11 ms·

Because the academic standard for research, and the original motivation for tenure, allows for researchers to criticize anyone, including their own institution,

Because the academic standard for research, and the original motivation for tenure, allows for researchers to criticize anyone, including their own institution, as long as it's done and presented as the proper product of research. In other words, if a researcher is doing their research properly, it shouldn't matter if they're attacking their own institution or even colleagues, because it passes scientific muster and the quality of the research is what justifies it. When companies like Google or IBM employee researchers, they're positioning themselves as supporting that model of inquiry, and the benefit for them is the credibility that comes from participation in scientific inquiry. Gebru attacking Google's AI practices actually lends Google credibility for disinterestedly supporting basic research and taking its results seriously. A company that employs an ethicist and takes that ethicist's output seriously even when it challenges the company is a company that genuinely cares about the academic standard in that field. A company that hires an ethicist and then fires them when they point out the company's wrongdoing is sounding an alarm about their own unethical conduct. The part I struggle to understand here is how Google could be so stupid. Who cares, from a commercial perspective, if an academic they employ drags them? Keeping Gebru on payroll was straightforwardly purchased ethical credibility; firing her is a PR disaster and an open statement that their ethics AI group is a propaganda unit rather than a genuine research entity. It would have been trivial, even beneficial, to air the academic dispute. They gained nothing by retracting her paper and then firing her.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tomcam 6y ago
You’re 100% right. A job at a FAANG company isn’t a tenured position. Let her go get a job at Harvard and trash them all she wants.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What?? Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    >Yet when a woman of color does it Maybe the reason it isn't praised in this case isn't due to her being a woman of color but due to other differences in this case and those that are praised?
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      If that were the case there wouldn't be "Tensions in Google's ethical AI group" would there be? Read the article, clearly the team, and many Google employees, were angered by this. Perhaps we shouldn't just sweep it under the rug. It seems there is very real merit, this was not just a disgruntled employee. The subject matter is directly related to diversity - to remove race is to, again, cover up the systemic race issues we face as a society.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    James Darmore
  - free_rms 6y ago
    What was she blowing the whistle on specifically? Carbon emissions from a company that's been "carbon neutral" on paper for a decade?
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people. And I don't think anyone's disputing her desire to promote and encourage ethical implementations of AI technology. The crux of this issue is how you handle yourself, and it seems the more I read about how she handled these things, the more it seems like how children act. "If I don't get my way, I'm quitting!" Yeah, you get to sit atop your high horse and lord your morality over the rest of the mortals beneath you. You don't actually get to do shit, though, and you've actively lost the ability to control how this unfolds, at least at Google.
- fatbird 6y ago
  I think you're missing the point: companies like Google set up research units like this to act like tenured positions, like mini-universities, and then employ academics like Gebru just so they get the credibility that comes with employing them. "See, we're not all about profit, we support basic research in this area, even when it criticizes our other work." Critical to that credibility is actually having the same standards as Harvard with respect to allowing the researchers to publish what they will, whether or not they're the target. By appearing to fire Gebru because her paper was insufficiently pro-Google, they damaged their whole purpose of having an ethical AI group. The demands of the group may seem childish or absurdly far-reaching, but if Google wants to rebuild their credibility here, this is the standard they have to hit. Otherwise, their own researchers have less credibility because their output will be viewed as "approved by Google management", not real research. This is critical if they need to say "our own AI ethicists say this is ok."
username90 6y ago
Google didn't fire her for her research, they fired her for being toxic. She was toxic because some of her coworkers didn't accept her research, but most people would have handled the situation without being toxic and if she did she wouldn't have gotten fired.
- fatbird 6y ago
  The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. That's not toxic, that's anger. One angry incident, justified or not, does not make the case for firing a "toxic" employee.
  - xenihn 6y ago
    >The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. What about the paper trail she left on Twitter?
    - fatbird 6y ago
      That happened after she was fired. You can't cite that behaviour as a reason for firing her. Violates causality.
      - xenihn 6y ago
        Her spat with the Facebook guy was before that.
        fatbird 6y ago
        That was a public argument on her core area of research. Google literally hired her to do that work. Being professionally assertive isn't toxic.
atsjie 6y ago
"Timnit Gebru: Google and big tech are 'institutionally racist'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862 It's good to be critical and reflect on the company you're working for. There are bad cultures and attitudes in any big company, not just tech. But if you're going to sprout your opinions publically about your (ex)-employer like that, sorry, but I wouldn't want her in my team. She sounds like too much of a headache to deal with. Her work must be truly extraordinary to warrent having that headache.
- tootie 6y ago
  I wouldn't want to run a racist company. And I wouldn't want to create phony pretense for firing someone if there was ostensibly valid justification they could have used.
- nullifidian 6y ago
  >Her work must be truly extraordinary I'm pretty sure her work as an ethicist can be summarized as "Any application of AI/ML must be stopped until it is absolutely GUARANTEED that there won't be anything that could be deemed discriminatory by proponents of critical race/gender theory." Which is obviously an untenable position for a tech company. I think she will be happy when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    > when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases. That sounds like more of a nightmare scenario than having to deal with this person... Its hard to even know where to begin with how something like this could go off the rails easily.
    - fatbird 6y ago
      Indeed. Imagine how people of color feel at the possibility of an AI running ever-larger parts of society that has racism built right into it at the start because the people building it are blind to anything but the most obvious instances of it.
tootie 6y ago
This is it exactly. She's applying a standard of academic rigor to Google and they can either accept it or not. If they want to filter what kind of research they publish, then they have to admit to themselves (and their employees) that they baking pro-Google bias into their work and it need not be taken too seriously by academics. Maybe that kind of bias is irrelevant when you're publishing algorithm or mathematical work where bias is less inherent, but if you have an AI Ethics team you should be prepared for some controversy. And they clearly weren't and panicked.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tomcam 6y ago

You’re 100% right. A job at a FAANG company isn’t a tenured position. Let her go get a job at Harvard and trash them all she wants.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
We praise whistleblowers left and right on HN, at the expense of objectivity (assange, snowden, et al), despite ethical issues with them. Yet when a woman of color does it, "oh they are their own company and can do what they want and it's her fault for trying to be ethical in this space in industry." What?? Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  >Yet when a woman of color does it Maybe the reason it isn't praised in this case isn't due to her being a woman of color but due to other differences in this case and those that are praised?
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    If that were the case there wouldn't be "Tensions in Google's ethical AI group" would there be? Read the article, clearly the team, and many Google employees, were angered by this. Perhaps we shouldn't just sweep it under the rug. It seems there is very real merit, this was not just a disgruntled employee. The subject matter is directly related to diversity - to remove race is to, again, cover up the systemic race issues we face as a society.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  James Darmore
- free_rms 6y ago
  What was she blowing the whistle on specifically? Carbon emissions from a company that's been "carbon neutral" on paper for a decade?
- cbozeman 6y ago
  You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people. And I don't think anyone's disputing her desire to promote and encourage ethical implementations of AI technology. The crux of this issue is how you handle yourself, and it seems the more I read about how she handled these things, the more it seems like how children act. "If I don't get my way, I'm quitting!" Yeah, you get to sit atop your high horse and lord your morality over the rest of the mortals beneath you. You don't actually get to do shit, though, and you've actively lost the ability to control how this unfolds, at least at Google.
fatbird 6y ago
I think you're missing the point: companies like Google set up research units like this to act like tenured positions, like mini-universities, and then employ academics like Gebru just so they get the credibility that comes with employing them. "See, we're not all about profit, we support basic research in this area, even when it criticizes our other work." Critical to that credibility is actually having the same standards as Harvard with respect to allowing the researchers to publish what they will, whether or not they're the target. By appearing to fire Gebru because her paper was insufficiently pro-Google, they damaged their whole purpose of having an ethical AI group. The demands of the group may seem childish or absurdly far-reaching, but if Google wants to rebuild their credibility here, this is the standard they have to hit. Otherwise, their own researchers have less credibility because their output will be viewed as "approved by Google management", not real research. This is critical if they need to say "our own AI ethicists say this is ok."

username90 6y ago

Google didn't fire her for her research, they fired her for being toxic. She was toxic because some of her coworkers didn't accept her research, but most people would have handled the situation without being toxic and if she did she wouldn't have gotten fired.

fatbird 6y ago
The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. That's not toxic, that's anger. One angry incident, justified or not, does not make the case for firing a "toxic" employee.
- xenihn 6y ago
  >The only evidence of toxicity was an email she sent after being forced to retract a paper that she wouldn't have to retract under proper academic circumstances, based on feedback they weren't even going to provide to her. What about the paper trail she left on Twitter?
  - fatbird 6y ago
    That happened after she was fired. You can't cite that behaviour as a reason for firing her. Violates causality.
    - xenihn 6y ago
      Her spat with the Facebook guy was before that.
      - fatbird 6y ago
        That was a public argument on her core area of research. Google literally hired her to do that work. Being professionally assertive isn't toxic.

atsjie 6y ago

"Timnit Gebru: Google and big tech are 'institutionally racist'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862 It's good to be critical and reflect on the company you're working for. There are bad cultures and attitudes in any big company, not just tech. But if you're going to sprout your opinions publically about your (ex)-employer like that, sorry, but I wouldn't want her in my team. She sounds like too much of a headache to deal with. Her work must be truly extraordinary to warrent having that headache.

tootie 6y ago
I wouldn't want to run a racist company. And I wouldn't want to create phony pretense for firing someone if there was ostensibly valid justification they could have used.
nullifidian 6y ago
>Her work must be truly extraordinary I'm pretty sure her work as an ethicist can be summarized as "Any application of AI/ML must be stopped until it is absolutely GUARANTEED that there won't be anything that could be deemed discriminatory by proponents of critical race/gender theory." Which is obviously an untenable position for a tech company. I think she will be happy when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases. That sounds like more of a nightmare scenario than having to deal with this person... Its hard to even know where to begin with how something like this could go off the rails easily.
  - fatbird 6y ago
    Indeed. Imagine how people of color feel at the possibility of an AI running ever-larger parts of society that has racism built right into it at the start because the people building it are blind to anything but the most obvious instances of it.

tootie 6y ago

This is it exactly. She's applying a standard of academic rigor to Google and they can either accept it or not. If they want to filter what kind of research they publish, then they have to admit to themselves (and their employees) that they baking pro-Google bias into their work and it need not be taken too seriously by academics. Maybe that kind of bias is irrelevant when you're publishing algorithm or mathematical work where bias is less inherent, but if you have an AI Ethics team you should be prepared for some controversy. And they clearly weren't and panicked.