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Good grief - this terrible clickbaity headline writing: "We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says" The paper DID NOT force

Good grief - this terrible clickbaity headline writing: "We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says" The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way. The headline from the last discussion on Timnit's exit[0] was awful as well: "The withering email that got an ethical AI researcher fired at Google". So bad in fact that it was changed on HN to more accurately reflect what actually happened: "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google" (much more neutral and factual in tone). Seriously, what happened to journalistic standards and integrity? Why are the actual events being so forcefully twisted to fit a particular narrative? No wonder the general population struggle to figure out what's true and what's not, and fall victim to all kinds of nonsense, BS theories, and conspiracies. I wish I had a good idea on how to change this behaviour by journalists and publications. (Clearly this is a problem that goes far beyond Timnit's story.) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25292386

saagarjha 6y ago
> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way. This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Is it really fair to disparage an article for having a title like that when you’ve completely ignored such a large part of the issue?
- the-dude 6y ago
  Do you dispute her ultimatum and/or offer to resign?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer? No. But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position from which she felt her only way to exercise her leverage was to make such a proposition, then pretend like they’re blameless by “choosing a provided option” of terminating her without looking at the reasons why she had to do such a thing? I’m not sure yet. I don’t think we have enough information at this point to judge, so I’m a bit concerned with comments like the one I just responded to that ignore like this concern doesn’t exist.
    - mustuhfa 6y ago
      What about her toxic behavior? Do you dispute that?
      - threeseed 6y ago
        Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.
        mustuhfa 6y ago
        Have you read the exchange with Lecun? That is fact and it is Toxic. So its not unnecessary or imflammatory
        e_proxus 6y ago
        Do you have any links to this discussion? I’m trying to verify the toxic claim and am having a hard time finding it on Twitter right now because of all the noise.
        throwaway74453 6y ago
        I think there are links to the tweets in this article: https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
- bartread 6y ago
  > This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure. As I pointed out in the previous discussion she may have faced some sort of disciplinary action upon her return from vacation due to the content of her message to the brain group. However, when she resigned what Google managers did (and this is no great leap of logic) is figure out that if they made her work her notice period she'd probably only cause more trouble in the meantime, so they brought it forward and made it effective immediately. This might or might not be unusual behaviour for handling a resignation at Google, but it is fairly common practice amongst different organisations for a variety of different reasons that usually boil down to mitigating some kimd of risk to the organisation.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    …and? Did you not consider it useful to mention at all? Do you think you’ve already included what she mentioned?
    - bartread 6y ago
      Do you really think it's valuable for me to regurgitate an entire discussion that I've provided a link to (and which anyone can easily read) in my comment when what I'm actually trying to do is make a wider, but relatively pithy, point about journalistic integrity and the impact that the lack of it is having on our societies more than comment on Timnit's specific case? I will say that your comments are an almost perfect illustration of that point though.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Timnit claims she was fired, you’ve completely erased that part from the discussion and used it to prove a point about journalistic integrity. You provided a link to a massive discussion that has clearly not yet been able to piece through the details. When I asked you why you were so confident in your position that Timnit was clearly in the wrong and rightfully terminated because she didn’t comply with what Google told her to do, you decided that I lack journalistic integrity. Google, talking through Jeff Dean, claims that Timnit was unhappy with her situation and submitted a good faith resignation which Google accepted due to her not following their policies. Timnit claims that she was forced into a position where she had to issue her ultimatum, forcing her into a resignation. And we have claims from Google employees saying that the process she had was unusual and did not match a normal review. Isn’t the true journalistic malpractice ignoring this and claiming that any title that doesn’t match your view, which appears to be Google’s view of the situation is inaccurate?
kmlx 6y ago
> Seriously, what happened to journalistic standards and integrity? Why are the actual events being so forcefully twisted to fit a particular narrative? clicks. after a decade during which they lost money over fist not knowing how to monetise their product on the internet, they all went to the lowest common denominator: clicks. this in turn forced them to start bending the truth (something that tabloids where known for, and for which they got huge profits). basically we still don’t have a viable business model for this industry. the only one that works needs headlines such as the one you mentioned to function. the interesting bit is that publication such as Nikkei or the FT are still top-notch, but these are niches, not general audience publications. (also my FT subscription is £30/month and that’s a lot of money if you’re not in that niche)
- bartread 6y ago
  > the interesting bit is that publication such as Nikkei or the FT are still top-notch, but these are niches, not general audience publications. (also my FT subscription is £30/month and that’s a lot of money if you’re not in that niche) Indeed. £30/mo sounds like quite a lot of money in an era where a teenager doesn't come to your house every morning and shove the newspaper through your door (as I used to many years ago) but, adjusted for inflation, it's probably less than the cost of that older delivery mechanism. It's hard to persuade people of that point of view though so they stick with free, ad-supported "news". Not that paid news wasn't historically ad supported as well, but at least they had more diversified revenue streams. And you are, of course, correct: it's all about the clicks and ad revenue. And, given most peoples' preference for free over paid news, I don't have any great ideas on how to fix that.
Jabbles 6y ago
I don't see how you can possibly be that confident about the truth of what happened. Unless you have non-public information, then there is still considerable uncertainty. Timnit says she was fired: https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952 Jeff Dean's email says the article was "approved", though clearly not approved enough: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Other researchers at Google say that this level of scrutiny is highly unusual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307618 So in fact it is you that is twisting the narrative by asserting that the truth is publicly known, and that it is exactly as Google describes.
- the-dude 6y ago
  And further down that thread: > I need to be very careful what I say so let me be clear. They can come after me. No one told me that I was fired.
- bartread 6y ago
  Timnit also shared a number of tweets, which you can easily access via the one you referenced, where she quotes from the email that Google sent her in response to her ultimatum. They accepted her resignation and brought her finish date forward. They cited her message to the brain group as reason for doing so (without the resignation I suspect she may have faced some disciplinary action, though whether it would have gone as far as firing I don't know). They clearly weren't happy with the content but, beyond that, if somebody is pissed off enough to write that the kind of message Timnit did then, by making them work their notice period, you only invite them to cause more trouble whilst they're still part of the organisation. You therefore bring forward their leaving date and make their resignation effective immediately. When you do this it's about mitigating risk to the organisation. Commonly I've seen it done with salespeople in certain sectors, where when they resign they are escorted from the premises and access is revoked as part of minimising the risks that they'll take clients with them to their next role (particularly if they'll be working for a competitor). Still, any situation in which continuing to have an employee around represents a significant risk to the organisation is one in which you might ask them to leave immediately. Google already had a mess to try to clean up with the brain group as a result of Timnit's message to that group. They probably didn't want any new messes to deal with, so they asked her to leave immediately to mitigate that risk. Btw, I'm not advocating for Google here: I'm just looking at this in terms of, "What would I as a manager do in a circumstance where an employee has set out conditions of an ultimatum for their continued employment that I am unable or unwilling to meet?"
viktorcode 6y ago
> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. We all would love to see an evidence of it.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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sillysaurusx 6y ago
Your feelings are justified. I felt the same way as you two days ago. You might be interested to know that I’ve changed my mind. The reasons are documented here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 Basically, every one of those arguments evaporates when you dig into the details. She was doing her job. The paper was anodyne and perhaps even boring. She was rightfully pissed off that some middle manager was telling her and her four coauthors that they must retract their paper (the reviewers later posted on Reddit that they would have been happy to accept edits). Jeff was micromanaging her citation list, which is almost unheard of, apparently. Multiple google employees came out of the woodwork to say “there is no such review process, other than a quick scan to see if you’re leaking company secrets by accident.” All of this is fascinating. Because, as far as I can tell, the entire AI community is now on her side. The only people who keep bringing up her character flaws are people who don’t do AI / ML. Or at least, they seem to be pretty quiet now that Jeff revealed Google supposedly has some weird academic review process no one’s heard of till now. Your feelings about the journalists are completely warranted, to underscore that point. But it’s odd how much momentum is building. Try to ignore the circus; you’ll be surprised to find there is substance behind the claims. I was as surprised as anyone. And to reiterate, pick any one of the arguments you mention, and really dig into it deeply for details. Try to verify the claims. The most you’ll get is that she was curt. And I remind you that it’s usually known who the reviewers are at any given venue. Even if it’s blinded, you at least know the general group of people involved. In this case it was highly unusual to do some kind of anonymous, selective, ad-hoc enforcement of rules that really don’t seem to benefit the scientific process in any way.
- throwaway74453 6y ago
  Re the existence of an internal review (tl;dr: it definitely does exist!): A Google employee here who's actually published research there. There definitely IS an internal review and an approval process and every single paper I have published while there had to go through it. Everyone I knew had to submit for an internal review well in advance and I personally couldn't even submit to a conference review once because we only asked for the internal review 3 days in advance, which wasn't enough time. My understanding was that everyone around me was adhering to this.
woj-tek 6y ago
> She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given I'm unsure whether "improvement" is the right synonym for "change" in this situation.
martingoodson 6y ago
‘she resigned of her own volition’. That’s false - she, at most, threatened to resign.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

saagarjha 6y ago

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. Her subsequent behaviour - submitting without approval, rant, ultimatum, and resignation - did. And she wasn't "forced out": she resigned of her own volition. She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given, resubmit it for approval, and then get on with her life, but she went the other way. This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Is it really fair to disparage an article for having a title like that when you’ve completely ignored such a large part of the issue?

the-dude 6y ago
Do you dispute her ultimatum and/or offer to resign?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Do I dispute that she provided an ultimatum of which one side was a resignation offer? No. But can I say that this ultimatum wasn’t the result of Google pulling the rug out from under her and putting her in an unfortunate position from which she felt her only way to exercise her leverage was to make such a proposition, then pretend like they’re blameless by “choosing a provided option” of terminating her without looking at the reasons why she had to do such a thing? I’m not sure yet. I don’t think we have enough information at this point to judge, so I’m a bit concerned with comments like the one I just responded to that ignore like this concern doesn’t exist.
  - mustuhfa 6y ago
    What about her toxic behavior? Do you dispute that?
    - threeseed 6y ago
      Toxic is an inflammatory and unnecessary word to use when no-one is privy to the actual facts.
      - mustuhfa 6y ago
        Have you read the exchange with Lecun? That is fact and it is Toxic. So its not unnecessary or imflammatory
        e_proxus 6y ago
        Do you have any links to this discussion? I’m trying to verify the toxic claim and am having a hard time finding it on Twitter right now because of all the noise.
        throwaway74453 6y ago
        I think there are links to the tweets in this article: https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
bartread 6y ago
> This sounds a lot like taking what Google said without including Timnit’s point of view. Not at all. I've read everything she's written on the issue including the long message she wrote to the brain group, and her tweets where she shared what Google said when they accepted her resignation. These latter make specific reference to the ultimatum, which was the ultimate reason for her departure. As I pointed out in the previous discussion she may have faced some sort of disciplinary action upon her return from vacation due to the content of her message to the brain group. However, when she resigned what Google managers did (and this is no great leap of logic) is figure out that if they made her work her notice period she'd probably only cause more trouble in the meantime, so they brought it forward and made it effective immediately. This might or might not be unusual behaviour for handling a resignation at Google, but it is fairly common practice amongst different organisations for a variety of different reasons that usually boil down to mitigating some kimd of risk to the organisation.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  …and? Did you not consider it useful to mention at all? Do you think you’ve already included what she mentioned?
  - bartread 6y ago
    Do you really think it's valuable for me to regurgitate an entire discussion that I've provided a link to (and which anyone can easily read) in my comment when what I'm actually trying to do is make a wider, but relatively pithy, point about journalistic integrity and the impact that the lack of it is having on our societies more than comment on Timnit's specific case? I will say that your comments are an almost perfect illustration of that point though.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Timnit claims she was fired, you’ve completely erased that part from the discussion and used it to prove a point about journalistic integrity. You provided a link to a massive discussion that has clearly not yet been able to piece through the details. When I asked you why you were so confident in your position that Timnit was clearly in the wrong and rightfully terminated because she didn’t comply with what Google told her to do, you decided that I lack journalistic integrity. Google, talking through Jeff Dean, claims that Timnit was unhappy with her situation and submitted a good faith resignation which Google accepted due to her not following their policies. Timnit claims that she was forced into a position where she had to issue her ultimatum, forcing her into a resignation. And we have claims from Google employees saying that the process she had was unusual and did not match a normal review. Isn’t the true journalistic malpractice ignoring this and claiming that any title that doesn’t match your view, which appears to be Google’s view of the situation is inaccurate?

kmlx 6y ago

> Seriously, what happened to journalistic standards and integrity? Why are the actual events being so forcefully twisted to fit a particular narrative? clicks. after a decade during which they lost money over fist not knowing how to monetise their product on the internet, they all went to the lowest common denominator: clicks. this in turn forced them to start bending the truth (something that tabloids where known for, and for which they got huge profits). basically we still don’t have a viable business model for this industry. the only one that works needs headlines such as the one you mentioned to function. the interesting bit is that publication such as Nikkei or the FT are still top-notch, but these are niches, not general audience publications. (also my FT subscription is £30/month and that’s a lot of money if you’re not in that niche)

bartread 6y ago
> the interesting bit is that publication such as Nikkei or the FT are still top-notch, but these are niches, not general audience publications. (also my FT subscription is £30/month and that’s a lot of money if you’re not in that niche) Indeed. £30/mo sounds like quite a lot of money in an era where a teenager doesn't come to your house every morning and shove the newspaper through your door (as I used to many years ago) but, adjusted for inflation, it's probably less than the cost of that older delivery mechanism. It's hard to persuade people of that point of view though so they stick with free, ad-supported "news". Not that paid news wasn't historically ad supported as well, but at least they had more diversified revenue streams. And you are, of course, correct: it's all about the clicks and ad revenue. And, given most peoples' preference for free over paid news, I don't have any great ideas on how to fix that.

Jabbles 6y ago

I don't see how you can possibly be that confident about the truth of what happened. Unless you have non-public information, then there is still considerable uncertainty. Timnit says she was fired: https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952 https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334352694664957952 Jeff Dean's email says the article was "approved", though clearly not approved enough: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Other researchers at Google say that this level of scrutiny is highly unusual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25307618 So in fact it is you that is twisting the narrative by asserting that the truth is publicly known, and that it is exactly as Google describes.

the-dude 6y ago
And further down that thread: > I need to be very careful what I say so let me be clear. They can come after me. No one told me that I was fired.
bartread 6y ago
Timnit also shared a number of tweets, which you can easily access via the one you referenced, where she quotes from the email that Google sent her in response to her ultimatum. They accepted her resignation and brought her finish date forward. They cited her message to the brain group as reason for doing so (without the resignation I suspect she may have faced some disciplinary action, though whether it would have gone as far as firing I don't know). They clearly weren't happy with the content but, beyond that, if somebody is pissed off enough to write that the kind of message Timnit did then, by making them work their notice period, you only invite them to cause more trouble whilst they're still part of the organisation. You therefore bring forward their leaving date and make their resignation effective immediately. When you do this it's about mitigating risk to the organisation. Commonly I've seen it done with salespeople in certain sectors, where when they resign they are escorted from the premises and access is revoked as part of minimising the risks that they'll take clients with them to their next role (particularly if they'll be working for a competitor). Still, any situation in which continuing to have an employee around represents a significant risk to the organisation is one in which you might ask them to leave immediately. Google already had a mess to try to clean up with the brain group as a result of Timnit's message to that group. They probably didn't want any new messes to deal with, so they asked her to leave immediately to mitigate that risk. Btw, I'm not advocating for Google here: I'm just looking at this in terms of, "What would I as a manager do in a circumstance where an employee has set out conditions of an ultimatum for their continued employment that I am unable or unwilling to meet?"

viktorcode 6y ago

> The paper DID NOT force her out of Google. We all would love to see an evidence of it.

deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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sillysaurusx 6y ago

Your feelings are justified. I felt the same way as you two days ago. You might be interested to know that I’ve changed my mind. The reasons are documented here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25308233 Basically, every one of those arguments evaporates when you dig into the details. She was doing her job. The paper was anodyne and perhaps even boring. She was rightfully pissed off that some middle manager was telling her and her four coauthors that they must retract their paper (the reviewers later posted on Reddit that they would have been happy to accept edits). Jeff was micromanaging her citation list, which is almost unheard of, apparently. Multiple google employees came out of the woodwork to say “there is no such review process, other than a quick scan to see if you’re leaking company secrets by accident.” All of this is fascinating. Because, as far as I can tell, the entire AI community is now on her side. The only people who keep bringing up her character flaws are people who don’t do AI / ML. Or at least, they seem to be pretty quiet now that Jeff revealed Google supposedly has some weird academic review process no one’s heard of till now. Your feelings about the journalists are completely warranted, to underscore that point. But it’s odd how much momentum is building. Try to ignore the circus; you’ll be surprised to find there is substance behind the claims. I was as surprised as anyone. And to reiterate, pick any one of the arguments you mention, and really dig into it deeply for details. Try to verify the claims. The most you’ll get is that she was curt. And I remind you that it’s usually known who the reviewers are at any given venue. Even if it’s blinded, you at least know the general group of people involved. In this case it was highly unusual to do some kind of anonymous, selective, ad-hoc enforcement of rules that really don’t seem to benefit the scientific process in any way.

throwaway74453 6y ago
Re the existence of an internal review (tl;dr: it definitely does exist!): A Google employee here who's actually published research there. There definitely IS an internal review and an approval process and every single paper I have published while there had to go through it. Everyone I knew had to submit for an internal review well in advance and I personally couldn't even submit to a conference review once because we only asked for the internal review 3 days in advance, which wasn't enough time. My understanding was that everyone around me was adhering to this.

woj-tek 6y ago

> She could have chosen to make improvements to the paper based on the feedback she was given I'm unsure whether "improvement" is the right synonym for "change" in this situation.

martingoodson 6y ago

‘she resigned of her own volition’. That’s false - she, at most, threatened to resign.

deleted 6y ago

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