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Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues? I don't know if

Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues? I don't know if Gebru actually qualifies aside the matters of ethical AI. In my experience those people who work in engineering who sidewalks into some non-engineering matters often lack skills to compete where most do, and decided to leverage their incompetency with some other topics. And Gebru is doing exactly that in Google.

britch 6y ago
I'm not seeing the connection between your comment and the Gerbu's firing. As I understand it Gerbu was hired as an academic to do research into AI ethics (her field of study). She was fired, in part, due to a disagreement around the contents of a paper she was publishing. Where is the sidewalking into engineering matters?
- metabagel 6y ago
  I haven’t the foggiest idea what “sidewalking into engineering matters” (from the parent comment) means. Is that a British expression? I’ve only ever heard “sidewalk” used as a noun.
anu7df 6y ago
If you don't know her qualifications outside of ethical AI, you can't possibly know if "Gebru is doing exactly that in Google" People's motivations and ambitions vary. She may be very skilled in all things AI and yet choose the role she had and choose that hill to die on.
- lmm 6y ago
  It's like when you see an official's nephew get a plum job at a large corp. Sure, it's possible that they legitimately got there on their merits, but if you give them the benefit of the doubt then you'll get taken for a ride by the bad actors, and you don't have the time or ability to check the details.
warriorstar 6y ago
You can't possibly be for real. You don't know her qualifications, so you assume she doesn't have any. Then you come up with a straw-man of "non-engineers lacking skills" and assign that to her! You're more willing to assign traits you made up to her than look up what she's actually capable of!
- academicthrow 6y ago
  If you've been in academia for awhile you've seen this happen time and time again. Student does excellently in undergrad, masters, phd coursework* but when it comes to making real technical contributions, they hit a wall. It was a clever move by her to use her pedigree to pivot into "AI ethics" where the standards for publishing are much lower (as we can see from this draft that was circulated). *Given her background/race, we can't actually rule out the possibility that she got carried through the ranks by AA.
  - pseingatl 6y ago
    This is an outrageous racist statement in itself. The idea that she reached her position because of AA is unbelievable. Getting into Google isn't easy, and the company doesn't give a rat's ass about diversity, HR statements and pablum notwithstanding. If any company has a reputation for hiring only talented people, it's Google. She got her position based on merit, like the overwhelming majority of Google employees.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      The existence of affirmative action is not in any doubt, and it's not racist to suppose that some people benefit from it, given that's the entire purpose it exists for. the company doesn't give a rat's ass about diversity I have no idea how anyone could think that. It's famous for being obsessed with diversity to the extent that they publicly fired, slandered and screwed over a guy who wrote an essay saying maybe the company is approaching diversity the wrong way. This is a company in which managers have apologised for using the word "family" because it's supposedly offensive to LBGT people, in which they organise competitions which ban men (see Code Jam for Women), in which they fund female-only scholarships, which literally has a website called https://diversity.google/ https://diversity.google/, which puts "Google is committed to advancing racial equity for Black communities" at the top of its developer documentation, which labels businesses in Google Maps if they're women or black owned and a million other things that show this is a topic they think about all the time. As for merit, you're about a decade behind the times. Google was relaxing hiring standards for women in particular a long time ago. For example they could fail phone screens and be advanced to the next stages anyway, whereas men would just be dropped at that point. You can't be so strongly pro-diversity and not have that problem because ultimately the only way to seriously improve in your self-chosen metrics is to hire 'diverse' people aggressively.
metabagel 6y ago
I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues? In general? Yes. When it comes to the snakes FAANG have created biting the hand that feeds on the industry stage? No. I absolutely love to watch their internal dramas spill out for all to see or, if you're smart, take warning from. >I don't know if Gebru actually qualifies aside the matters of ethical AI. In my experience those people who work in engineering who sidewalks into some non-engineering matters often lack skills to compete where most do, and decided to leverage their incompetency with some other topics. And Gebru is doing exactly that in Google. Not in a position to comment on this person's credentials or skills but I don't personally begrudge the type of grifter you're talking about. Most of us are merely trying to optimize for income and they're no different, and their success is a result of poor leadership in companies and/or society.
ergocoder 6y ago
She is likely fired for her toxicity. Looking at this Twitter thread between her and Jeff Dean 6 months ago: https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360 https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360 ... She was being toxic toward Jeff Dean, who is her manager's manager. I looked at that tweet, and yikes. I'll never do that to my colleagues.
- dekhn 6y ago
  I personally think it was this tweet that sealed her fate at Google. Calling out your leadership unecessarily with a tweet about white supremacy is just insane.
dekhn 6y ago
She is eminently qualified to do ML research, and established an excellent position in ethical ML. I don't think this is a fair criticism of her abilities.
- thu2111 6y ago
  What AI research has she done that isn't related to "ethics"? She doesn't seem to have any track record for creating new algorithms, for example.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    she worked on object detection with Fei Fei during her PhD. Folks who took classes where she TA'd said she was technically competent.

britch 6y ago

I'm not seeing the connection between your comment and the Gerbu's firing. As I understand it Gerbu was hired as an academic to do research into AI ethics (her field of study). She was fired, in part, due to a disagreement around the contents of a paper she was publishing. Where is the sidewalking into engineering matters?

metabagel 6y ago
I haven’t the foggiest idea what “sidewalking into engineering matters” (from the parent comment) means. Is that a British expression? I’ve only ever heard “sidewalk” used as a noun.

anu7df 6y ago

If you don't know her qualifications outside of ethical AI, you can't possibly know if "Gebru is doing exactly that in Google" People's motivations and ambitions vary. She may be very skilled in all things AI and yet choose the role she had and choose that hill to die on.

lmm 6y ago
It's like when you see an official's nephew get a plum job at a large corp. Sure, it's possible that they legitimately got there on their merits, but if you give them the benefit of the doubt then you'll get taken for a ride by the bad actors, and you don't have the time or ability to check the details.

warriorstar 6y ago

You can't possibly be for real. You don't know her qualifications, so you assume she doesn't have any. Then you come up with a straw-man of "non-engineers lacking skills" and assign that to her! You're more willing to assign traits you made up to her than look up what she's actually capable of!

academicthrow 6y ago
If you've been in academia for awhile you've seen this happen time and time again. Student does excellently in undergrad, masters, phd coursework* but when it comes to making real technical contributions, they hit a wall. It was a clever move by her to use her pedigree to pivot into "AI ethics" where the standards for publishing are much lower (as we can see from this draft that was circulated). *Given her background/race, we can't actually rule out the possibility that she got carried through the ranks by AA.
- pseingatl 6y ago
  This is an outrageous racist statement in itself. The idea that she reached her position because of AA is unbelievable. Getting into Google isn't easy, and the company doesn't give a rat's ass about diversity, HR statements and pablum notwithstanding. If any company has a reputation for hiring only talented people, it's Google. She got her position based on merit, like the overwhelming majority of Google employees.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    The existence of affirmative action is not in any doubt, and it's not racist to suppose that some people benefit from it, given that's the entire purpose it exists for. the company doesn't give a rat's ass about diversity I have no idea how anyone could think that. It's famous for being obsessed with diversity to the extent that they publicly fired, slandered and screwed over a guy who wrote an essay saying maybe the company is approaching diversity the wrong way. This is a company in which managers have apologised for using the word "family" because it's supposedly offensive to LBGT people, in which they organise competitions which ban men (see Code Jam for Women), in which they fund female-only scholarships, which literally has a website called https://diversity.google/ https://diversity.google/, which puts "Google is committed to advancing racial equity for Black communities" at the top of its developer documentation, which labels businesses in Google Maps if they're women or black owned and a million other things that show this is a topic they think about all the time. As for merit, you're about a decade behind the times. Google was relaxing hiring standards for women in particular a long time ago. For example they could fail phone screens and be advanced to the next stages anyway, whereas men would just be dropped at that point. You can't be so strongly pro-diversity and not have that problem because ultimately the only way to seriously improve in your self-chosen metrics is to hire 'diverse' people aggressively.

metabagel 6y ago

I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues? In general? Yes. When it comes to the snakes FAANG have created biting the hand that feeds on the industry stage? No. I absolutely love to watch their internal dramas spill out for all to see or, if you're smart, take warning from. >I don't know if Gebru actually qualifies aside the matters of ethical AI. In my experience those people who work in engineering who sidewalks into some non-engineering matters often lack skills to compete where most do, and decided to leverage their incompetency with some other topics. And Gebru is doing exactly that in Google. Not in a position to comment on this person's credentials or skills but I don't personally begrudge the type of grifter you're talking about. Most of us are merely trying to optimize for income and they're no different, and their success is a result of poor leadership in companies and/or society.

ergocoder 6y ago

She is likely fired for her toxicity. Looking at this Twitter thread between her and Jeff Dean 6 months ago: https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360 https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360 ... She was being toxic toward Jeff Dean, who is her manager's manager. I looked at that tweet, and yikes. I'll never do that to my colleagues.

dekhn 6y ago
I personally think it was this tweet that sealed her fate at Google. Calling out your leadership unecessarily with a tweet about white supremacy is just insane.

dekhn 6y ago

She is eminently qualified to do ML research, and established an excellent position in ethical ML. I don't think this is a fair criticism of her abilities.

thu2111 6y ago
What AI research has she done that isn't related to "ethics"? She doesn't seem to have any track record for creating new algorithms, for example.
- dekhn 6y ago
  she worked on object detection with Fei Fei during her PhD. Folks who took classes where she TA'd said she was technically competent.