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To be fair, the article is not about the firing. In any case, the two researchers who got fired did more harm to Google than good. Internally no one cares they
by tinyhouse 6y ago
To be fair, the article is not about the firing. In any case, the two researchers who got fired did more harm to Google than good. Internally no one cares they left. AI etichs is an esoteric academic research field.
- fmajid 6y agoMore importantly it has no connection to the bottom line, which is why Google management doesn't seem particularly concerned with disquiet in that research group, as long as it doesn't spread to the rest of the company.
- tkgally 6y agoGoogle and other companies should regard rigorous research and discussion about AI ethics as long-term protection of their bottom lines. If they start launching products and selling services that are found to unfairly favor or disfavor certain groups of people, they will be vulnerable to lawsuits, government regulation, and damage to their reputations.
- azmodeus 6y agoI think it is important to shift AI ethics to become more of an investment but that requires more tooling to evaluate AI ethics problems and the business risks.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoOne of the core issues in AI ethics, really the core issue currently, is that any product you launch or service you run will be found by some subset of the population to unfairly favor certain groups of people. No amount of research will allow Google to build a model so neutral everyone has to agree with it, because people want different things and have different ideas and assumptions about what's fair. As they found in 2019 with their AI ethics board, even basic ideas like "let's listen to everyone" are subject to this dilemma, because some groups feel that it's unfair to listen to other groups.
- pyrale 6y agoThis may not change end of year results, but this kind of research is what gives Google a credible voice when it comes to shaping public discourse and influencing legislative process, for instance.
- Tenoke 6y ago>AI etichs is an esoteric academic research field. I don't agree in general but I do think these two researchers, and this whole saga have just hurt the AI ethics field.
- DavidSumpter 6y agoBut when you write something like this, do you also understand that their actual research is widely considered to be of a high quality and very important? So if you agree that ethics is important, would you leave them off a top 10 list (and who would you put on)?
- bo1024 6y agoI'm in the research community and I think you're significantly underetsimating the effect of firing Gebru and Mitchell. Machine learning is the hottest research area in computer science and ethics of ML is possibly its hottest subfield. And people pay attention to employers' actions. I think Microsoft Research is still feeling reputation effects from closing down its Silicon Valley lab 10 years ago with no warning. It sent a message to everyone who worked there that they had no job security, and plenty left for academia. The research community is not going to forget about Google's actions here nor, for the most part, will it view Google very favorably.
- tinyhouse 6y agoI think you're very wrong. Yes, there's hype around ML etichs. Trends in ML come and go. Do you see any VC investing in etichs in ML startups? As I said, it's an esoteric academic field. How do you even compare between the two? MSR closed an entire lab out of the blue of some great researchers who didn't do anything wrong. Here you have two employees going against their company and shitting on it publicly. The only researchers who will not want to work at Google after this saga are the ones Google better off without.
- jack_riminton 6y agoWhy would a VC invest in an ethics startup? How much money something can make is not a good arbiter of how important it is e.g. the hippocratic oath
- manux 6y ago> Do you see any VC investing in etichs in ML startups? Perhaps you should pay less attention to VCs and more attention to governments and academic institutions, who for example in Canada are investing 10s of millions of dollars into AI ethics/FATE/AI for good research. Sometimes, the point isn't just to make money, it's to actually improve humanity.
- tinyhouse 6y agoThe point is not just making money. The point is solving real world problems. AI ethics focus on esoteric problems that don't solve any real world problems. AI ethics research has very little impact if at all on real issues.
- djmips 6y agoI speculate this article is because of the firing.
- tiahura 6y agoAI etichs is an esoteric academic research field. I would argue it’s a Public Relations field.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoi agree. Ethics means nothing. It's just an emotional security blanket. They are no more qualified than a 5 year old to invent ethical standards.