12 ms·

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of di

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.

minikites 6y ago
When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Even when we do the response is quite often some form of "not like that" or the goalposts get moved back another 40 yards from the back of the endzone.
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    Heck, even kneeling during the national anthem is “too much”...
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Because it "disrespects the veterans" in some people's eyes. Astonishing, isn't it, that the same people who found issue with Kaepernick's protest probably have never heard the name "Nate Boyer"[1] before-who is both a veteran of the armed forces, and a veteran of the NFL. It's never good enough. [1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/05/nfl-49ers-colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-nate-boyer https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/05/nfl-49ers-colin-kaepernick-...
      - edgyquant 6y ago
        I’m pretty sure “disrespects the flag” is little more than a strawman to attack instead of them having to discuss the actual point trying to be made.
        dvtrn 6y ago
        Of course it is.
        darkarmani 6y ago
        And painting a blue line down the middle of it is the best way to respect the flag. /s
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- prionassembly 6y ago
  Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to hijack my sudden spike in karma (and, I assume, visibility) to "amplify" some important research milestones in the Humanities that impact the problem of "AI ethics" taken seriously. [General] * Baudrillard - "Forget Foucault" * Delanda - "Philosophy and simulation" [Science and technology issues] * Latour - "The Pasteurization of France" * Latour - "Reassembling the social" * Caillon - "Acting in an uncertain world" [Computers and society] * Various authors - "Software Studies: a lexicon", available here https://monoskop.org/images/a/a1/Fuller_Matthew_ed_Software_Studies_A_Lexicon.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/a1/Fuller_Matthew_ed_Software_...
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    If you're referencing Baudrillard (points to HN profile), Simulacra and Simulations ought to go up there too, for this technology crowd.
  - athms 6y ago
    >It’s good that they hire from the Humanities... Gebru has a BS and MS in electrical engineering, and a PhD in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence; all from Stanford. After receiving her MS, she worked at Apple's hardware engineering group. After her PhD, she worked Microsoft's AI research lab.
    - prionassembly 6y ago
      That's... surprising. I've read (really read) a handful of her papers on arxiv, and the only that isn't a gooey Problematic Studies fondue has ten coauthors (with her in 5th or 6th place). She really has the lingo down pat. Maybe the problem is precisely that they didn't actually hire from the Humanities? Although the cynic in me thinks they just hired someone with a "SJW" discourse rather than find themselves criticized for their market strategy -- whether their use of their monopoly power is ethical. As it stands it really sounds like they got someone to offer Yann LeCun as a scapegoat for AI products (Amazon Rekognition is infamous); these services then serve as scapegoats for police departments, which...
tmotwu 6y ago
If she was truly removed for her abrasiveness, we would have a completely separate discussion entirely. What transpired, from both her disclosures and Google's leaderships response, has justifiably reigned in a lot of concern and skeptism from the broader research community.
- teen 6y ago
  She was, they said her email was not befitting of a manager. Which is clearly true
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her. I know none of the facts and am perfectly ignorant about this situation, but I have seen people get kicked out for semi-justifiable surface reasons that were totally unrelated to why their superiors didn't like them. So a-priori, the theory that the difference between someone's not-so-significant faults being tolerated or not being tolerated, is their willingness to comply with the goals that for whatever reason the leadership doesn't feel they can make explicit, is a reasonable suggestion.
    - srean 6y ago
      > The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her Conjecturing what could be the real reason, person A conjecturing why a person B does what he does (hates our freedom, for example) and why one should not take B's own explanation of his own actions -- these to me are an avoidable form of discourse. Nothing good comes of it other than an obligate outrage.
      - whatshisface 6y ago
        Well, refusing to consider the idea that someone might do something with more than zero layers of subtlety... would lead to falling for every trick anybody ever tries to play. ;) A more appropriate response would be to admit that it's not easy to tell the difference, and maybe, if the interlocutor cares enough, to do some research to determine whether or not it's still suspicious once the facts are known. One example of some facts that could resolve or strengthen the suspicion would be: How many other emails of equal or greater verbal strength were sent at Google, but then not followed up by dismissal?
coffeemaniac 6y ago
Would anyone mind citing an instance of this toxic Twitter behavior? I don't dispute that individual tweets can be enough to wreck your career in certain circumstances but it's a high bar and haven't noticed any links to twitter.com supporting these accusations.
whimsicalism 6y ago
> divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy. Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor during the peak of the civil rights movement. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor for the Guardian in 2018. The moral preening, the harumph-worthy circle jerks of pithy middlebrow dismissals and vacuous brigading. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  Relating GP to a '60s era segregation apologist for offering a dissenting opinion is proving their point.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    They're free to offer a dissenting opinion, my comment was on the rhetorical flourishes around diversity advocates being "divisive", "dogmatic", uncivil are very reminiscent of that period. I think it is very illuminating to read letters from that period, because they aren't just vitriolic racists like schools often teach. These are people trying to come off as "very reasonable", offering a civil, moderate path forward for the South, etc., etc. It's fascinating to see that rhetoric being deployed to defend what is an obvious evil and compare to who is using that rhetoric now.
    - tmpz22 6y ago
      I agree historical context on rhetoric can be absolutely eye opening, but your example was not a 1:1 comparison (neither the victims or actions being of equal consequence). It also reminds me of Goodwin's Law [1] where disagreements on the internet so often devolve into calling someone a Nazi (to me a '60s segregationist apologist is one or two steps removed from a Nazi). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
devy 6y ago
This above is very intolerable in Corporate America. First and foremost, she works for the corporation and get paid, no matter how great she is, she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America. Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. A book about how toxic this is and how it needs to change, right? This small detail seems sort of missing from your comment.
  - devy 6y ago
    Yes. I am just stating a fact. And do you see a change?
- minikites 6y ago
  >she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America "Corporate culture" isn't fixed, the whole point is that it needs changing.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    "Corporate culture" is a culture of bland, and empty niceties, with a veneer of politeness and it's 100% needed so that a large corporation can focus on getting things done without every interaction turning into twitter. Hacker news also requires a certain amount of politeness in the way you speak and it's one of the many reasons the discourse is better than twitter.
    - PascLeRasc 6y ago
      What makes you think our discourse is better? We have plenty of low-quality comments (see this one for an example) and nearly every thread goes off-topic (like what we're discussing now).
actuator 6y ago
Her spat against Yann LeCun felt very wrong to me. That is not how fellow academics/researchers should treat each other. Maybe Yann LeCun was wrong, the way she conveyed the message disregarding any knowledge he might have on this was definitely not civil. She could have chosen a different way to address the complaints here, not by getting overtly confrontational. Maybe the review group got it wrong, maybe they were right. But that is not how you handle disputes.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > definitely not civil. I agree that people should try to be kind and charitable to each other, and this conversation didn't show that. That said, I think we also have to be cognizant of the way "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo. It might not have been very "civil" for instance when Google employees walked out of the office, but I also don't think it was "civil" when Google paid $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment. Sometimes big problems can't be met just with civil discourse, it's why many of us still voted for Biden (for instance) even after he told Trump to "shut up."
  - ivalm 6y ago
    What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Was he laboring for free before that?
      - ivalm 6y ago
        He was laboring with contracts that stipulated severance, which got paid out.
marricks 6y ago
How is that relevant to this discussion of her getting dismissed? It's okay to unceremoniously let her go because she is outspoken on Twitter? That's the only way your comment would seem relevant to this discussion.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Body of work aside, she absolutely is an aggressive-ranging-into-toxic Twitter personality and a very strident proponent of a divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy.

minikites 6y ago

When was the last time a marginalized group gained rights by asking politely?

dvtrn 6y ago
Even when we do the response is quite often some form of "not like that" or the goalposts get moved back another 40 yards from the back of the endzone.
- Cyph0n 6y ago
  Heck, even kneeling during the national anthem is “too much”...
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Because it "disrespects the veterans" in some people's eyes. Astonishing, isn't it, that the same people who found issue with Kaepernick's protest probably have never heard the name "Nate Boyer"[1] before-who is both a veteran of the armed forces, and a veteran of the NFL. It's never good enough. [1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/05/nfl-49ers-colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-nate-boyer https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/05/nfl-49ers-colin-kaepernick-...
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      I’m pretty sure “disrespects the flag” is little more than a strawman to attack instead of them having to discuss the actual point trying to be made.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        Of course it is.
      - darkarmani 6y ago
        And painting a blue line down the middle of it is the best way to respect the flag. /s
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
prionassembly 6y ago
Are we evaluating her as a researcher or as an activist? I’ve read some of her research (that’s on arxiv) and it’s... not on the level that “Google AI researcher” implies. It’s good that they hire from the Humanities, but we tend to smush all academics as if they all had equal rigor and value. Maybe she’s a great activist. Or a great cook. Being it that I’m not into activism, I can’t judge that. ---- Edit: I have to hijack my sudden spike in karma (and, I assume, visibility) to "amplify" some important research milestones in the Humanities that impact the problem of "AI ethics" taken seriously. [General] * Baudrillard - "Forget Foucault" * Delanda - "Philosophy and simulation" [Science and technology issues] * Latour - "The Pasteurization of France" * Latour - "Reassembling the social" * Caillon - "Acting in an uncertain world" [Computers and society] * Various authors - "Software Studies: a lexicon", available here https://monoskop.org/images/a/a1/Fuller_Matthew_ed_Software_Studies_A_Lexicon.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/a1/Fuller_Matthew_ed_Software_...
- dvtrn 6y ago
  If you're referencing Baudrillard (points to HN profile), Simulacra and Simulations ought to go up there too, for this technology crowd.
- athms 6y ago
  >It’s good that they hire from the Humanities... Gebru has a BS and MS in electrical engineering, and a PhD in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence; all from Stanford. After receiving her MS, she worked at Apple's hardware engineering group. After her PhD, she worked Microsoft's AI research lab.
  - prionassembly 6y ago
    That's... surprising. I've read (really read) a handful of her papers on arxiv, and the only that isn't a gooey Problematic Studies fondue has ten coauthors (with her in 5th or 6th place). She really has the lingo down pat. Maybe the problem is precisely that they didn't actually hire from the Humanities? Although the cynic in me thinks they just hired someone with a "SJW" discourse rather than find themselves criticized for their market strategy -- whether their use of their monopoly power is ethical. As it stands it really sounds like they got someone to offer Yann LeCun as a scapegoat for AI products (Amazon Rekognition is infamous); these services then serve as scapegoats for police departments, which...

tmotwu 6y ago

If she was truly removed for her abrasiveness, we would have a completely separate discussion entirely. What transpired, from both her disclosures and Google's leaderships response, has justifiably reigned in a lot of concern and skeptism from the broader research community.

teen 6y ago
She was, they said her email was not befitting of a manager. Which is clearly true
- whatshisface 6y ago
  The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her. I know none of the facts and am perfectly ignorant about this situation, but I have seen people get kicked out for semi-justifiable surface reasons that were totally unrelated to why their superiors didn't like them. So a-priori, the theory that the difference between someone's not-so-significant faults being tolerated or not being tolerated, is their willingness to comply with the goals that for whatever reason the leadership doesn't feel they can make explicit, is a reasonable suggestion.
  - srean 6y ago
    > The case being made in this thread is that that was how they got her, not why they fired her Conjecturing what could be the real reason, person A conjecturing why a person B does what he does (hates our freedom, for example) and why one should not take B's own explanation of his own actions -- these to me are an avoidable form of discourse. Nothing good comes of it other than an obligate outrage.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      Well, refusing to consider the idea that someone might do something with more than zero layers of subtlety... would lead to falling for every trick anybody ever tries to play. ;) A more appropriate response would be to admit that it's not easy to tell the difference, and maybe, if the interlocutor cares enough, to do some research to determine whether or not it's still suspicious once the facts are known. One example of some facts that could resolve or strengthen the suspicion would be: How many other emails of equal or greater verbal strength were sent at Google, but then not followed up by dismissal?

coffeemaniac 6y ago

Would anyone mind citing an instance of this toxic Twitter behavior? I don't dispute that individual tweets can be enough to wreck your career in certain circumstances but it's a high bar and haven't noticed any links to twitter.com supporting these accusations.

whimsicalism 6y ago

> divisive and dogmatic strain of diversity advocacy. Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor during the peak of the civil rights movement. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.

claydavisss 6y ago
Reading the HN comments section sometimes feels akin to doing archival research on letters to the editor for the Guardian in 2018. The moral preening, the harumph-worthy circle jerks of pithy middlebrow dismissals and vacuous brigading. It's astonishing how consistent the tropes are.
tmpz22 6y ago
Relating GP to a '60s era segregation apologist for offering a dissenting opinion is proving their point.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  They're free to offer a dissenting opinion, my comment was on the rhetorical flourishes around diversity advocates being "divisive", "dogmatic", uncivil are very reminiscent of that period. I think it is very illuminating to read letters from that period, because they aren't just vitriolic racists like schools often teach. These are people trying to come off as "very reasonable", offering a civil, moderate path forward for the South, etc., etc. It's fascinating to see that rhetoric being deployed to defend what is an obvious evil and compare to who is using that rhetoric now.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    I agree historical context on rhetoric can be absolutely eye opening, but your example was not a 1:1 comparison (neither the victims or actions being of equal consequence). It also reminds me of Goodwin's Law [1] where disagreements on the internet so often devolve into calling someone a Nazi (to me a '60s segregationist apologist is one or two steps removed from a Nazi). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

devy 6y ago

This above is very intolerable in Corporate America. First and foremost, she works for the corporation and get paid, no matter how great she is, she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America. Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24331490-leadership-bs

whimsicalism 6y ago
> Stanford Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote a book about this[1] in particular. A book about how toxic this is and how it needs to change, right? This small detail seems sort of missing from your comment.
- devy 6y ago
  Yes. I am just stating a fact. And do you see a change?
minikites 6y ago
>she has to follow the corporate culture and norms or she won't be surviving in Corporate America "Corporate culture" isn't fixed, the whole point is that it needs changing.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  "Corporate culture" is a culture of bland, and empty niceties, with a veneer of politeness and it's 100% needed so that a large corporation can focus on getting things done without every interaction turning into twitter. Hacker news also requires a certain amount of politeness in the way you speak and it's one of the many reasons the discourse is better than twitter.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    What makes you think our discourse is better? We have plenty of low-quality comments (see this one for an example) and nearly every thread goes off-topic (like what we're discussing now).

actuator 6y ago

Her spat against Yann LeCun felt very wrong to me. That is not how fellow academics/researchers should treat each other. Maybe Yann LeCun was wrong, the way she conveyed the message disregarding any knowledge he might have on this was definitely not civil. She could have chosen a different way to address the complaints here, not by getting overtly confrontational. Maybe the review group got it wrong, maybe they were right. But that is not how you handle disputes.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> definitely not civil. I agree that people should try to be kind and charitable to each other, and this conversation didn't show that. That said, I think we also have to be cognizant of the way "civility" is not objective/neutral, often relies on codifying the norms of a dominant majority, and also preserves the status quo. It might not have been very "civil" for instance when Google employees walked out of the office, but I also don't think it was "civil" when Google paid $90 million to someone fired for sexual harassment. Sometimes big problems can't be met just with civil discourse, it's why many of us still voted for Biden (for instance) even after he told Trump to "shut up."
- ivalm 6y ago
  What about paying $90 million to the key person in creation of android? Honestly, he is a scumbag, but that doesn’t nullify his contribution to google (?) it’s not that he was paid for sexual harassment, it’s that he got paid for being creator of one of the most important products in the world.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Was he laboring for free before that?
    - ivalm 6y ago
      He was laboring with contracts that stipulated severance, which got paid out.

marricks 6y ago

How is that relevant to this discussion of her getting dismissed? It's okay to unceremoniously let her go because she is outspoken on Twitter? That's the only way your comment would seem relevant to this discussion.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]