6 ms·

I empathize deeply with Gebru and I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google and in tech generally. I do think that, despite me be

by leoh 6y ago

I empathize deeply with Gebru and I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google and in tech generally. I do think that, despite me being white, however, there is a good chance that I would be fired, were I to make an ultimatum about quitting unless the company did X. Based on conversations with managers who have worked at big companies like Google (full disclosure, I work there now), it sounded like this was nearly an explicit policy HR holds at some companies — i.e. that ultimatums would never be tolerated and could result in termination. That said, supposing such a policy were in place, given the understandable frustration she felt about the situation and given the potential institutional racism that led to the event in the first place, an exception likely should have been made. Moreover, one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum and would take it very seriously if they did, opting to take time to consider it, as opposed to issuing a quick termination.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
Why does being an ethicist qualify someone to make ultimatums? Is Google supposed to let researchers dictate the terms of their employment?
- leoh 6y ago
  An ideal HR department would not yield to ultimatums unless they felt that not yielding is a sound, ethical orientation. Thus, a trained ethicist's position ought to be at least tentatively considered without rushing to a decision.
- geofft 6y ago
  The question isn't really about whether she was qualified to make ultimatums. She's not an idiot - she knew that there was little chance of it going well for her, career-wise, when she did so. Everyone who's saying "She should have expected to lose her job" is missing that she did. The question is why she felt she needed to make one anyway. In particular, she was hired into effectively an adversarial role: to note when Google was engaging in unethical practices. This is not particularly uncommon in business: internal audit teams do this in their own way, for instance. Or security teams, or legal teams, or whoever. All of them have the job of occasionally telling the company "Don't do this." If an internal auditor (or security engineer, or counsel) says, I feel like I am unable to do my job under the terms you've set and if you don't change those terms I see no choice but to leave, it's worth asking why. It's possible that the auditor has an unreasonable view of how to do their job. But it's also entirely possible that the company is intentionally preventing the auditor from being able to do their job because they have something they don't want seen, that upper management wants to do something that they know their audit team won't agree with. An ethicist is much the same. It would be one thing if she was fired by her boss. She was not, and her boss was blindsided. She was fired by her skip-boss on the orders of her skip-skip-boss, neither of whom are on the ethics team, but who are in the larger Google AI organizational unit.
  - corty 6y ago
    An internal auditor is usually held to some standard of confidentiality. Audit results becoming public should not happen at the decision of just the auditor (except of course if there were a legal obligation to report). In that respect she proved untrustworthy for the company by her ultimatum. She basically proved that she would be willing to make Google look bad in the future. She also went public, making Google look bad in the present. Basically the same reason for letting her go as with Damore.
    - geofft 6y ago
      She already had formal approval for her publication to be public well before the ultimatum. The ultimatum was in response to management saying "Actually, we're going to change the process on you because we find this work embarrassing." She did not make a decision to publish on her own. Moreover, she's not an auditor, and she has never been accused of publishing confidential information. My story about an auditor was an analogy.
HexagonalKitten 6y ago
> I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google I think Google saw a black female PhD and jumped to hire her. All the boxes, and a well respected PhD. So it's hard to imagine how they'd be racist against someone they head hunted and desperately wanted. It's not like they hired her from behind a curtain and only found out who they hired once they said yes. > Based on conversations with managers ... nearly an explicit policy HR holds ... that ultimatums would never be tolerated and could result in termination. Yes, but it's would not could. And especially quickly when the demand could never be fulfilled. I've heard of only one ultimatum that worked, but it was for the benefit of both parties. A senior engineer said they'd be leaving at the end of the quarter if the company didn't let them hire a team around them, including a peer. They gave two choices, fold the project and move me into a supported team, or support this one. > one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum If she'd said "stop, don't release that AI, it's got a critical bug that will hurt people" then they probably would. That's the role they hired her for. But I imagine they'd think she's a bit too close to her own situation, and out of her area, to take her word here and tell her the names of the anonymous reviewers for great justice.
- kitsune_ 6y ago
  > I think Google saw a black female PhD and jumped to hire her. All the boxes, and a well respected PhD. So it's hard to imagine how they'd be racist against someone they head hunted and desperately wanted. I don't think that's true. Co-optation is a concept that is well studied in sociology and political science. In fact I'd wager that a lot of the DEI initiatives are pure PR. Additionally you cannot deduce whether an entire institution is "institutionally" X or not X just because one individual behaved one way or the other. The fact that Jeff Dean hired Gebru doesn't tell you anything. Actual statistical measures, such as retention rates, percentage of work force, percentage of leadership etc. need to be consulted.
  - HexagonalKitten 6y ago
    > a lot of the DEI initiatives are pure PR. Of course. > Additionally you cannot deduce whether an entire institution is "institutionally" X or not X just because one individual behaved one way or the other. That's not required here. Even if the diversity push is pure PR, it's still coordinated company-wide and reflected in all their messaging. Even if it is pure PR, they still stand to gain from supporting it. > The fact that Jeff Dean hired Gebru doesn't tell you anything. It tells you quite a lot. Google is willing to hire ethicists, blacks, and women. They're willing to let them publish many papers, and go to many conventions representing Google. > Actual statistical measures, such as retention rates, percentage of work force, percentage of leadership etc. need to be consulted No, that's only to disprove the literal conspiracy theory that Google is secretly racist and is hiring black people as part of a white-supremacy program. There'd need to be something to make that likely before it's even worth investigating. As long as the most likely theory is a disgruntled employee... Did you read her papers?

by leoh 6y ago

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago

Why does being an ethicist qualify someone to make ultimatums? Is Google supposed to let researchers dictate the terms of their employment?

leoh 6y ago
An ideal HR department would not yield to ultimatums unless they felt that not yielding is a sound, ethical orientation. Thus, a trained ethicist's position ought to be at least tentatively considered without rushing to a decision.
geofft 6y ago
The question isn't really about whether she was qualified to make ultimatums. She's not an idiot - she knew that there was little chance of it going well for her, career-wise, when she did so. Everyone who's saying "She should have expected to lose her job" is missing that she did. The question is why she felt she needed to make one anyway. In particular, she was hired into effectively an adversarial role: to note when Google was engaging in unethical practices. This is not particularly uncommon in business: internal audit teams do this in their own way, for instance. Or security teams, or legal teams, or whoever. All of them have the job of occasionally telling the company "Don't do this." If an internal auditor (or security engineer, or counsel) says, I feel like I am unable to do my job under the terms you've set and if you don't change those terms I see no choice but to leave, it's worth asking why. It's possible that the auditor has an unreasonable view of how to do their job. But it's also entirely possible that the company is intentionally preventing the auditor from being able to do their job because they have something they don't want seen, that upper management wants to do something that they know their audit team won't agree with. An ethicist is much the same. It would be one thing if she was fired by her boss. She was not, and her boss was blindsided. She was fired by her skip-boss on the orders of her skip-skip-boss, neither of whom are on the ethics team, but who are in the larger Google AI organizational unit.
- corty 6y ago
  An internal auditor is usually held to some standard of confidentiality. Audit results becoming public should not happen at the decision of just the auditor (except of course if there were a legal obligation to report). In that respect she proved untrustworthy for the company by her ultimatum. She basically proved that she would be willing to make Google look bad in the future. She also went public, making Google look bad in the present. Basically the same reason for letting her go as with Damore.
  - geofft 6y ago
    She already had formal approval for her publication to be public well before the ultimatum. The ultimatum was in response to management saying "Actually, we're going to change the process on you because we find this work embarrassing." She did not make a decision to publish on her own. Moreover, she's not an auditor, and she has never been accused of publishing confidential information. My story about an auditor was an analogy.

HexagonalKitten 6y ago

> I have no doubts that she has experienced institutional racism at Google I think Google saw a black female PhD and jumped to hire her. All the boxes, and a well respected PhD. So it's hard to imagine how they'd be racist against someone they head hunted and desperately wanted. It's not like they hired her from behind a curtain and only found out who they hired once they said yes. > Based on conversations with managers ... nearly an explicit policy HR holds ... that ultimatums would never be tolerated and could result in termination. Yes, but it's would not could. And especially quickly when the demand could never be fulfilled. I've heard of only one ultimatum that worked, but it was for the benefit of both parties. A senior engineer said they'd be leaving at the end of the quarter if the company didn't let them hire a team around them, including a peer. They gave two choices, fold the project and move me into a supported team, or support this one. > one would hope that a company would trust an established ethicist about whether it were appropriate to issue an ultimatum If she'd said "stop, don't release that AI, it's got a critical bug that will hurt people" then they probably would. That's the role they hired her for. But I imagine they'd think she's a bit too close to her own situation, and out of her area, to take her word here and tell her the names of the anonymous reviewers for great justice.

kitsune_ 6y ago
> I think Google saw a black female PhD and jumped to hire her. All the boxes, and a well respected PhD. So it's hard to imagine how they'd be racist against someone they head hunted and desperately wanted. I don't think that's true. Co-optation is a concept that is well studied in sociology and political science. In fact I'd wager that a lot of the DEI initiatives are pure PR. Additionally you cannot deduce whether an entire institution is "institutionally" X or not X just because one individual behaved one way or the other. The fact that Jeff Dean hired Gebru doesn't tell you anything. Actual statistical measures, such as retention rates, percentage of work force, percentage of leadership etc. need to be consulted.
- HexagonalKitten 6y ago
  > a lot of the DEI initiatives are pure PR. Of course. > Additionally you cannot deduce whether an entire institution is "institutionally" X or not X just because one individual behaved one way or the other. That's not required here. Even if the diversity push is pure PR, it's still coordinated company-wide and reflected in all their messaging. Even if it is pure PR, they still stand to gain from supporting it. > The fact that Jeff Dean hired Gebru doesn't tell you anything. It tells you quite a lot. Google is willing to hire ethicists, blacks, and women. They're willing to let them publish many papers, and go to many conventions representing Google. > Actual statistical measures, such as retention rates, percentage of work force, percentage of leadership etc. need to be consulted No, that's only to disprove the literal conspiracy theory that Google is secretly racist and is hiring black people as part of a white-supremacy program. There'd need to be something to make that likely before it's even worth investigating. As long as the most likely theory is a disgruntled employee... Did you read her papers?