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I'm not saying that you're saying that she's marginalized because she's a well known researcher. I think she feels marginalized because the process she's going
by omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
I'm not saying that you're saying that she's marginalized because she's a well known researcher.
I think she feels marginalized because the process she's going through is dehumanizing, especially given the topic she wrote about (bias in AI frameworks).
It's possible that 99% of Google employees would want to be in her position, but I think that's a bit high. I imagine even fewer would to be there after going through what she goes through, especially racism, which sucks.
I can see how you would think she's confrontational. I think she is to some degree, but I don't think it's unfounded.
She's a minority, and as such, has to deal with all of the explicit and systemic racism that's present in the US. She believes that there are intrinsic characteristics associated with the AI models used at Google that perpetuate the racism she has experienced. She was able to write a paper about the defects she believes were present in those models, which apparently passed whatever initial review processes are present at Google. Not long after that, someone at Google didn't like her paper and, through HR, used a "review" process, which isn't really a review process because there's no mechanism for her to discuss/debate anything with the reviewers, to effectively order her retract the paper under the guise of an anonymous review.
In effect, Google may be perpetuating racism indirectly via problems with their AI models, and directly by silencing her work via a process that sounds like a peer review, but is really just a way for someone to anonymously order her to retract her work.
I'd be angry too if my work implicitly supported frameworks that discriminated against me, and when I submitted valid criticism of those frameworks, my work ordered me to retract it under the guise of some anonymous review process.