4 ms·

> Jeff gives the impression that they demanded retraction (!) because they wanted Timnit and her coauthors to soften their critique. The more I read about this,

> Jeff gives the impression that they demanded retraction (!) because they wanted Timnit and her coauthors to soften their critique. The more I read about this, the worse it looks. I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece on Google and published with Google's name. For me, it's correct they demand a retraction. It's simply unprofessional to critque your company for something while not mentioning the work they're doing to combat that.

chejazi 6y ago
> I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece Hopefully the paper gets leaked so we can judge for ourselves.
- tmathmeyer 6y ago
  I've read it internally. It's rather bland and doesn't actually indite google. I'm inclined to believe that it was a paper-submission-process issue.
  - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
    That disagrees with what Dean himself is saying...
freeone3000 6y ago
Company with unethical practices hires ethics researcher Ethics researcher publishes piece critical of company's activities Company is shocked as to how this could happen.
- acituan 6y ago
  Ethics researcher omits relevant research in paper to smuggle in a particular agenda. Company calls it out. Researcher realizes the limits of her narrative setting powers. Non-vocal majority is happy to see runaway activism being curbed in corporate settings. Slow march through institutions is slowed down for a day.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance (since even though environmental improvements could have been done, they were not done! So the actual impact wasnt lessened by them at all!); To simply not having known about it. The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. Moreover, that's the role of a conference reviewer, not the employer. Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. The fundamental difference between activism and research is that activism sets the agenda ahead of time while research explores the knowledge space and reports findings. One helps us incrementally make better sense of the world, the other wants us to narrow on particular facts while omitting other relevant facts in the name of advancing a cause. > Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance ... To simply not having known about it The omitted research is clearly relevant. Deciding what is relevant and what is not is precisely what narrative warfare is. If they did not know about the adjacent research, then they would simply be incompetent researchers (which I highly doubt is the case). > The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. There is no retraction because there was no external publication. Jeff Dean states reviewer response as you stated was there but was ignored by the approver. > Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed. Corporate researchers are still employees and are bound by a job description. Independent of the content of the research, it is also entirely within the rights of the employer to set a certain bar of quality being cleared. In this case it seems like Google didn't want affiliation with this paper, not the other way around.
      - freeone3000 6y ago
geofft 6y ago
For me, it's pretty unprofessional (and cowardly) to hire a well-respected ethics researcher, write some PR pieces about how the company takes ethical actions seriously, and then tell her that her publications have to follow the party line and cannot overly criticize the company.
cmsj 6y ago
Self-critique is more precious than gold, particularly when you have the scale of influence that Google does.
abeppu 6y ago
> It's simply unprofessional to critque your company for something while not mentioning the work they're doing to combat that. It would seem deeply problematic for an AI ethics researcher to have the expectation that when they critique their own employer, they should mention all their work to ameliorate bias or ethics problems, but to not have a similar expectation when they're critiquing other companies. Is the point of having an ethics researcher to expand our understanding of ethical issues, or merely to aid in PR? If a university administrator were to attempt to tell a PI not to submit a paper critical of work from another lab at the same institution, I think that would be judged as a shocking overreach. But for Google, we're not even in agreement that this behavior is a problem. It's unfortunate that we expect so little from corporations, even if those corporations are some of the main drivers of research in a field.
- xapata 6y ago
  That's not the assertion here. A good researcher should be aware of the current state of the field, and thus mention current efforts to solve a problem when discussing that problem. Regardless of who's doing the work.
  - abeppu 6y ago
    I agree with you that a researcher should be aware of current work relevant to the problem under discussion. Jeff's quoted email states that part of the issue was that Timnit's paper "ignored too much relevant research", without specifically saying whether the unmentioned relevant research was done by Google. But the parent comment to which I responded, and which I quoted, specifically said the problem was to criticize google while working for google, and seemed to approve that this should be judged unacceptable. > I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece on Google and published with Google's name. For me, it's correct they demand a retraction. The "regardless of who's doing the work" part is key, and not all participants in this conversation are on the same page about it.
    - xapata 6y ago
      > not all participants in this conversation are on the same page about it. I don't see anything contradicting, but merely failing to add the "regardless" footer. Admittedly, sometimes I read too quickly.
sjg007 6y ago
Academic papers are not hit pieces.
mempko 6y ago
What if they aren't doing work to combat the problems? As a citizen I want to know.

chejazi 6y ago

> I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece Hopefully the paper gets leaked so we can judge for ourselves.

tmathmeyer 6y ago
I've read it internally. It's rather bland and doesn't actually indite google. I'm inclined to believe that it was a paper-submission-process issue.
- Ar-Curunir 6y ago
  That disagrees with what Dean himself is saying...

freeone3000 6y ago

Company with unethical practices hires ethics researcher Ethics researcher publishes piece critical of company's activities Company is shocked as to how this could happen.

acituan 6y ago
Ethics researcher omits relevant research in paper to smuggle in a particular agenda. Company calls it out. Researcher realizes the limits of her narrative setting powers. Non-vocal majority is happy to see runaway activism being curbed in corporate settings. Slow march through institutions is slowed down for a day.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance (since even though environmental improvements could have been done, they were not done! So the actual impact wasnt lessened by them at all!); To simply not having known about it. The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. Moreover, that's the role of a conference reviewer, not the employer. Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > It's not "runaway activism" if you hire ethics researchers who find ethics problems. The fundamental difference between activism and research is that activism sets the agenda ahead of time while research explores the knowledge space and reports findings. One helps us incrementally make better sense of the world, the other wants us to narrow on particular facts while omitting other relevant facts in the name of advancing a cause. > Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance ... To simply not having known about it The omitted research is clearly relevant. Deciding what is relevant and what is not is precisely what narrative warfare is. If they did not know about the adjacent research, then they would simply be incompetent researchers (which I highly doubt is the case). > The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. There is no retraction because there was no external publication. Jeff Dean states reviewer response as you stated was there but was ignored by the approver. > Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed. Corporate researchers are still employees and are bound by a job description. Independent of the content of the research, it is also entirely within the rights of the employer to set a certain bar of quality being cleared. In this case it seems like Google didn't want affiliation with this paper, not the other way around.
    - freeone3000 6y ago

geofft 6y ago

For me, it's pretty unprofessional (and cowardly) to hire a well-respected ethics researcher, write some PR pieces about how the company takes ethical actions seriously, and then tell her that her publications have to follow the party line and cannot overly criticize the company.

cmsj 6y ago

Self-critique is more precious than gold, particularly when you have the scale of influence that Google does.

abeppu 6y ago

> It's simply unprofessional to critque your company for something while not mentioning the work they're doing to combat that. It would seem deeply problematic for an AI ethics researcher to have the expectation that when they critique their own employer, they should mention all their work to ameliorate bias or ethics problems, but to not have a similar expectation when they're critiquing other companies. Is the point of having an ethics researcher to expand our understanding of ethical issues, or merely to aid in PR? If a university administrator were to attempt to tell a PI not to submit a paper critical of work from another lab at the same institution, I think that would be judged as a shocking overreach. But for Google, we're not even in agreement that this behavior is a problem. It's unfortunate that we expect so little from corporations, even if those corporations are some of the main drivers of research in a field.

xapata 6y ago
That's not the assertion here. A good researcher should be aware of the current state of the field, and thus mention current efforts to solve a problem when discussing that problem. Regardless of who's doing the work.
- abeppu 6y ago
  I agree with you that a researcher should be aware of current work relevant to the problem under discussion. Jeff's quoted email states that part of the issue was that Timnit's paper "ignored too much relevant research", without specifically saying whether the unmentioned relevant research was done by Google. But the parent comment to which I responded, and which I quoted, specifically said the problem was to criticize google while working for google, and seemed to approve that this should be judged unacceptable. > I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece on Google and published with Google's name. For me, it's correct they demand a retraction. The "regardless of who's doing the work" part is key, and not all participants in this conversation are on the same page about it.
  - xapata 6y ago
    > not all participants in this conversation are on the same page about it. I don't see anything contradicting, but merely failing to add the "regardless" footer. Admittedly, sometimes I read too quickly.

sjg007 6y ago

Academic papers are not hit pieces.

mempko 6y ago

What if they aren't doing work to combat the problems? As a citizen I want to know.