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The problem with AI ethics as a field is that it attracts a whole lot of activists, most of whom have mediocre contributions to the field at best, zero contribu

by JPKab 6y ago

The problem with AI ethics as a field is that it attracts a whole lot of activists, most of whom have mediocre contributions to the field at best, zero contributions at worst. Watching highly entitled, and often narcissistic people with no tangible accomplishments attack Yan LeCun is pretty insane. The head of AI at Nvidia, who is very aggressive in her AI Ethics activism, recently put a screenshot of a list of names, which included mine, on a public tweet. In the tweet, she described the list as containing "fan boys" of an academic critical of "wokeness" as he calls it. I didn't know anything about the academic. I was added to the list because I commented on her tweet attacking him and asked her if she had engaged in any verbal discussions with him. That's it. I asked a question, and was put on a list proclaiming everyone in it as alt-right bigots. I found out about this because a former colleague called me and told me I was on the list. I didn't follow the guy she was attacking or anything like that. Not that it would have been justified if I had. It should be noted that I was a leading advocate at a large enterprise software company for getting CUDA integration and helping NVIDIA sell more hardware in the enterprise. NVIDIA didn't fire her, and they should have.

908B64B197 6y ago
> It should be noted that I was a leading advocate at a large enterprise software company for getting CUDA integration and helping NVIDIA sell more hardware in the enterprise. Should have paused the project and reached out to the sales team responsible for your company's corporate account. Would have been interesting to see who pulls more weight (sales and paying customers or ethics "researchers").
- JPKab 6y ago
  I was already contemplating leaving it for a startup, and frankly my response to her behavior was to become even less motivated about pushing that rock up the hill in the large organization I was in. I've since departed for the startup.
joshuamorton 6y ago
Claiming that Gebru has no tangible accomplishments is factually wrong. She's lead author on multiple highly impactful papers. > I asked a question, and was put on a list proclaiming everyone in it as alt-right bigots. Were you, or are you editorializing her actions? Because what you actually described is that she put you on a list > of "fan boys" of an academic critical of "wokeness" as he calls it That's not calling you alt-right. I believe the stated purpose of the list was to have a set of people that allies could engage with constructively if they wanted to. In other words, it was a list of people whom might be good to engage in verbal discussions with. Because of that, you're calling for her to be fired. Why?
- JPKab 6y ago
  Edit: I was mistaken in my response, since the commenter named Gebru. The head of AI at Nvidia is not Gebru, it's Anima Anandkumar. Gebru had nothing to do with this. She specifically said the things I stated, in a now deleted tweet. I know the cognitive dissonance is causing you to question my account, but that's what she did. Look up articles where screenshots are posted. I wasn't claiming Gebru has no accomplishments either. Many of her fellow ethicists fall into that category. She's not an ethicist, just won't shut up about it, along with race stuff, and has nasty, unprofessional habit of attacking people publicly. She's a bully, and I'm sick of people like you defending her because you've bought into her idiotic religion.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > She specifically said the things I stated, in a now deleted tweet. I know the cognitive dissonance is causing you to question my account, but that's what she did. I agree that she said the specific things you quoted. I'm not debating what she actually said. However when you say she characterized you as a member of the alt-right, that is your editorializing, and not something she said (nor did you claim it was). I'm simply clarifying that she never accused you of being a member of the alt-right, and that you're projecting that accusation. > Edit: I was mistaken in my response, since the commenter named Gebru. The head of AI at Nvidia is not Gebru, it's Anima Anandkumar. Gebru had nothing to do with this. Right, but Gebru had a highly discussed disagreement with Yann, so when you said > Watching highly entitled, and often narcissistic people with no tangible accomplishments attack Yan LeCun is pretty insane. You were saying "Gebru is a narcissistic person with no tangible accomplishments". Either that, or you're making up generic events and hypotheticals, but that would be a really strangely specific hypothetical. Anandkumar also has very significant achievements, so there's no one you could be directing that comment at that wouldn't be belittling.
jeremysalwen 6y ago
> NVIDIA didn't fire her, and they should have. Talk about cancel culture.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  Perhaps if she makes wild accusations like that she should be cancelled?
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Forcing its advocates to play by their own rules is probably the best way to beat it.
  - brippalcharrid 6y ago
    I think Alinsky's fourth rule is commonly understood to have the addendum "and actively dissuade them from trying to make you live up to your own through appeals to their better nature".
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Cancel culture is when a mob of people, usually on Twitter, most of whom have no direct relation to the institutions in question, try to create a bunch of bad publicity for a target at an institution for the purposes of making that institution decide to cut ties with the target. I think JPKab is saying that an NVIDIA employee mistreated someone who is effectively a prospective customer for NVIDIA (or who is working to create prospective customers), and that this by itself should lead NVIDIA management to fire that employee even in the absence of public attention to the event.
- dmatech 6y ago
  Not at all. The way she acted created serious risks to her employer, and anyone seeing her postings could reasonably conclude that she was conducting personal attacks on others and doing it on behalf of NVIDIA. When you declare your employer in your bio and talk about your field of work, it becomes relevant to your continued employment.
- 6y ago
ausbah 6y ago
most researchers have mediocre, marginal, or straight up "un-sexy" contributions to a field, that's just how most research happens. it doesn't make anyone "less of a researcher" though I also would also everyone look at Gebru's work [1] - certainly seems like they're an established research who comes from a top university, has published in top conferences, and has a good understanding of the technical parts of the field one's past experiences with something they are criticizing or defending is probably a good prior to have, but also shouldn't be the sole criterion. "leading" scientists are more often than not wrong on plenty of things http://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/ http://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/
diebeforei485 6y ago
I agree with this - "ethicists" without much experience in the field tend to be the worst people.
a1369209993 6y ago
> it attracts a whole lot of activists, most of whom have mediocre contributions to the field at best, []zero contributions at worst.[] That is absurdly, unjustifiably optimistic. The worst activists have larger negative contributions than the best contributors have positive contributions. And as you yourself have observed, even typical activists often have worse-than-zero contributions.
- vyhd 6y ago
  Citation please.
Bancakes 6y ago
Why would you be an "AI expert" to make judgements on AI? In fact, it's more politically consistent to have equal representation. We already know what AI experts believe - make money in the end.

by JPKab 6y ago

908B64B197 6y ago

> It should be noted that I was a leading advocate at a large enterprise software company for getting CUDA integration and helping NVIDIA sell more hardware in the enterprise. Should have paused the project and reached out to the sales team responsible for your company's corporate account. Would have been interesting to see who pulls more weight (sales and paying customers or ethics "researchers").

JPKab 6y ago
I was already contemplating leaving it for a startup, and frankly my response to her behavior was to become even less motivated about pushing that rock up the hill in the large organization I was in. I've since departed for the startup.

joshuamorton 6y ago

Claiming that Gebru has no tangible accomplishments is factually wrong. She's lead author on multiple highly impactful papers. > I asked a question, and was put on a list proclaiming everyone in it as alt-right bigots. Were you, or are you editorializing her actions? Because what you actually described is that she put you on a list > of "fan boys" of an academic critical of "wokeness" as he calls it That's not calling you alt-right. I believe the stated purpose of the list was to have a set of people that allies could engage with constructively if they wanted to. In other words, it was a list of people whom might be good to engage in verbal discussions with. Because of that, you're calling for her to be fired. Why?

JPKab 6y ago
Edit: I was mistaken in my response, since the commenter named Gebru. The head of AI at Nvidia is not Gebru, it's Anima Anandkumar. Gebru had nothing to do with this. She specifically said the things I stated, in a now deleted tweet. I know the cognitive dissonance is causing you to question my account, but that's what she did. Look up articles where screenshots are posted. I wasn't claiming Gebru has no accomplishments either. Many of her fellow ethicists fall into that category. She's not an ethicist, just won't shut up about it, along with race stuff, and has nasty, unprofessional habit of attacking people publicly. She's a bully, and I'm sick of people like you defending her because you've bought into her idiotic religion.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > She specifically said the things I stated, in a now deleted tweet. I know the cognitive dissonance is causing you to question my account, but that's what she did. I agree that she said the specific things you quoted. I'm not debating what she actually said. However when you say she characterized you as a member of the alt-right, that is your editorializing, and not something she said (nor did you claim it was). I'm simply clarifying that she never accused you of being a member of the alt-right, and that you're projecting that accusation. > Edit: I was mistaken in my response, since the commenter named Gebru. The head of AI at Nvidia is not Gebru, it's Anima Anandkumar. Gebru had nothing to do with this. Right, but Gebru had a highly discussed disagreement with Yann, so when you said > Watching highly entitled, and often narcissistic people with no tangible accomplishments attack Yan LeCun is pretty insane. You were saying "Gebru is a narcissistic person with no tangible accomplishments". Either that, or you're making up generic events and hypotheticals, but that would be a really strangely specific hypothetical. Anandkumar also has very significant achievements, so there's no one you could be directing that comment at that wouldn't be belittling.

jeremysalwen 6y ago

> NVIDIA didn't fire her, and they should have. Talk about cancel culture.

chris_wot 6y ago
Perhaps if she makes wild accusations like that she should be cancelled?
HideousKojima 6y ago
Forcing its advocates to play by their own rules is probably the best way to beat it.
- brippalcharrid 6y ago
  I think Alinsky's fourth rule is commonly understood to have the addendum "and actively dissuade them from trying to make you live up to your own through appeals to their better nature".
waterhouse 6y ago
Cancel culture is when a mob of people, usually on Twitter, most of whom have no direct relation to the institutions in question, try to create a bunch of bad publicity for a target at an institution for the purposes of making that institution decide to cut ties with the target. I think JPKab is saying that an NVIDIA employee mistreated someone who is effectively a prospective customer for NVIDIA (or who is working to create prospective customers), and that this by itself should lead NVIDIA management to fire that employee even in the absence of public attention to the event.
dmatech 6y ago
Not at all. The way she acted created serious risks to her employer, and anyone seeing her postings could reasonably conclude that she was conducting personal attacks on others and doing it on behalf of NVIDIA. When you declare your employer in your bio and talk about your field of work, it becomes relevant to your continued employment.
6y ago

ausbah 6y ago

most researchers have mediocre, marginal, or straight up "un-sexy" contributions to a field, that's just how most research happens. it doesn't make anyone "less of a researcher" though I also would also everyone look at Gebru's work [1] - certainly seems like they're an established research who comes from a top university, has published in top conferences, and has a good understanding of the technical parts of the field one's past experiences with something they are criticizing or defending is probably a good prior to have, but also shouldn't be the sole criterion. "leading" scientists are more often than not wrong on plenty of things http://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/ http://ai.stanford.edu/~tgebru/

diebeforei485 6y ago

I agree with this - "ethicists" without much experience in the field tend to be the worst people.

a1369209993 6y ago

> it attracts a whole lot of activists, most of whom have mediocre contributions to the field at best, []zero contributions at worst.[] That is absurdly, unjustifiably optimistic. The worst activists have larger negative contributions than the best contributors have positive contributions. And as you yourself have observed, even typical activists often have worse-than-zero contributions.

vyhd 6y ago
Citation please.

Bancakes 6y ago

Why would you be an "AI expert" to make judgements on AI? In fact, it's more politically consistent to have equal representation. We already know what AI experts believe - make money in the end.