claims to be a leading researcher in the field, but has she written any significant papers or research of note? Her biggest accomplishment seems to be driving Yann LeCunn off Twitter with angry accusations. She tried to continue her power trip at a workplace but her boss called her bluff. This is a great firing for Google. She won’t be missed.
    • contemporary343 6y ago
      Uh what? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Timnit+gebru https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Timnit+gebru The first paper listed there has over 1000 citations in 2 years. That’s influence and impact. Just because you don’t know of her work doesn’t mean that her work has not had an impact and that she’s not well known in her research community. She definitely is.
      • aparsons 6y ago
        I’ve read the papers. The ones where she is a (1,2,3)ary author are all glorified rants - well worded, but offering no actionable feedback or new methods.
    • uoaei 6y ago
      Your comment betrays your inherent bias, and frankly, it is not a good look. Everything you've said here is not only falsifiable, but straight up false. It appears you didn't even try to challenge your own beliefs before spraying them out into the public sphere. You aren't representing yourself in a decent light.
      • aparsons 6y ago
• barrkel 6y ago
  If I understand the document correctly, she wants HR to be biased against hiring "privileged" people (I think that means white, possibly male too, not sure) and wants to get politicians to force the company to report to create pressure for the same.
  • riku_iki 6y ago
    Is considering gender and race as a factor during hiring process illegal, and thus those "dei okrs" to hire more women too?..
    • anonvenger 6y ago
      a. Yes, but you can post 'women and minorities encouraged' job ads. b. No. People invested in identity politics are, by their own admission, interested in outcomes. In this world view, the legal system is a tool for achieving the desired outcomes. The same set of rules can be illegal if it rejects certain identities in a context, and at the same time legal if it promotes those identities in a different context. 'Heads I win, tails you lose', but dead serious. A thread discussing the pervasive 'women and minorities encouraged' mindset is in western academia: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95011/is-it-considered-normal-to-publish-job-offers-inviting-candidates-to-apply-based https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95011/is-it-con...
  • mlindner 6y ago
    Yeah in this case it looks like Google made the 100% right choice. Engaging in racism and sexism should get you fired, no matter who's doing it.
  • whymauri 6y ago
    I interpreted privilege from an HR perspective, i.e.: the privilege to dole out these mysterious HR/PR meetings.
  • ipnon 6y ago
    Which is literally illegal under US laws like the Civil Rights Act!
• bitshift010 6y ago
  Chief AI Scientist at Facebook, Yann Lecun, quit Twitter after a back and forth with this particular AI researcher - https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter... >I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google (which is when they backed off--before that Google lawyers were prepared to throw us under the bus and our leaders were following as instructed) and the next day I get some random “impact award.” Pure gaslighting. I think if you threaten to sue your employer, the employer isn't too much at fault and just covering their own neck when you later threaten to resign and they take you up on that offer.
  • axaxs 6y ago
    Yeah, that Lecun argument was a really bad first impression of her from me. I guess she found out life isn't Twitter and you can't just go around telling everyone they are bad and wrong without consequences.
    • KentLane 6y ago
      She will land on her feet. There is a huge demand for ideologues willing to lobotomize ML. “Let’s generate fake data with GANs to prevent our AI from discovering politically uncomfortable regularities!” It’s ugly work but someone has to do it, right?
      • whymauri 6y ago
        This is a rude dismissal of an entire field within machine learning and statistics (ethics, bias, and robustness).
        • thu2111 6y ago
          Rude, maybe but not very. Dismissal, yes. The belief that AI should learn reality as it exists and not some ideologically purified version of it is a completely rational one, and dismissing the "work" of those so-called "ethicists" is no more problematic than dismissing the "work" of the Chinese censors who purify the Chinese internet. Indeed being dismissive of that work is to be praised, as it shouldn't exist at all.
• stefan_ 6y ago
  This seems like such a self-defeating move? You are already paying "Ethics in AI" researchers purely to whitewash your always expanding inscrutable data gathering and mining efforts, what do you care what they write on some internal listserv. It's all just regulatory cover. Pretend you are the leading force on researching this, never implement any of it.
• room500 6y ago
  I feel the title is a little misleading. "withering email" == "anger-fueled message sent by a manager to a large group that asks readers to ignore company policy and start arguments with other leaders" I don't see where "ethical AI researcher" comes into play here. Instead, I see a leader at a company unprofessionally sending messages to a large listserv and is later fired. What am I missing?
  • idlewords 6y ago
    You're missing that she wasn't fired.
  • cool_dude85 6y ago
    What's misleading about the title? You have your own way of characterizing the email, and so does the publication. Them not agreeing with you isn't the same as misleading you.
    • robertlagrant 6y ago
      Disagreement about characterisation matters if one characterisation is just not true.
      • cool_dude85 6y ago
        Sure, only that doesn't seem like the case here. Are you really gonna argue that the email is in a factual, true-or-false sense, not "withering"?
    • room500 6y ago
      I agree that there is a fine line here. In general, if I hear "withering e-mail" without context, I imagine an e-mail sent between two parties (or at most, a handful) where one party is cutting down the other directly. When I hear that an employee was fired for a "withering e-mail", I immediately think of retaliation. In this case, "e-mail" is almost inconsequential. This "e-mail" was a broadcast to hundreds of people who were not in any way involved with the subject matter. It was "withering" in the sense that it cut someone down, but the person/company it cut down wasn't even in the TO field. Words matter. I now notice that the post title is changed to the much more neutral "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google".
• parliament32 6y ago
  I don't think "fired" is the right choice of words -- she gave an ultimatum offering to resign, and they accepted her resignation. Is accepting a resignation the same as firing someone? > Thanks for making your conditions clear. We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting. We respect your decision to leave Google as a result, and we are accepting your resignation. https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364734418726912 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364734418726912
  • raldi 6y ago
    Have “#1 and #2” been published? I don’t see them at the link above or anywhere else.
    • Kiro 6y ago
      One of them is in the updated article with Jeff Dean's response: > Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including 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.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jseliger 6y ago
    I recently re-read Noah Smith's essay "Leaders Who Act Like Outsiders Invite Trouble" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/leaders-who-act-like-outsiders-invite-trouble https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/leader.... It's not directly on point, but one concept is: "This extraordinary trend of rank-and-file members challenging the leaders of their organizations goes beyond simple populism. There may be no word for this trend in the English language. But there is one in Japanese: gekokujo." And later, "The real danger of gekokujo, however, comes from the establishment’s response to the threat. Eventually, party bosses, executives and other powerful figures may get tired of being pushed around." Institutions are being pushed by the Twitter mob, and by the Twitter mob mentality, even when the person is formally within the institution. And I think we're learning, or going to have to re-learn, things like "Why did companies traditionally encourage people to leave politics and religion at the door?" and "What's the acceptable level of discourse within the institution, before you're not a part of it any more?" Colleges are inculcating an environment and culture that may not be good for working in large groups. One recent example of these challenges: https://quillette.com/2020/12/01/race-and-social-panic-at-haverford-a-case-study-in-educational-dysfunction https://quillette.com/2020/12/01/race-and-social-panic-at-ha....
• Tycho 6y ago
  Title here is misleading (probably deliberate). The email that got this person “fired” was one that allegedly contained an ultimatum and a threat to resign. The employer then called her bluff and accepted her resignation with immediate effect.
  • black_puppydog 6y ago
    Very hard to take that at face value. This is the email that management took as somehow being beyond what an employee at google can do. The title is quite correct IMHO.
    • mcguire 6y ago
      If you accuse unnamed co-workers of not only ignoring your expertise and of micro- and macro-aggressions, but also of dehumanizing you, yeah, someone is going to have an uncomfortable work environment.
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    Even if it were the case, responding to "retract this paper" with "No; I prefer to resign" is/should be par for the course for a researcher.
    • VHRanger 6y ago
      They submitted thee paper for internal review one day before their external deadline. They set themselves up for failure regardless of the paper's content.
      • mlyle 6y ago
        I suspect reality is somewhere between our two accounts, where one describes this as a purely deadline-related problem and the other describes months of effort to seek feedback via various channels and moving goalposts for what types of review were expected.
      • malcolmgreaves 6y ago
• colordrops 6y ago
  I'm very confused by all of this. I've read the tweets and this article and can't make heads or tails of what is going on. What am I missing?
  • d_theorist 6y ago
    It’s completely impossible to tell. Not really sure why it’s making the news.
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    Gebru wrote a research paper and circulated it for feedback. Google managers said "retract the paper because we say so." Gebru responded with "I'd rather resign (and also you suck)." Google "accepted" the resignation (i.e. fired her).
    • mcguire 6y ago
      "I said here are the conditions. If you can meet them great I’ll take my name off this paper, if not then I can work on a last date. Then she sent an email to my direct reports saying she has accepted my resignation. So that is google for you folks. You saw it happen right here." And I've lost the link to the tweet.
    • robertlagrant 6y ago
      That's not it.
    • colordrops 6y ago
      I was able to discern this, but it doesn't explain why they wanted her to retract the paper. The contents of the paper and why they want her to retract it are key to the story, otherwise it's he-said-she-said.
    • mda 6y ago
      Except that this is not exactly what happened, read the comments at the top.
• schoolornot 6y ago
  This was a vent: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-the-disaster/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-t... Then you try to engage in a conversation about how this is not acceptable and people start doing the opposite of any sort of self reflection—trying to find scapegoats to blame. The message was clear, stop! The paper rubbed someone the wrong way. Go rewrite it on your own without any references to Google and publish it. I've been in tech for a long time. In nearly every org turnover was minimal on the engineering side of the house versus sales who dropped like flies every quarter. The only people who were ever laid off were those who routinely rocked the boat. Getting some sense of that here.
• matthewdgreen 6y ago
  This is a very frustrating email, only because there seems to be a very significant issue at the heart of it — a research paper that is allegedly being suppressed by Google management for some reason -- and this email largely seems to omit that in favor of unrelated disagreements with management and “process”. It’s like trying to find an astronomical body that only shows up through its gravitational impact on other bodies: a lot of chaff, with something very heavy and unseen in the center.
• apsec112 6y ago
  I used the original title when I submitted this article, but anybody please feel free to suggest a better one if a moderator is watching this
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sandworm101 6y ago
  Wow. Outside of the issues discussed, this email was not what I would expect from senior manager. The language is all over the place. It is rambling. It is not unintelligible, but is far from an easy read. It seems like something dictated into a machine rather than something composed on a keyboard. If you are not confident in your use of language but still want to go out in a blaze of glory, make sure someone QCs your final speech.
  • gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
    I did not get that impression. But I do recognize the dense style common on the humanities academic field. It can throw some people off at first.
    • sandworm101 6y ago
      One paragraph has four parentheticals. I wonder which humanities background, other than Law, finds that acceptable.
      • gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
        Foucault nests parenthetical with mdashs (or greek-comma, as some people call them in latin languages), so...
        • beervirus 6y ago
          There are a lot of things to love about Foucault's writing. It's not exactly a model of clarity and concision though.
      • beervirus 6y ago
        I'm a lawyer, and I would never write in such an intentionally obtuse style.
        • gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
• greatjack613 6y ago
  Unrelated, but hiring by race or gender is inherently racist. We should hire by skill alone whether the person is a Lesbian Black Female, or a White Male
  • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    Some people have redefined racism to mean that it's impossible to be racist to the majority. I.e. white people. Another argument is that it's necessary to be discriminatory in favour of minorities to level the playing field. I share your opinion, but not everyone does.
  • 3ball 6y ago
    yes, we should hire based on merit and not color of skin or gender. hate when companies fill in seat just coz there has to be a women etc
  • mlindner 6y ago
    This person was advocating for exactly that, so it's no wonder they were fired.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I would have just down-voted this, but I hate it when people do that to me rather than actually respond. In this case, I'm not going to respond in much detail, other than to note that there are 30+ years of writings about affirmative action which get deeply into this issue. Your summary of it is misleading and incomplete.
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    Having a diverse workforce is very valuable. The paradigm shifts that can come from voices of different backgrounds are invaluable. Can those growing up under racism be considered a skill? seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but it can definitely benefit the employer.
  • RandallBrown 6y ago
    While I do agree with you that technically this is correct, the issue has quite a bit of nuance. It's a hell of a lot easier for a white male to pick up those skills because of culture and society than it is for most other groups of people. I think there's a lot that can be done to help minority groups succeed and I'm a little less concerned about what's "fair" to white males like me.
• xupybd 6y ago
  She seems very passionate about makeing the world a better place. The only downside to this sort of drive is that it doesn't always align with everyone else's vision of a better world. I don't think she and Google were on the same page and perhaps both parties will be much happier going their separate ways.
  • RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > She seems very passionate about makeing the world a better place. Some of the worst people in history who committed the worst atrocities were very passionate about making the world a better place, at least as they defined “better”.
    • unknownkadath 6y ago
      I mean, so were pretty much all of the best people in history. That's not a great filter for finding the next hitler, is it?
      • RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
        But I would guess that if you added up all the contributions of the people most passionate for making the world a better place, the bad far outweighs the good.
        • unknownkadath 6y ago
          That would be a bold supposition, I think.
    • xupybd 6y ago
      Agreed, I'm simply stating that she is clearly very motivated to propagate her world view and that it doesn't align with her employer. I am making no comment on the validity or morality of either her position or Googles position.
• boccko 6y ago
  My stomach lifted when I was reading this. You can't prescribe group percentages at any workplace, but you can try to externalize your inadequacies.
  • aparsons 6y ago
    Welcome to equal outcome hiring. This disease has plagued SV for the past 5 years.
• no-dr-onboard 6y ago
  > You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognized by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organizations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company...I understand that the only things that mean anything at Google are levels, I’ve seen how my expertise has been completely dismissed. But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation. This conclusion seems so non sequitur to the argument. There is literally nothing in the previous argument to suggest that any of this was motivated by anything other than a disagreement with the report. The argument presented by the researcher is conjecture. Coupled with the fact that she threatened to sue her employer and they kept her for a year? Any reasonable employer would see that her employment is a liability and dismiss her prior to a year. In the world of business, there is no jewel too precious to discard.
• mlindner 6y ago
  > I had stopped writing here as you may know, after all the micro and macro aggressions and harassments I received after posting my stories here (and then of course it started being moderated). That's all I need to know about why she was fired. I'm glad Google despite all the stuff they've done before knows when someone has gone off the SJW deep end.
• whymauri 6y ago
  >But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation. Yikes.
• idlewords 6y ago
  This title is not accurate; she told Google she would resign unless certain conditions were met, and her offer was accepted with immediate effect.
  • pseudalopex 6y ago
    She didn't offer to resign immediately.
• high_derivative 6y ago
  These things seem to play out like clockwork. Progressive companies hire social justice warriors into vague ethics or policy roles, let them hire their activist friends, shower them with fast track careers and promotions. It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to any of these companies. They nevertheless become increasingly emboldened and misinterpret their situation. After all, no-one dares criticise them, they are showered with feel-good publicity. The only thing they need to do is keep their end of the deal. Until they overstep, get fired, and cause drama by claiming everything that happened to them was due to discrimination, and not because they are toxic and disruptive. I think this is all a good thing because it may alert some executives to the price for hiring activists into research roles. Edit: Should add that I am purely talking about the power dynamics here, not research impact or the question of whether AI policy is an interesting subject. It is, I am just observing that it has not driven particular value to companies when compared to the negative publicity these dramas cause.
  • swirepe 6y ago
    >It's good optics, the progressives like it because it makes them feel better about working at big techs. >Said hires have thus far, as far as I can tell, not produced anything of substantial value to any of these companies. These two statements are at odds with each other.
  • idlewords 6y ago
    No one got fired here. Offering to resign was a huge mistake.
    • aylmao 6y ago
      > No one got fired here. I mean, from the tweets what I gather is she wasn't planning on leaving just yet. Saying "hey, you want to resign by [X] but we'd rather you be gone so let us inform you've just been resigned as of now" is essentially firing [1]. > Offering to resign was a huge mistake. I think this will be good for her in the long term. I'm sure she'll find another research position, and the alternative was betraying her convictions or just the huge burden of constantly being worn down by Google. [1]: https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392
• bigdict 6y ago
  In what way is a celebrated and highly promoted Stanford, Apple, and later Google alum a marginalized voice?
• tinyhouse 6y ago
  Good for Google. I don't know anything about her, but her debate with Lecun on Twitter was enough for me to know she is toxic. I don't care how good of a researcher she is. The fact they fired her given the current climate shows they actually have balls. I had no idea... I read her email. You know what's crazy about it? she is talking about Google silencing marginalized voices. She keeps referring to herself as a marginalized voice in the research community! She has a PhD from Stanford, working at one the best places in the world for AI researchers, and she gets more attention than almost any other researcher I know of (she earned it of course). Wake up woman. You're a privileged researcher! If I were making the comments she made to Lecun, no one would even bother to listen, yet alone Lecun actually respond and eventually leave twitter because of that. Give me a break. There's not even one sentence in her email about what is actually the content of her paper that is so controversial. It's just a rant about nothing. Welcome to the real world, companies have policies and once you join them you lose your freedom to do whatever the heck you want. You can go back to academia but no one would pay you what you've been making at Google Research.
  • Crash0v3rid3 6y ago
    Can you point me to that Twitter thread?
    • buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      I'm not 100% sure, but perhaps this one? https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1274809417653866496?s=20 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1274809417653866496?s...
    • mellosouls 6y ago
      Overview here, pasted from another commenter elsewhere in this rabbit hole. https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• draw_down 6y ago
  I feel like if you say you're going to quit unless some conditions are met, you're explicitly accepting the possibility of going out the door. That is, you can't employ this only rhetorically, it doesn't work that way. I don't know what the conditions were, and in a lot of ways there is important information being tactically withheld here, so it's hard to say for certain. But generally, unless you yourself are really really important to the company, you should prepare for it not to go your way. And it's going to be rare in a huge place like Google, with tons of people they could put in your place, for a person to be that important. Maybe this person is, I'm unfamiliar. But as far as I can see this doesn't seem outrageous on Google's part.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• christmm 6y ago
  It is surprising she was not fired long ago. I suppose Timnit was usually rewarded for such an attitude, chock full of victim based language. "after all the micro and macro aggressions and harassments I received" "does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized?" "Silencing marginalized voices like this is the opposite of the NAUWU principles which we discussed" "the next day I get some random “impact award.” Pure gaslighting" "Writing more documents and saying things over and over again will tire you out but no one will listen."
  • ur-whale 6y ago
    Your forgot "gaslighting", towards the end.
  • ciarannolan 6y ago
    People with this ultimate victim attitude are absolutely toxic to employ and work with. I go out of my way to screen them out of hiring in technical roles.
  • beervirus 6y ago
    For all its faults, Google bends over backwards (and sometimes forwards) to advance minorities' interests. It's just not plausible that they're doing the opposite in this one case.
• aylmao 6y ago
  > AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google I think this title could be a little more descriptive. The conversation is about DEI, the fact she pointed out more accountability is necessary, the abruptness of it all, etc. I didn't know who Timnit Gebru was and almost didn't click on it because this sounded like some random researcher and I'm sure Google fires people all the time. Once I was reading it I realized this is quite interesting after all.
• mam2 6y ago
  Can anyone from google give us the infamous mail she sent to brain ?
  • gundmc 6y ago
    It's in the article.
• lowercase1 6y ago
  Too many comments focused on whether Google was justified in firing her/the appropriateness of the email and not enough on the impact/veracity allegations. Much more interesting questions that might get revealed a bit: Does Google treat minorities appropriately? Is Google covering up ai ethics research? Does Google care about AI ethics/bias?
  • mcguire 6y ago
    It's difficult to tell, since no one is presenting any kind of unbiased evidence. From what I've seen, I agree with Gebru about AI research, but this letter has too many problems itself.
  • uoaei 6y ago
    I know folks in the AI ethics team. The only reason that department exists is because it was regulated into existence. So, no, Google does not particularly care about AI ethics. They care about not getting harangued by the US government.
  • tanilama 6y ago
    > Does Google care about AI ethics/bias? Google cares about AI ethnics because talking about it gives those people, especially higher ups, an imagined sense of significance and adrenaline rush of being a savior. But in reality, AI ethnics is just a gloried showroom of diversity/inclusiveness. It is not a product, it doesn't generate revenue, in corporate world, nobody cares.
• bww 6y ago
  From her email: > So if you would like to change things, I suggest focusing on leadership accountability and thinking through what types of pressures can also be applied from the outside. For instance, I believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is the entity that started forcing tech companies to report their diversity numbers. This probably shouldn't need pointing out, but appealing to your colleagues to put pressure on your own management via the U.S. Congress seems pretty obviously like a good way to get yourself fired. If you're going to try to exert political pressure from the outside, you're going to wind up on the outside. I'm no big fan of Google's management, but I find it hard to fault them for this one.
  • thundergolfer 6y ago
    In plenty of countries it would be illegal to fire someone for doing that. It’s clear that the results of Timnit’s actions were hardly unpredictable given the state of USA corporate<>labour relations, but one could still fault management.
    • beervirus 6y ago
      They didn't fire her. She said that unless they met certain conditions, she was quitting. They didn't meet the conditions and accepted her resignation.
• anonvenger 6y ago
  The character revealing bit is this: > Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback” on a paper through a privileged and confidential document to HR? Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized? She was told by her bosses boss to retract a paper. Whatever is it that paper, and whatever the reasons or the delivery method are, there is nothing somebody in her position can do about it, short of resign and, assuming the paper does not depend on proprietary information, independently publish. She instead decides to complain on an internal forum and call it 'constant dehumanization'. That is a serious accusation that she needs to back up, not just throw it around unsubstantiated. This is the fundamental victim mindset of the social media woke: any setback is chalked up to identity based oppression. Reality check: everybody has setbacks, most of them unfair, or at least easily perceived as unfair, and definitely frustrating. Most have the decency to deal with it, pick up and go on without making a disgraceful spectacle by venting on social media. As it happens, I am aware of a similar situation between two people I highly respect at Google, where a VP told a paper author to abstain from publishing, in that case presumably to avoid spilling 'special sauce' information to the public. You never heard of it, and that's a good thing. Something all of us need to ponder as we are ushered in the brave new social media era. Old school venting is ephemeral and limited to a small group of trusted confidents. Social media venting is permanent, and has the possibility to go viral. Proceed with caution.
  • korse 6y ago
    Why is this post flagged? I too was expecting more than 'social media venting' and am surprised that this article made it this far.
    • Andraia 6y ago
      On HN, a downvote is an attempt to make a conflicting opinion disappear, and flagging is a super-downvote.
    • dang 6y ago
      Ideological battle. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• mring33621 6y ago
  Well, I'd definitely like to see Ms. Gebru's paper now! And Hello, Streisand effect!
• lambda_obrien 6y ago
  One thing I learn each day on HN is that software practitioners need more ethics lessons, it's sad that it's so hard for some folks to open their mind enough to understand why this isn't just some "rabble rouser" causing drama. Ethics in software, especially AI, are severely lacking in the present day.
  • unknownkadath 6y ago
    Recognizing that all people are, well, people would be a good first step on the road to ensuring that we dont all not become paperclips, right?
    • lambda_obrien 6y ago
      for sure yes; treating people like people not robots or cattle or employees, just other humans who have needs, wants, and emotions.
• Copenjin 6y ago
  I wonder why these privileged people (I don't have her huge salary, I don't live in the us or work for a FAANG) keeps forgetting that after all they are just _employees_.
  • uoaei 6y ago
    That's one of the worse takes possible about this situation. Her role is specifically created to hold her employer to account when they are using bad practices. Her opposition to particular policies enacted in the company is literally part of her job description.
    • Copenjin 6y ago
      I understand what you are saying, but I doubt they hired her to be some kind of controller with unlimited enforcing power (as she says: "I understand that the only things that mean anything at Google are levels"). Only highlighting issues without power to enforce anything is not enough to have any tangible results? That's for sure. But she was not the CEO.
      • uoaei 6y ago
        This is a very dangerous stance to take. You are advocating for a purely authoritarian mode of management, applied universally without concern for context.
        • Copenjin 6y ago
          Not saying that it's desirable or that's not horrible, but isn't that the default mode? Or at least that's the world I've lived in, if you are an employee, in the end your opinions don't actually count, you are just a cog. Your position in the hierarchy is what matter. And that's why at some point you need labor unions (not saying high paid tech workers needs them) and at some other point you start considering stop being an employee.
          • 6y ago
• seek3r 6y ago
  Although the language she used in the email may not be what’s expected by a manager, I choose to be sympathetic. Obviously, this is a person which is very passionate about her research. She’s also a Black woman; given US history, there’s a probability that she was discriminated against during her life — maybe, multiple times. If not her, maybe some of her relatives were. Sure, this is hypothetical and does not excuse her attitude — but try to put yourself in her shoes. It’s easy for us to reason about it, and think about how we would have dealt with it differently. Maybe she was in a bad place, or felt that she was being discriminated against. She’s also a human being like me and you so — yes — maybe it’s not about racism and discrimination. Maybe she’s just entitled. Either way, Google’s HR should’ve done better. It’s easy to let anger or exasperation get the hang of you. They should’ve scheduled a call to discuss everything calmly.
• ipnon 6y ago
  I found this particularly telling: >But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation. Decisions in megacorporations are made in one direction, from the top on down. If this is her main point of contention, I sympathize but that's what you get for joining one of the largest corporations in the world. It seems both parties will be better off without each other. I hope her research won't suffer for it.
  • zemo 6y ago
    > I hope her research won't suffer for it. of course it will. The big tech companies have created networks of users and user data that is beyond anything that can be replicated in an academic or laboratory setting. By saying that it's fine for corporations to have draconian oversight over research about the systems they build, what you are saying is that these systems cannot be researched for any purposes other than to make them more profitable. That is an abdication of responsibility.
    • ipnon 6y ago
      edit: I'd also like to point out the obvious: Google was censoring her publications. How can you suggest that remaining in that environment is going to be conducive to her publishing high quality research? I disagree because I don't think Big N has exclusive access to the data necessary for cutting edge research. You don't need petabytes of data to train cutting edge neural networks. It also seems she published the paper she is best known for before joining Google, suggesting academics are not submitting subpar research compared to Big N.
  • kaymanb 6y ago
    If her goal was to perform research that would positively impact AI that runs in production, then taking a position at Google doesn't seem like the worst idea. Especially with since their stated principles [1] seem to fit that agenda. Unfortunately enacting change "from within" isn't always easy. It's easy to forget that Google AI still sits underneath the megacorp. [1] https://ai.google/principles/ https://ai.google/principles/
• papreclip 6y ago
  Hopefully google will come to their senses at some point and stop creating roles within the company where the job description is to tie the company's shoelaces together
• dogisan 6y ago
  If this is about authorship an HR complaint would be the adequate process to retract the paper.
• dogisan 6y ago
  Sounds like an authorship dispute (e.g., against her by one of her junior RAs). In that case an HR complaint would be the correct process to retract the paper. Once it is retracted HR would presumably try to mediate between the disputed authors.
• ipsocannibal 6y ago
  Read this and it made me recall: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richa...
• mola 6y ago
  So odd, why does google employ these researchers? Isn't it obvious it's just a vacuous PR stunt? What self respecting researcher gives his name to a corporate entity and expects anything but being used to woke-wash the company? This is a silly communion that puts both sides to shame. Late stage capitalism is such a circus.
• thex10 6y ago
  I think this link does a nice job of contextualizing at least part of the situation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/google-s-co-head-of-ethical-ai-says-she-was-fired-over-email https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/google-s-... I’ve been at companies where I’m faced with an approval process before publishing research to the outside world. It can be quite stressful, especially in the face of holidays and impending deadlines. However I guarantee that if anyone had a problem with the work, they would take the time to tell me why. And it would happen without untitled meetings or unrelated email drama. They might even work with me to fix the problem because they’re my coworkers and that’s what it means to work together in a normal workplace where people respect each other as colleagues. Sadly every piece of publicity related to Google and its workers makes me want to work there less and less...
  • thex10 6y ago
    Another source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researcher-timnit-gebru.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researc...
• korse 6y ago
  This article actually brings to mind an old question of mine regarding short range infra-red rangefinders. Are these devices discriminatory because they respond poorly to less reflective objects? If white men were not so prevalent in the development of these devices, would we see a greater emphasis on inexpensive sensing solutions that measure return from objects based on a human common denominator like density rather than the reflection of nearly-visible light?
• hiddencost 6y ago
  dang, this title is straight up a lie. She did not resign, and was fired.
• contemporary343 6y ago
  It looks like the paper was critical of large language models: https://www.fastcompany.com/90582375/timnit-gebru-google-firing https://www.fastcompany.com/90582375/timnit-gebru-google-fir... The original article has been updated with Jeff Dean's response, while a member of Gebru's team (who still works at Google Brain) states that Dean's email is misleading and inaccurate: https://twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334579764573691904 https://twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334579764573691904 As I understand it: The paper had already been submitted to a conference, and the "cross functional team" Dean speaks of basically reviewed it like peer reviewers and said you have to retract it. It sounds like Gebru and her co-authors were not given an opportunity to respond to the criticisms to stave off retraction. If you've experienced peer review, you know that such reviews are by no means a definitive analysis of a paper, and one usually gets the opportunity to respond. Here, it sounds like anonymous internal peer review was used as a hammer to retract it. Dean's descriptions of the criticisms sounds rather pedestrian to me, as a researcher, and I'm sure Gebru and her co-authors would push back on these characterizations. Honestly, it sounds like the paper was attacking some sacred cows internally. And Gebru's work probably threatened other researchers on other teams. Not unlike traditional peer review mind you, but at least one can usually post in on arXiv without worrying about this.
  • iandanforth 6y ago
    This. Failure to cite relevant research is a reason to reject a paper from a conference but that's not the job of an internal review. Research independence is fundamental and why professors are given tenure. Sure companies are companies and don't play by those rules, but you can't claim to be making a fair academic criticism if you're not adhering to academic norms. If the paper was bad it should have been rejected by the conference to which it was submitted. If the paper was critical of things Google does and it didn't like that, that's pure suppression. And, as you say, academic norms provide a period of rebuttal, it's unclear how much was allowed here. Secondly there is value of having anonymous review in an academic setting, however it sounds like they tried to enforce that anonymous review for the company, which again doesn't serve the same purpose. People should be told exactly why decisions are being made so they can correct their mistakes in the future. If you aren't willing to invite someone into a decision making process, when a large portion of their research is in biases in institutional decision making, then you have got to know you're in for a bad time.
• YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  >> A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. Plain English translation: she didn't present the results of her research in a light that favours the company's goals. Once in a while someone posts an article on HN about academia and how doing a PhD is badly paid with few opportunities for stable employment. Then the comments will wonder why people still bother with academia. Well, this is why. Because, as a rule, if you are a researcher in academia you won't be asked to retract your research because it makes someone look bad.
  • ggreer 6y ago
    > Well, this is why. Because, as a rule, if you are a researcher in academia you won't be asked to retract your research because it makes someone look bad. If your results go against current dogma, or if they reveal an uncomfortable truth, your paper will be rejected for spurious reasons every time you submit it. A recent example from Glenn Geher[1]: > I have published more than 100 academic pieces in my career to date. I've pretty much been through it all. > From this context, I will say that the most difficult paper that my team (the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab) and I have ever tried to publish was a paper on the topic of political motivations that underlie academic values of academics. That's the pushback you get for researching political motivations in academia. It's much worse if your ideas directly connect to social policies. If your ideas are particularly heretical (or you engage in good faith with heretics), you'll have your life threatened by violent mobs. This has happened to Allison Stanger, Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, and many others. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202011/politics-in-academia-case-study https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean...
    • YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
      From the article you cited: >> Each rejection came with a new set of reasons. After some point, it started to seem to us that maybe academics just found this topic and our results too threatening. Maybe this paper simply was not politically correct. It looks like the only reason to believe the reasons for rejecting the paper were political is that it was rejected by many venues. Note that having different reviewers give different feedback is par for the course. Personally, I don't think this is serious. Having one's paper rejected, stings, but it happens to everyone and all the time. There's no reason to see hidden motives behind it. The paper not being very good is sufficient explanation. Not that it doesn't happen for papers to be rejected because they threaten a reviewer's work. But to claim that the entire academic establishment is threatened by a paper and that's why it was rejected? Sounds a bit far-fetched.
• faangeng 6y ago
  I find it funny how all these commenters have come out of the woodwork to question a highly accomplished and respected AI researcher's track record for their "tone" and the "value" of their research. Unsurprisingly, there's a fixation on railing against SJWs, activism, and political correctness. None of these comments offer any substance on the main issue in focus: the fact that Google may be actively suppressing the publication of valuable research for reasons other than its academic merit.
  • kybernetikos 6y ago
    I'm a bit unclear about how corporation research is conducted then. I would have naively assumed that when you undertake research as an employee, that research belongs to your employer and they have a right to decide if they want it made public with their name attached to it, or keep it secret for their own benefit. Of course there are all kinds of ethical questions that can arise in that situation, but is that not the normal case in corporate research?
  • calf 6y ago
    I find it pretty disturbing that tech has this right-wing streak and not only is it a lack of substance or focus, but an inability to consider the argument from her point of view, thus proving her point about prejudice.
• iandanforth 6y ago
  Title is contentious. The article's title says she was fired. The sequence of events was that she was said she would resign if her conditions were not met, Google did not meet those conditions and terminated her. Neither "fired" nor "resigns" seems correct. I feel that she was "forced out" or "let go" (ironically this euphemism is more accurate here). She threatened to leave and they kicked her out.
• defertoreptar 6y ago
  > This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google (which is when they backed off--before that Google lawyers were prepared to throw us under the bus and our leaders were following as instructed) and the next day I get some random “impact award.” Pure gaslighting. And she was under the impression that her company would value her so much that, not only they wouldn't take the first "clean" opportunity to let her go, but that they'd want her to stay so much that she could leverage it? That's just you not realizing how your company sees you as a litigious/PR disaster timebomb and are tiptoeing around you. The worst part is that there was a path for you to be professional and achieve your goals, but then I guess you don't get to bask in Twitter's righteous indignation that way.
  • malcolmgreaves 6y ago
    Don't ask questions, just fall in line like a good cog in the machine. You shouldn't question the overlords!
  • adamsea 6y ago
    > The worst part is that there was a path for you to be professional and achieve your goals, but then I guess you don't get to bask in Twitter's righteous indignation that way. IMHO we don’t really know if that part (achieving your goals) is true, or not true.
  • thebladerunner 6y ago
    To clarify, the first paragraph of defertoreotar@'s comment is a quote from Timnit Gebru's tweet where she admits to recently conspiring a legal battle against Google, while on Google's payroll. A wolf in sheep's clothing...
    • istjohn 6y ago
      I'm not sure why you seem to think that her willingness to assert her rights under the law should discredit her in any way.
• iron0013 6y ago
  Timnit Gebru is very clear that she didn’t resign. The actual headline at the link doesn’t say that she resigned. The moderator editorialization of headlines (and occasionally outright substitution of completely different urls than the ones that were submitted) on HN has gone way beyond disappointing, it’s outrageous. Shame on you dang.
• baggy_trough 6y ago
  Let's try to be honest about this. Any executive who receives this letter (and they will certainly be involved due to the liability concern) will immediately conclude that Gebru has to be gotten out as quickly as possible. The venom drips from the letter. It is clear that she is not a salvageable employee who could operate with the business interest of Google in mind. Sadly, she will undoubtedly come up with some trumped up reason to sue for discrimination and probably be bought off with a settlement.
• omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Does anyone have a link to the paper? Jeff Dean's email response mentions mitigations that were made to address the concerns, but didn't go into any detail. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues.
• malcolmgreaves 6y ago
  A woman of color that spoke truth to power. And surprise -- the old white guy running the show didn't like it. Sad -- Jeff Dean's lost an incredible amount of respect and trustworthiness. Looks like he's sold out and is now a Google-guy (see reports of his email to Brain staffers in which he has multiple, easily refutable lies).
• dang 6y ago
  Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25289445
• sjs382 6y ago
  It's hard to make too much sense about what happened. Here's what I made of it, if anyone can point out any important mistakes/inaccuracies/details: 1. She and her co-authors submitted a paper for review 1 day before its (external, for publication?) due date. It's supposed to be submitted to Google 2 weeks prior, so they can review. 2. The authors submitted it externally before the review was returned. 3. Google decided that the paper "didn’t meet our bar for publication" and demanded a retraction. 4. Timnit Gebru demanded access to all of the internal feedback, along with the author of the feedback. If Google wouldn't provide this access, she said that she intended to resign and would set a final day. 5. Google declined her demands and took her ultimatum as a resignation. Rather than setting a final date, they made the separation effective immediately.
  • hpoe 6y ago
    I think one in important point is that she submitted the paper the day before the deadline when 2 weeks is usually required for review. It was approved then, but after the review process worked out she was asked to retract her paper.
    • sjs382 6y ago
      I think I covered that in #1 & #2, unless there's something subtle I missed.
      • davorak 6y ago
        I think the subtle part might be "It was approved then", I read that somewhere too and it was not clear whether it was approved by google despite it not following the normal 2 week process or if it was talking about some other form of approval.
        • tfehring 6y ago
          From Dean's email: >Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. Not sure what to make of that - maybe that Gebru submitted the paper and then immediately clicked the "approve" button herself?
• TheMagicHorsey 6y ago
  I remember Timnit from that Twitter thread a while back with LeCun on the subject of bias in a deep learning system. In that thread Timnit established that she was an "authority" and then instead of engaging on the merits in the conversation, simply said basically, "You have to submit to me because I'm the authority" and refused to offer any information of any substance ... as though she was some kind of wizard and what she knew was just way too complicated for us mortals to understand. Meanwhile, LeCun just very calmly engaged on the specific technical details about bias in Deeplearning systems. After that, Twitter just piled on LeCun and claimed he was being a "mansplainer" ... as though saying anything technical to a black woman is "mansplaining". As an engineer what would you seek to research if you wanted to reduce the bias in specific AI systems? You'd figure out how to minimize bias in the algorithms and in the data, and identify any other sources that could introduce bias, and figure out how to put controls on developers and data collectors to prevent bias ... right? Ok, now go look at what is actually discussed in AI bias papers. Sometimes I feel the emperor has no clothes and everyone just pretends like vacuous bullshit is something profound because if you criticize the papers you'll be fired or blacklisted in Silicon Valley.
• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  This is a really hard problem space to solve. I'm very sorry to see this drama happening and I have sympathy for both sides. I routinely run into the issue that if I try to understand why people did something that went badly/harmed people without looking to blame them per se, I get accused of being "an apologist." But in practice trying to understand why things happen is essential to finding a real solution. Merely asserting that X person's/group's needs matter and they are being harmed isn't really enough to find a viable path forward. Like I have seen people say that suburbia is "White supremacist design" because in practice it ended up being mostly Whites who got suburban housing when suburbia was born in the US. I have tried to make the distinction that suburbia was born in part because large swaths of greenfield development was quicker, easier and cheaper to create and that this choice wasn't, per se, racist. I am aware there was real racism happening and there were a lot of bylaws that intentionally excluded People of Color, but I'm sure those bylaws would have existed even if they had been building towers of condos in downtown areas instead. It wasn't specific to the architectural form that was built. I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate. I asked this person about a thing they did. I had been having paranoid fears that they did that thing in reaction to me and stuff I was working on and when they replied to my inquiry they had a wholly unrelated reason. I didn't tell them that I was having paranoid fantasies that maybe this was some kind of negative reaction to me. I framed it neutrally. Their reply was very reassuring to me. It was reassuring in part because I trust and respect this person. If you don't have that piece, having a long list of negative experiences makes it difficult to believe they aren't intentionally harming you and then lying about their real motives to cover it up and enable additional abuse. It is, perhaps, a mistake to leave this remark. Like Timnit Gebru, I'm pretty tired and frustrated with a lot of things and feeling rubbed raw and exhausted. But it seems to me it doesn't get better by throwing in the towel and giving up on saying anything just because the entire world is touchy after a nearly year-long global pandemic.
  • jpab 6y ago
    > I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate. What feels like a breakdown of trust in society has been on my mind a lot recently. Without trust, it seems communication and collaboration becomes impossible. How can society solve any of its problems when people can't discuss anything about those problems or potential solutions without it turning into a fight?
• jpdus 6y ago
  @dang/mods: Apart from what you think about the story, the new title "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google" is even more biased and incorrect than the old one or the headline from the linked article. Timnit definitely did not intend to resign "immediately" and from everything what is known was fired on the spot (that she mentioned a possible resignation in an Email is not important for that distinction). A correct headline would be "AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired by Google after threatening to resign".
• 1024core 6y ago
  This person forced Yann LeCun (one of the top 3 AI/ML researchers today, head of Facebook AI, and an ML researcher since the 80s) to give up on Twitter after she took exception to this tweet of his: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016 She lives her life attacking people who she disagrees with, and brings in race/gender into any conflict where she's involved. I am surprised Google had hired her, because it was only a matter of time they'd become collateral damage in this roving tornado of hate and aggression. From what I have seen today, she gave them an ultimatum: do this, this and that or else I will leave. They decided to not do those things she demanded, and then proceeded to fire her before she could do any more internal damage.
  • elevenoh 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Curious: How did she 'force him to give up on twitter'? There's a lotta companies who've hired ticking time bombs like this. They don't get why they were truly hired.
    • 1024core 6y ago
      It was discussed on HN a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23696427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23696427
    • hintymad 6y ago
      Easy. Just call that person a racist, a bigot, or an oppressor without a shred of evidence. > A person: I think bias in machine learning is caused by bias in training data. > Me: Why are you ignoring all I've been saying? You're a racist. You're a white man who oppresses. I'm not going to talk to a bigot like you. Repeat this a few times, the attacked will be punished both online and offline. Justice served.
      • tfehring 6y ago
        I don't think that's a fair characterization of Gebru's argument there at all. A better summary might be "You're the Chief AI Scientist at a massively influential and profitable company with billions of users and exabytes of data, you can't just throw up your hands and say 'welp, that's what the model spits out so that's what we're stuck with.'"
• sorenjan 6y ago
  AI ethics researcher sounds like a fluff position anyway, she got hired to give Google a shine of inclusiveness to the non technical people that think AI is going to take over the world and doesn't understand that the current state of it is nothing more than pattern recognition and statistics. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it still bothers me that people like this get highly paid positions to point out problems seemingly without any technical knowledge. And then she's delusional enough to think that she can misbehave and make ultimatums? The article links to a "landmark study" that shows that black women are underrepresented in training datasets and therefore misclassified more. Sure, that's important to fix, but it sounds like an undergraduate project, and it's not something I would call AI.
  • Upvoter33 6y ago
    "but it still bothers me that people like this get highly paid positions to point out problems seemingly without any technical knowledge" You are making a lot of (wrong) assumptions here. Not too many Stanford PhDs are graduating without technical knowledge
    • sorenjan 6y ago
      Ok, I read her Wikipedia entry and apparently she has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford. Those are probably fairly standardized, so I'll concede that she does have some technical knowledge. I have however seen way to many doctorates that seem technical while they're not. There's a common theme in her career, and it's not necessarily technical knowledge. She worked at Microsoft research, sounds really impressive. But it was in the "Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics in AI lab". which sounds like a PR stunt. Her research was supported by Stanford DARE fellowship, which is mainly concerned with increasing diversity. She was an AI researcher at Google, but it consisted in pointing out bias in datasets. Her PhD research[1] was using street view images to find pick up trucks and finding a correlation with republican voters, which sounds more like a sociological application of computer vision than a hard technical problem. [1]https://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13108 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13108
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• scythe 6y ago
  >A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. So I don't work in AI, but in every field I have worked in, and in the academic journals I used to work for, all of these are issues that would be addressed during the standard peer review process. You ignored recent publications? Reviewers will complain. A good journal will have peer reviewers who know which citations are missing. You left out citations that weaken your conclusion? Reviewers will complain. Et cetera. I realize people object to Gebru's history on Twitter, but Google exec's defense of her dismissal sounds pretty weak to me.
• breatheoften 6y ago
  Why do these parties not agree on the timeline for the review period? One party claims they had been going through review for 2 months and one said the review was submitted with only 1 day ... It seems likely that both sides are mis-characterizing events in pursuit of their own goals -- which to me suggests a general environment where parties are tending not to communicate with the goal of arriving at agreement -- but rather as adversaries. Hackernews will of course assume that the only reason for an adversarial relationship in this scenario is "cancel culture SJW memes" and other "deemed toxic" trends for which the minority voice is almost always the only guilty party. I think that level of dismissal is unwarranted as it seems pretty likely to me that there is a definite gotcha-oriented communication style coming from the google leadership here -- which very well might reflect an intentionally or unconsciously adopted strategy to create obstacles for voices of disagreement like this.
  • ipnon 6y ago
    It's a bit presumptuous to dismiss all of HN as having the same opinion, when you yourself are voicing a contrary opinion on HN itself.
• somepersoninny 6y ago
  I don't have much to say about her research or Google, really. I don't know much about AI or this group she's in, or her for that matter. But I'm all for diversity in tech and women's rights, etc. What strikes me is how out of touch she seems to be. We're in the middle of pandemic and millions of people are out of work. The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, due to luck, her credentials and research, she has been able to continue working for one of the top companies in the world and is even able to take a vacation. Good for her. And yet, while on vacation, she makes demands of her employer that perhaps she was aware they wouldn't/couldn't meet. I'm stunned by the if you don't accept my conditions, I'll deal with you, when I'm good and ready, when I get back from vacation. Like, how out of touch and tone deaf is this? Anyway, the first thing she does, after rage quitting, is to run to Twitter to complain. She even said on Twitter that she didn't have a lawyer and wanted to find one ASAP. Honestly, everything Google did seems perfectly reasonable. Is her behavior unbecoming of a manager? Based on what I saw on Twitter, I'd say 'Yes'. I had been following her on Twitter and saw this pop-up last night. It was kind of confusing and seemed like it was going to become very annoying, so I unfollowed. Then today, it kept showing up in other people's feeds, so I blocked her and muted people who retweeted her. There is such a thing as a "brilliant jerk" and usually companies keep such people around too long. Seems like Google decided this headache wasn't worth it, and cut her loose. But now we see a "brilliant jerk" who is female and a minority/POC.
• chrononaut 6y ago
  (IANAL) One small point to add is that since Timnit was a manager at Google, she also acts as an agent of her employer.[0] With this, there is going to be a higher expectation of conforming with company policies and processes, particularly how she interacts with other individuals inside and outside the company due to her actions having a larger impact on Google's general liability. I am not sure how this may have influenced Google's decision in this particular case, but I imagine it was part of the evaluation. Other comments here delve further into her current and previous actions. [0] https://www.lynchlf.com/blog/personal-liability-for-managers-involved-in-harassment-discrimination-and-hostile-work-environment-claims/ https://www.lynchlf.com/blog/personal-liability-for-managers...
• choppaface 6y ago
  Mods: the official title on this news article is "The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google" The current HN story is titled "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google". That current title is either inaccurate or is pure editorial from the submitter.
• madrox 6y ago
  Regardless of what happened, it's stuff like this that makes me consider leaving management. Any employee may try to get social media to take their side with any call you've had to make, which is stressful and potentially career-ending. Management is already a thankless job, and managers want to have a 9-5 like anyone else. Moreover, managers are often more bound in what they can and cannot say in public about employee decisions. I switched from IC to EM because I really love helping grow careers, but if I ever was put in Jeff Dean's position I'd probably quit immediately. No job is worth it.
• tanilama 6y ago
  She is not fired for being a black woman. She is fired because she works against the interests of the company who hired her. The outcome won't be different if you are a man. What is the story?
• qpiox 6y ago
  Google Censors Science should have been the title of this article.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• samizdis 6y ago
  FT article [1] "Google embroiled in row over AI bias research" seems calm/considered. Includes: > Jeff Dean, Google’s head of AI, defended the decision in an internal email to staff on Thursday, saying the paper “didn’t meet our bar for publication”. He also described Ms Gebru’s departure as a resignation, after Google had refused to agree to unspecified conditions she had set to stay at the company. > The dispute has threatened to shine a light on Google’s handling of internal AI research that could hurt its business, as well as the company’s long-running difficulties in trying to bring more diversity to its workforce. ... > The paper looked at the potential bias in large-scale language models, one of the hottest new fields of natural language research. Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-3 and Google’s own system, Bert, attempt to predict the next word in any phrase or sentence — a method that has been used to produce surprisingly effective automated writing, and which Google uses to better understand complex search queries. > The language models are trained on vast amounts of text, usually drawn from the internet, leading to warnings that they could regurgitate racial and other biases that are contained in the underlying training material. > “From the outside, it looks like someone at Google decided this was harmful to their interests,” said Emily Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, who co-authored the paper. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/995c62ab-26b1-4eed-b1fb-cb4846023ed2 https://www.ft.com/content/995c62ab-26b1-4eed-b1fb-cb4846023...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• villgax 6y ago
  Lol, more like fired after threatening to resign if certain demands were not met.
• iamleppert 6y ago
  Looks like she bluffed her way out of a job. I’m not sure I feel sorry for this person at all.
• dash2 6y ago
  I am not very sympathetic with Timnit Gebru in this affair. At the same time, I am discouraged by the number of comments here that go over the top, fail to recognise nuance and uncertainty, and engage in name-calling (“virtue-signalling SJW” and so forth). A plague on both your houses!
• shoue301 6y ago
  OMG HN comments is a much more honest place than Twitter. Thank you all.
  • 0x008 6y ago
    I’ve been reading the comments for an hour now and I have to say this discussion is amazing.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• known 6y ago
  She was bullied to resign :(
• gerash 6y ago
  I think Google made the right decision here. From what I've read from her posts and elsewhere she does not act or sound very professional
• hownottowrite 6y ago
  https://archive.is/BhsJM https://archive.is/BhsJM
• jackallis 6y ago
  can't help thinking; there is her side of the story, google side of the story and than there is truth. need story from inside.
• xiphias2 6y ago
  ,,Google Head of AI Jeff Dean, in an internal email, told staff that an internal team determined that Ms. Gebru’s most recent AI research was insufficiently rigorous. '' When Jeff Dean wrote me feedback for a small thing that I made, I was extremely happy to even get an answer from him. I think Timnit doesn't have any idea of the things Jeff and Sanjay wrote together, their code base was always clean, beautiful and well documented and tested, with lots of benchmark tests. She should have gone with the comments and work much more on the paper.
• VHRanger 6y ago
  Here's the timeline I get: - Timnit submits a paper to a conference about environmental costs of large language models like BERT. Note Google invested massively in BERT for their infrastructure this year. - Right before the external deadline, she submits it for internal review - Internal review asks for revisions, they want mitigations they worked on mentionned at minimum in the paper. - She responds to these with an effective "publish or I QUIT" email - However you put it, she gets terminated. - Gebru is somehow shocked at this and posts her half on social media Seeing this develop over the last day, I've grown less empathetic to her side of this affair. She created an unwinnable situation, then responded with an ultimatum.
• garbagecoder 6y ago
  Where she loses me is demanding the names of her reviewers. I never once have known who peer reviewed anything I wrote. Sounds like she was teeing them up for a Twitter auto da fe.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• srajan 6y ago
  It sounds like Google was at odds with the research and the push by Timnit. And she gave them the easy exit with her ultimatum. It is shameful on Google to use a weak excuse as "not meeting protocol" to let go of a great researcher. Looks like the paper hit home raw. When explained, even a layman can see the bias these AI models will have. Looks like it is time for a better search engine to emerge and call out these monopolies.
• aphelion 6y ago
  What passes for AI ethics research is akin to a "Hiroshima ethics research" that focuses on the carbon footprint of the Enola Gay and the lack of BIPOC representation on the team that assembled the Little Boy bomb. I don't care if the corporations building a dystopian panopticon are intersectional.
• bra-ket 6y ago
  good riddance. She tried to doxx her colleagues for daring to criticize her work.