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It's pretty important to get this story straight: She moved files when she wasn't supposed to. This seems like a pretty standard firing. People are already clai

It's pretty important to get this story straight: She moved files when she wasn't supposed to. This seems like a pretty standard firing. People are already claiming on twitter that Google is assaulting ethical AI, and I just don't see it. Google did not immediately comment on those claims. Its statement said of Mitchell: “We confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.” Yeah, uh, don't do this.

elefanten 6y ago
Not just exfiltration but sharing outside the organization, as per news articles about it. There's no story here, this is an obvious outcome. Edit: to add that the more interesting question is whether they should sue her. If they don't, that may be the contextually-appropriate version of letting her off the hook easy (to live up to their culture or for morale or for optics or whatever reason).
yellow_postit 6y ago
Wonder if there will be some big leak or bus throwing article from the exfiltrated data the reporting references.
guardiangod 6y ago
>She moved files when she wasn't supposed to If that's true, that's not very ethical is it?
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  You always have to be careful with people who do bad things for "good" reasons (ie the difference between Sci-Hub and reselling pirated papers for a profit). You want a gulf of difference between the punishment for nefarious activity and the punishment for well-intended-but-unlawful activity.
- 2-tpg 6y ago
  She is an authority on Ethics, being listed on the ICLR conference as part of the Ethics Review Committee: > Margaret Mitchell, Google Research and Machine Intelligence But I do think they can miss her, since there are already 8 people responsible for Ethics and Diversity, with 11 responsible for the actual organization of the conference. Maybe they can update https://iclr.cc/ https://iclr.cc/ to reflect the fact that she is not representing Google anymore?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cambalache 6y ago
    > She is an authority on Ethics This is so pretentious. Ethics is a branch of philosophy and even religion with deep debates raging from 4000 years ago and no end in sight. Hundreds of specialists have been going at it in multi-decades efforts and yet any of their opinions must not carry more weight than the average citizen's. Mitchell has a BS in Linguistics an MS in computational linguistics and a PhD in CS. Her fist paper about something even tangentially related to ethics is from 2015.
    - achenatx 6y ago
      Philosophers have already identified the problem. There is no universal standard of morality or ethics. The core of ethics derives from evolution. Societies with certain sets of cooperative and competitive values destroy, dominate, and expand. Mutations are constantly happening and some of those ethics can lead to the self-destruction of a culture, while some make a culture even more dominant. Some are neutral and just background noise and have no substantial impact on the society. In the grand scheme of things the only thing that matters for morals and ethics is whether the culture that embodies those ethics can survive against pressure from other cultures. Some ethics have been selected into the genome as they provide superior fitness of individuals. The idea that we should pursue equal outcomes is a mutation. In general it has been shown to destroy a culture (socialism) when competing with more capitalistic cultures. The victim type culture is likely to be much weaker than one where people constantly compete to rise to the pinnacle of power and wealth. Ultimately power and wealth drive innovation; and innovation, especially of weapons, drives domination. There are other types of domination, such as media, food, language, etc.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Pretty debatable. Is the law equivalent to morality? If not then I can't see how corporate law is either, since corporations aren't even democracies.
- benlivengood 6y ago
  Were Snowden's leaks ethical? It's pretty common for rule-breaking and law-breaking to be ethical when rules, laws, and norms are unethical.
duckfang 6y ago
> She moved files when she wasn't supposed to. According to Google. Remember, an entity that has a reason and a justification to do what it wants will manufacture whatever evidence it needs to do that. And, it's not a court of law. At best, it's "allegedly moved files when they weren't supposed to".
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  If she did not do that, I am sure she could sue Google for libel.
- cornel_io 6y ago
  If she didn't do it and they don't have good reason to believe she did, then she could and should easily win a large lawsuit against them, since they have publicly accused her of illegal activity. That is a hugely more risky move than just saying that someone underperformed or was let go for other reasons, and knowing how heavily pre-lawyered everything that Google does is, I highly doubt they would publicize something like that without having evidence to back it up. Maybe I'm wrong, but afaik she has yet to deny doing exactly what they've claimed. My guess is that in her mind she was doing something totally reasonable by trying to dig up old emails that she remembered that she thought would help her friend's case against Google, and feels that even if that's against the letter of her agreements with the company it should be morally okay. Which is fine as a moral argument, but you're still gonna get fired.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    "Maybe I'm wrong, but afaik she has yet to deny doing exactly what they've claimed." That seems like the natural thing to do if you feel like you may already be in the process of being fired. I assume a lawyer would advise you to be quiet about it, right?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Probably, but she has been pretty far from quiet on the topic.
choppaface 6y ago
It's pretty important to get it straight: what files did she move and why? So far it appears she did NOT do an Anthony Levandowski and steal IP. In particular Google has said zero about the actual dollar value of those files, or cited any damages from the movement of the files. It appears much more likely she was talking to a lawyer, which is a perfectly legal thing to do, and probably pretty wise given Google's maximally adversarial approach to this whole mess. Yes you should always respect your employer's property. In tech, that's almost always IP stuff: code, diagrams, plans, etc. But don't let an employer defame a former employee with an intentionally "concise" story.
- KhitanMaps 6y ago
  > So far it appears she did NOT do an Anthony Levandowski and steal IP. From what I've seen, neither Google nor Margaret Mitchell have described the file transfer event in detail. We don't yet know the content of the thousands of documents she allegedly exfiltrated. > It appears much more likely she was talking to a lawyer, which is a perfectly legal thing to do, [...] I'm curious about this. Is it legal to copy and store _any_ documents that you deem necessary for your lawyer to see? Seems unlikely.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  It doesn't matter what files she moved and why. What matters is they were internal Google documents and exfiltrating sensitive contents that you don't own is a fireable offence in any corporation. She should have known better.
- jahewson 6y ago
  Just so everyone knows, in CA your assertions are false. CA courts have ruled that if a company protects documents or email systems then they earn the status of a trade secret. Theft of trade secrets is a felony criminal offence in CA. Do I think the CA AG is going to charge her? Unlikely. But there’s no need to demonstrate damages here like in a civil suit. Illegally exfiltrating documents to your lawyer is also, illegal. Such documents would not be admissible in court and should be obtained through the usual lawful channels of legal discovery. In short, don’t do this. It’s theft.
deanCommie 6y ago
An employer has a vested interest in letting you go can always find a reason that can be summarized as some violation of corporate policy. Right now I'm writing this during the work day on my work computer. I forwarded a work email to my own personal email once because my work email client wasn't syncing on my phone. Could these be used against me if my employer cared enough? Undoubtedly. OP is preemptively judging Mitchell 1 hour after she announced she was let go. We have no concept if there claims are legitimate and will not survive a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Google doesn't care. Paying Mitchell X Million dollars would be just a cost of doing business. In the meantime, an "uppity" provocateur is out of the building and not fighting for change.
threevox 6y ago
Also, she seemed like a toxic AF person

elefanten 6y ago

Not just exfiltration but sharing outside the organization, as per news articles about it. There's no story here, this is an obvious outcome. Edit: to add that the more interesting question is whether they should sue her. If they don't, that may be the contextually-appropriate version of letting her off the hook easy (to live up to their culture or for morale or for optics or whatever reason).

yellow_postit 6y ago

Wonder if there will be some big leak or bus throwing article from the exfiltrated data the reporting references.

guardiangod 6y ago

>She moved files when she wasn't supposed to If that's true, that's not very ethical is it?

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
You always have to be careful with people who do bad things for "good" reasons (ie the difference between Sci-Hub and reselling pirated papers for a profit). You want a gulf of difference between the punishment for nefarious activity and the punishment for well-intended-but-unlawful activity.
2-tpg 6y ago
She is an authority on Ethics, being listed on the ICLR conference as part of the Ethics Review Committee: > Margaret Mitchell, Google Research and Machine Intelligence But I do think they can miss her, since there are already 8 people responsible for Ethics and Diversity, with 11 responsible for the actual organization of the conference. Maybe they can update https://iclr.cc/ https://iclr.cc/ to reflect the fact that she is not representing Google anymore?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cambalache 6y ago
  > She is an authority on Ethics This is so pretentious. Ethics is a branch of philosophy and even religion with deep debates raging from 4000 years ago and no end in sight. Hundreds of specialists have been going at it in multi-decades efforts and yet any of their opinions must not carry more weight than the average citizen's. Mitchell has a BS in Linguistics an MS in computational linguistics and a PhD in CS. Her fist paper about something even tangentially related to ethics is from 2015.
  - achenatx 6y ago
    Philosophers have already identified the problem. There is no universal standard of morality or ethics. The core of ethics derives from evolution. Societies with certain sets of cooperative and competitive values destroy, dominate, and expand. Mutations are constantly happening and some of those ethics can lead to the self-destruction of a culture, while some make a culture even more dominant. Some are neutral and just background noise and have no substantial impact on the society. In the grand scheme of things the only thing that matters for morals and ethics is whether the culture that embodies those ethics can survive against pressure from other cultures. Some ethics have been selected into the genome as they provide superior fitness of individuals. The idea that we should pursue equal outcomes is a mutation. In general it has been shown to destroy a culture (socialism) when competing with more capitalistic cultures. The victim type culture is likely to be much weaker than one where people constantly compete to rise to the pinnacle of power and wealth. Ultimately power and wealth drive innovation; and innovation, especially of weapons, drives domination. There are other types of domination, such as media, food, language, etc.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Pretty debatable. Is the law equivalent to morality? If not then I can't see how corporate law is either, since corporations aren't even democracies.
benlivengood 6y ago
Were Snowden's leaks ethical? It's pretty common for rule-breaking and law-breaking to be ethical when rules, laws, and norms are unethical.

duckfang 6y ago

> She moved files when she wasn't supposed to. According to Google. Remember, an entity that has a reason and a justification to do what it wants will manufacture whatever evidence it needs to do that. And, it's not a court of law. At best, it's "allegedly moved files when they weren't supposed to".

warkdarrior 6y ago
If she did not do that, I am sure she could sue Google for libel.
cornel_io 6y ago
If she didn't do it and they don't have good reason to believe she did, then she could and should easily win a large lawsuit against them, since they have publicly accused her of illegal activity. That is a hugely more risky move than just saying that someone underperformed or was let go for other reasons, and knowing how heavily pre-lawyered everything that Google does is, I highly doubt they would publicize something like that without having evidence to back it up. Maybe I'm wrong, but afaik she has yet to deny doing exactly what they've claimed. My guess is that in her mind she was doing something totally reasonable by trying to dig up old emails that she remembered that she thought would help her friend's case against Google, and feels that even if that's against the letter of her agreements with the company it should be morally okay. Which is fine as a moral argument, but you're still gonna get fired.
- tyingq 6y ago
  "Maybe I'm wrong, but afaik she has yet to deny doing exactly what they've claimed." That seems like the natural thing to do if you feel like you may already be in the process of being fired. I assume a lawyer would advise you to be quiet about it, right?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Probably, but she has been pretty far from quiet on the topic.

choppaface 6y ago

It's pretty important to get it straight: what files did she move and why? So far it appears she did NOT do an Anthony Levandowski and steal IP. In particular Google has said zero about the actual dollar value of those files, or cited any damages from the movement of the files. It appears much more likely she was talking to a lawyer, which is a perfectly legal thing to do, and probably pretty wise given Google's maximally adversarial approach to this whole mess. Yes you should always respect your employer's property. In tech, that's almost always IP stuff: code, diagrams, plans, etc. But don't let an employer defame a former employee with an intentionally "concise" story.

KhitanMaps 6y ago
> So far it appears she did NOT do an Anthony Levandowski and steal IP. From what I've seen, neither Google nor Margaret Mitchell have described the file transfer event in detail. We don't yet know the content of the thousands of documents she allegedly exfiltrated. > It appears much more likely she was talking to a lawyer, which is a perfectly legal thing to do, [...] I'm curious about this. Is it legal to copy and store _any_ documents that you deem necessary for your lawyer to see? Seems unlikely.
bitcharmer 6y ago
It doesn't matter what files she moved and why. What matters is they were internal Google documents and exfiltrating sensitive contents that you don't own is a fireable offence in any corporation. She should have known better.
jahewson 6y ago
Just so everyone knows, in CA your assertions are false. CA courts have ruled that if a company protects documents or email systems then they earn the status of a trade secret. Theft of trade secrets is a felony criminal offence in CA. Do I think the CA AG is going to charge her? Unlikely. But there’s no need to demonstrate damages here like in a civil suit. Illegally exfiltrating documents to your lawyer is also, illegal. Such documents would not be admissible in court and should be obtained through the usual lawful channels of legal discovery. In short, don’t do this. It’s theft.

deanCommie 6y ago

An employer has a vested interest in letting you go can always find a reason that can be summarized as some violation of corporate policy. Right now I'm writing this during the work day on my work computer. I forwarded a work email to my own personal email once because my work email client wasn't syncing on my phone. Could these be used against me if my employer cared enough? Undoubtedly. OP is preemptively judging Mitchell 1 hour after she announced she was let go. We have no concept if there claims are legitimate and will not survive a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Google doesn't care. Paying Mitchell X Million dollars would be just a cost of doing business. In the meantime, an "uppity" provocateur is out of the building and not fighting for change.

threevox 6y ago

Also, she seemed like a toxic AF person