9 ms·

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

by 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?
      - sjs382 6y ago
        Yeah, I had a hard time making heads and tails of what that bit meant, exactly.
      - mehrdada 6y ago
        Most definitely not. I think that is a critical detail. You can be 100% sure if she clicked on Approve herself, Jeff would have either omitted that fact entirely or definitely explicitly mentioned it was a self-approval. Some other person clicked on Approve for sure and they are somehow not putting any responsibility on that person in this public narrative.
      - kazamaloo 6y ago
        it is sort of a placeholder approval. The actual reviews may be done by a legal team, HR/PR, other researchers in the field etc.
        FeepingCreature 6y ago
        A "placeholder approval" is also known as an "approval". If they didn't want to approve it, they shouldn't have done it.
        kazamaloo 6y ago
        what you refer to as "they" are two different entities.
        FeepingCreature 6y ago
        If the company doesn't even have a clear indication who is authorized to approve things, that seems much more a Google problem.
        mehrdada 6y ago
        Do you have actual information or just randomly speculating about the nature of that "approval" under a newly created anonymous HackerNews account?
jsmith45 6y ago
It sounds to me like Google has a policy that papers must be internally reviewed before they can be "published". She understood publish in the academic sense, while Google views sending the paper out for conference review as publishing. The paper ends up failing internal review, so per policy it must be promptly retracted. This is confusing to the academic who expects to get access to the raw review responses so that the paper can be fixed. After all in her mind it is not published yet, and updates can be submitted to the conference to fix the issues. The underlying reason for the paper failing internal review looks to be that it basically condemns Google's whole approach to AI (big models) while failing to take into account some relevant research that may favor google's approach. (I have no way of guessing if it would have passed review if it did take into account those, but still condemned the approach). The massive amount of miscommunication makes her feel like she was being oppressed, due to race and or gender. Hence her aggressive tone in her emails and ultimatum. Looks like a fairly classic case of a major blowup due to poor communication.
- beervirus 6y ago
  Looks like a fairly classic case of a person who injects race and gender into every topic... injecting race and gender into a topic.
- shuckles 6y ago
  It seems like she has been working at Google for a fair amount of time. If so, I’m surprised that there was still confusion over when a paper needs to be taken through the internal review process. Outside of that, I found this to be a good summary of the situation. It omits her widely distributed email denigrating the entire diversity approach taken by Google, though.
- powersnail 6y ago
  While there hasn't been enough evidence to fully condemn either side, I disagree that this is just poor communication. Unless Google deliberately changed the enforcement of the policy just to mess with her, she should have known the policy. It doesn't seem to be a complicated process, and 2 weeks is a reasonably short time to wait. On the other side, Google has been in this game long enough, that they must know a paper can be updated in this case. So there wouldn't be a misunderstanding there, either. What exactly happened is unclear so far. But I doubt it will come down to just a series of misunderstanding. On a side note, I suspect that working research for a company with a conflicting interest in the same area is generally a bad idea. At some point, the dilemma of either leaving or stopping caring about it would present itself.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ethical-ai 6y ago
What I really cannot understand is how someone who works on ethics can think that revealing names of anonymous reviewer is OK? Why would they need those names anyway? I'm also unable to think of any reason they might need the identities of the reviewers.
- woko 6y ago
  My guess would be that they took the issue as a personal offence, and they believe that someone higher in the power structure has some personal beef against them as a person, rather than against parts of their work. They want to confront that person.
  - visarga 6y ago
    Maybe they want a good old fashion public Twitter judgement for the reviewers. She has a crowd.
cmiles74 6y ago
I'm curious about this "submitted paper for review 1 day before publication" assertion. From my reading, it sounded like work on this paper had been going on for a while. The email quoted on "Platformer" makes it sound like communication with HR (which seems weird, honestly, for a research paper) had been going on for at least two months.[0] > Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months). The NY Times reported that four of the researchers working on the paper also worked at Google.[1] > In an interview with The Times, Dr. Gebru said her exasperation stemmed from the company’s treatment of a research paper she had written with six other researchers, four of them at Google. It seems to me Google management should have been aware of this paper prior to the day before publication. ---- [0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researcher-timnit-gebru.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researc...
- nebulous1 6y ago
  I don't think google are saying they weren't aware of the paper prior to the day-before, just that they hadn't seen the actual paper itself before then. Out of curiosity do people think that a company either should or would publish self-funded research that's detrimental to their PR? I'm not sure that this is a realistic expectation with our current methods of company governance (which should probably be changed). I'm assuming the research isn't overly safety oriented and is more like "overuse of google leads to decreased overall well-being" rather that "use of the cigarettes that we sell leads to significantly reduced life expectancy". Of course that statement begs the question of where the line between the two lies.
  - cmiles74 6y ago
    I did find a Reddit post with the abstract and some discussion from a person who claims to be a reviewer. https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t... In my opinion, it seemed pretty low key. But I've only read the abstract. In terms of Google's expectations and what should we consider reasonable, I'm really not sure... I do think that when they hired this person to be "technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google", they probably should've guessed that there could, possibly, be a conflict between "make loads of money" and "ethical".
jpster 6y ago
> 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. Is the part that makes me cynical about Google’s motive. What sort of process calls for XFN feedback on your work but withholds that feedback and its sources from you? This is very odd.
- visarga 6y ago
  Depends on how many followers the author has on Twitter and her history of Twitter use. After what I've seen, I think it was a good call.
anonuser123456 6y ago
There is one additional detail that is relevant I'm aware of; Timnit also sent an internal email to staff as reported here: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... One can judge the content for themselves, but it was clearly intended to ratchet up pressure on management.

by sjs382 6y ago

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?
    - sjs382 6y ago
      Yeah, I had a hard time making heads and tails of what that bit meant, exactly.
    - mehrdada 6y ago
      Most definitely not. I think that is a critical detail. You can be 100% sure if she clicked on Approve herself, Jeff would have either omitted that fact entirely or definitely explicitly mentioned it was a self-approval. Some other person clicked on Approve for sure and they are somehow not putting any responsibility on that person in this public narrative.
    - kazamaloo 6y ago
      it is sort of a placeholder approval. The actual reviews may be done by a legal team, HR/PR, other researchers in the field etc.
      - FeepingCreature 6y ago
        A "placeholder approval" is also known as an "approval". If they didn't want to approve it, they shouldn't have done it.
        kazamaloo 6y ago
        what you refer to as "they" are two different entities.
        FeepingCreature 6y ago
        If the company doesn't even have a clear indication who is authorized to approve things, that seems much more a Google problem.
      - mehrdada 6y ago
        Do you have actual information or just randomly speculating about the nature of that "approval" under a newly created anonymous HackerNews account?

jsmith45 6y ago

It sounds to me like Google has a policy that papers must be internally reviewed before they can be "published". She understood publish in the academic sense, while Google views sending the paper out for conference review as publishing. The paper ends up failing internal review, so per policy it must be promptly retracted. This is confusing to the academic who expects to get access to the raw review responses so that the paper can be fixed. After all in her mind it is not published yet, and updates can be submitted to the conference to fix the issues. The underlying reason for the paper failing internal review looks to be that it basically condemns Google's whole approach to AI (big models) while failing to take into account some relevant research that may favor google's approach. (I have no way of guessing if it would have passed review if it did take into account those, but still condemned the approach). The massive amount of miscommunication makes her feel like she was being oppressed, due to race and or gender. Hence her aggressive tone in her emails and ultimatum. Looks like a fairly classic case of a major blowup due to poor communication.

beervirus 6y ago
Looks like a fairly classic case of a person who injects race and gender into every topic... injecting race and gender into a topic.
shuckles 6y ago
It seems like she has been working at Google for a fair amount of time. If so, I’m surprised that there was still confusion over when a paper needs to be taken through the internal review process. Outside of that, I found this to be a good summary of the situation. It omits her widely distributed email denigrating the entire diversity approach taken by Google, though.
powersnail 6y ago
While there hasn't been enough evidence to fully condemn either side, I disagree that this is just poor communication. Unless Google deliberately changed the enforcement of the policy just to mess with her, she should have known the policy. It doesn't seem to be a complicated process, and 2 weeks is a reasonably short time to wait. On the other side, Google has been in this game long enough, that they must know a paper can be updated in this case. So there wouldn't be a misunderstanding there, either. What exactly happened is unclear so far. But I doubt it will come down to just a series of misunderstanding. On a side note, I suspect that working research for a company with a conflicting interest in the same area is generally a bad idea. At some point, the dilemma of either leaving or stopping caring about it would present itself.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ethical-ai 6y ago

What I really cannot understand is how someone who works on ethics can think that revealing names of anonymous reviewer is OK? Why would they need those names anyway? I'm also unable to think of any reason they might need the identities of the reviewers.

woko 6y ago
My guess would be that they took the issue as a personal offence, and they believe that someone higher in the power structure has some personal beef against them as a person, rather than against parts of their work. They want to confront that person.
- visarga 6y ago
  Maybe they want a good old fashion public Twitter judgement for the reviewers. She has a crowd.

cmiles74 6y ago

I'm curious about this "submitted paper for review 1 day before publication" assertion. From my reading, it sounded like work on this paper had been going on for a while. The email quoted on "Platformer" makes it sound like communication with HR (which seems weird, honestly, for a research paper) had been going on for at least two months.[0] > Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months). The NY Times reported that four of the researchers working on the paper also worked at Google.[1] > In an interview with The Times, Dr. Gebru said her exasperation stemmed from the company’s treatment of a research paper she had written with six other researchers, four of them at Google. It seems to me Google management should have been aware of this paper prior to the day before publication. ---- [0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researcher-timnit-gebru.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researc...

nebulous1 6y ago
I don't think google are saying they weren't aware of the paper prior to the day-before, just that they hadn't seen the actual paper itself before then. Out of curiosity do people think that a company either should or would publish self-funded research that's detrimental to their PR? I'm not sure that this is a realistic expectation with our current methods of company governance (which should probably be changed). I'm assuming the research isn't overly safety oriented and is more like "overuse of google leads to decreased overall well-being" rather that "use of the cigarettes that we sell leads to significantly reduced life expectancy". Of course that statement begs the question of where the line between the two lies.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  I did find a Reddit post with the abstract and some discussion from a person who claims to be a reviewer. https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_the_abstract_of_the_paper_that_led_to_timnit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t... In my opinion, it seemed pretty low key. But I've only read the abstract. In terms of Google's expectations and what should we consider reasonable, I'm really not sure... I do think that when they hired this person to be "technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team at Google", they probably should've guessed that there could, possibly, be a conflict between "make loads of money" and "ethical".

jpster 6y ago

> 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. Is the part that makes me cynical about Google’s motive. What sort of process calls for XFN feedback on your work but withholds that feedback and its sources from you? This is very odd.

visarga 6y ago
Depends on how many followers the author has on Twitter and her history of Twitter use. After what I've seen, I think it was a good call.

anonuser123456 6y ago

There is one additional detail that is relevant I'm aware of; Timnit also sent an internal email to staff as reported here: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... One can judge the content for themselves, but it was clearly intended to ratchet up pressure on management.