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It seems that one of the reasons they have not produced anything of value is because, at least in this case, the work is actively suppressed. The heart of the i

It seems that one of the reasons they have not produced anything of value is because, at least in this case, the work is actively suppressed. The heart of the issue here is that Timnit tried to publish a paper and was told by upper management to retract it with no further feedback. Maybe if you’re going to hire ethics researchers, you should listen to them?

PeterisP 6y ago
If the upper management wanted to retract that paper then it seems reasonable to assume that preparing this paper did not produce any value to the company. Doing work that needs to be actively suppressed is not producing value - at least not to the company. So apparently there's a fundamental misalignment between the work Dr. Gebru wants to do and the work that Google wants her to do; this was made clear with the suppression of the paper, and escalated as Dr. Gebru apparently (and understandably) did not want to work in a very different direction, (quoting her tweet) "asked for simple conditions first" which were totally unacceptable to the employer ("We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting."), so that's it, if neither is willing to compromise on their primary goals, they can't work together. This does indicate that apparently listening to ethics researchers they hired is unacceptable to Google. Sad, but not surprising.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  > If the upper management wanted to retract that paper then it seems reasonable to assume that preparing this paper did not produce any value to the company. I don't know about publishing standards at Google but, assuming they are uniform for all researchers, I am pretty sure Google would be unable to retain talent if researchers were asked to prove value to Google for every paper they publish. I think for researchers, this reinforces the oft-dismissed notion that you give up significant academic freedom in exchange for a fat paycheck when you join an industrial research lab. This can be particularly damaging for Google because many of its research projects don't have an immediate business impact, and it hires top researchers by offering an alternative to the slog of academia.
Yoofie 6y ago
The response email by management claims that it was submitted with one day before deadline. Context: > Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). And the key point: > 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 who approved for submission. Gebru herself or by someone in management? Then they address the weaknesses of the paper (as part of the review process). > 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. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Granted, its hard to track the timelines and who said what at what time, but there seems to be reasons why the paper would of failed their internal review process.

PeterisP 6y ago

If the upper management wanted to retract that paper then it seems reasonable to assume that preparing this paper did not produce any value to the company. Doing work that needs to be actively suppressed is not producing value - at least not to the company. So apparently there's a fundamental misalignment between the work Dr. Gebru wants to do and the work that Google wants her to do; this was made clear with the suppression of the paper, and escalated as Dr. Gebru apparently (and understandably) did not want to work in a very different direction, (quoting her tweet) "asked for simple conditions first" which were totally unacceptable to the employer ("We cannot agree to #1 and #2 as you are requesting."), so that's it, if neither is willing to compromise on their primary goals, they can't work together. This does indicate that apparently listening to ethics researchers they hired is unacceptable to Google. Sad, but not surprising.

blueblisters 6y ago
> If the upper management wanted to retract that paper then it seems reasonable to assume that preparing this paper did not produce any value to the company. I don't know about publishing standards at Google but, assuming they are uniform for all researchers, I am pretty sure Google would be unable to retain talent if researchers were asked to prove value to Google for every paper they publish. I think for researchers, this reinforces the oft-dismissed notion that you give up significant academic freedom in exchange for a fat paycheck when you join an industrial research lab. This can be particularly damaging for Google because many of its research projects don't have an immediate business impact, and it hires top researchers by offering an alternative to the slog of academia.

Yoofie 6y ago

The response email by management claims that it was submitted with one day before deadline. Context: > Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). And the key point: > 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 who approved for submission. Gebru herself or by someone in management? Then they address the weaknesses of the paper (as part of the review process). > 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. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Granted, its hard to track the timelines and who said what at what time, but there seems to be reasons why the paper would of failed their internal review process.