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I feel very disheartened that whatever good Timnit Gebru is doing in her work seems to be undermined by her constant antagonism and hostility. Based on this art

I feel very disheartened that whatever good Timnit Gebru is doing in her work seems to be undermined by her constant antagonism and hostility. Based on this article, and additional context from other Google employees, I think she is in the right, but that she herself is such an obnoxious person it's hard for a lot of us here to be able to separate the issue with her personality. My first introduction to Gebru (and probably a lot of others here) was through her fight with Yann LeCun. Whatever everyone thinks about that debate, one thing was clear: LeCun consistently asked his supporters to not attack Gebru, and tried to engage the discourse, whereas she repeatedly encouraged her supporters to attack LeCun, and avoided his points. FWIW, I myself am a minority. I am very sympathetic to the investigation of AI ethics and Gebru's general area of work. I also completely understand and support the need for activists to disrupt norms: we wouldn't have civil liberties if activists weren't willing to disrupt middle-class norms. But I think for exactly that reason activists have a responsibility (a greater responsibility even) to be selective about which norms or civilities they choose to disrupt. They do such enormous harm when their actions can be picked apart and dismissed for completely unrelated issues - in this case because Timnit doesn't seem to engage in good faith discussions with other experts in her field. It sucks, I really hate that this is what ethics in tech is going to be associated with.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> whereas she repeatedly encouraged her supporters to attack LeCun, and avoided his points. This is historical revisionism, colored by your misremembering of the events. If you go back and look, you'll be unable to find Gebru encouraging anyone to attack LeCun. Nor will you find LeCun making an effort to engage with Gebrus research. He never so much as acknowledges the existence of her publications when asked to read or comment on them. E: as an amusing example of the importance of this kind of research, my phone decided that when I typed "Gebru", I meant "Henry".
- saeranv 6y ago
  So as I recall, you're right that she didn't encourage people explicitly, but she kept retweeting other supporters attacking LeCun, whereas LeCun kept telling his supporters to not attack her, and talked very positively of her. I agree my phrasing is muddying the waters, I should have been more precise. On another note, it's interesting to me that I keep seeing the LeCun debate come up here again and again as an example of her being a bad-faith debater, given that it technically doesn't have anything to do with this Google debate. Whether we agree with her on the substance, I feel like it strengthens my point that she badly damaged her perception amongst the ML/AI crowd, and their willingness to give her the benefit of the doubt in the way she chose to debate LeCun.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    I think twitter is a better representation of the actual ML community than HN. Yes, her reputation suffered amongst a group predisposed to consider her area of research to be something between not real and propaganda (both sentiments I've seen expressed and upvoted!).
    - saeranv 6y ago
      It's possible, I'm not on twitter so don't really know how it played out there. I agree there's definitely a large population on HN with simplistic and reactionary political inclinations[1] that's predisposed to dislike her. I guess I'm going off the fact that I myself was put off by the way she argued, and I consider myself more progressive then the median HN-er. [1] The fact that you're getting downvoted without explanation (at this particular moment) is a good example of that to be honest. Your responses are just providing further context and understanding about the issue, there's no reason it should be downvoted other then the fact that people don't like that you're supporting Gebru.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> whereas she repeatedly encouraged her supporters to attack LeCun, and avoided his points. This is historical revisionism, colored by your misremembering of the events. If you go back and look, you'll be unable to find Gebru encouraging anyone to attack LeCun. Nor will you find LeCun making an effort to engage with Gebrus research. He never so much as acknowledges the existence of her publications when asked to read or comment on them. E: as an amusing example of the importance of this kind of research, my phone decided that when I typed "Gebru", I meant "Henry".

saeranv 6y ago
So as I recall, you're right that she didn't encourage people explicitly, but she kept retweeting other supporters attacking LeCun, whereas LeCun kept telling his supporters to not attack her, and talked very positively of her. I agree my phrasing is muddying the waters, I should have been more precise. On another note, it's interesting to me that I keep seeing the LeCun debate come up here again and again as an example of her being a bad-faith debater, given that it technically doesn't have anything to do with this Google debate. Whether we agree with her on the substance, I feel like it strengthens my point that she badly damaged her perception amongst the ML/AI crowd, and their willingness to give her the benefit of the doubt in the way she chose to debate LeCun.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  I think twitter is a better representation of the actual ML community than HN. Yes, her reputation suffered amongst a group predisposed to consider her area of research to be something between not real and propaganda (both sentiments I've seen expressed and upvoted!).
  - saeranv 6y ago
    It's possible, I'm not on twitter so don't really know how it played out there. I agree there's definitely a large population on HN with simplistic and reactionary political inclinations[1] that's predisposed to dislike her. I guess I'm going off the fact that I myself was put off by the way she argued, and I consider myself more progressive then the median HN-er. [1] The fact that you're getting downvoted without explanation (at this particular moment) is a good example of that to be honest. Your responses are just providing further context and understanding about the issue, there's no reason it should be downvoted other then the fact that people don't like that you're supporting Gebru.