4 ms·

Oh I'm sure we can trust the guy who runs the company that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI to also be the person to fund e

by tedivm 5y ago

Oh I'm sure we can trust the guy who runs the company that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI to also be the person to fund ethical AI research.

axg11 5y ago
> runs the company Schmidt doesn’t run Google by any definition of the word run. He also has a great track record of funding basic science (Schmidt Science Fellows).
- pengaru 5y ago
  While we're on his track records, his documented privacy stance is not great to say the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy
visarga 5y ago
> fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI That paper was activism dressed up as science. It even tried to coin a derogatory term for language models. The authors were full of vitriol on forums against many respected researchers. After calling them out on their perceived ethical problems, they refused to have a dialogue in order not to "offer a platform" to their opponents. Never seen anything like it in 10 years of following the field. It was so sad to see people trying to have a sincere talk and being shut down. If there is any good outcome from that scandal is that now big model papers devote 50% of their length to harm analysis. A bunch of better papers on harm reduction came out in the last year. The authors of the scandal paper moved on to exploit their new gained notoriety, so it wasn't necessarily a bad career step for them.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Oh I'm sure we can trust the guy who runs the company He doesn't. > that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI They didn't. They fired one person for pointing out internal race and gender issues at the company, and particularly management dishonesty in the handling of those issues (part of that firing process was a constructive termination campaign—an effort to make the workplace hostile enough to them that they would quit—that involved, among other things, subjecting her research to review processes not used for other researchers at Google in the same area, which came to light around a piece on the harms of AI, which, sure, it was in the company's interest to suppress, but the only reason that even became an issue is because of the process they had already focussed on her to force her out.) Then they fired a number of other people for things like pointing out holes in the narrative around firing the first person, including pointing out the unusual research oversight process. In the process, a number of people also quit the company over those events.
oh_sigh 5y ago
> that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI You're either extremely misinformed or are intentionally lying, but either way, this is just a flat out incorrect statement on multiple levels. You can just google "Timnit Gebru" to find out all the details of her dismissal. And Eric Schmidt doesn't run Google, and had literally zero to do with Timnit and others getting fired(which - to be clear, was entirely because of their response to Google's response to their paper, not because of the paper itself).

by tedivm 5y ago

Oh I'm sure we can trust the guy who runs the company that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI to also be the person to fund ethical AI research.

axg11 5y ago

> runs the company Schmidt doesn’t run Google by any definition of the word run. He also has a great track record of funding basic science (Schmidt Science Fellows).

pengaru 5y ago
While we're on his track records, his documented privacy stance is not great to say the least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy

visarga 5y ago

> fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI That paper was activism dressed up as science. It even tried to coin a derogatory term for language models. The authors were full of vitriol on forums against many respected researchers. After calling them out on their perceived ethical problems, they refused to have a dialogue in order not to "offer a platform" to their opponents. Never seen anything like it in 10 years of following the field. It was so sad to see people trying to have a sincere talk and being shut down. If there is any good outcome from that scandal is that now big model papers devote 50% of their length to harm analysis. A bunch of better papers on harm reduction came out in the last year. The authors of the scandal paper moved on to exploit their new gained notoriety, so it wasn't necessarily a bad career step for them.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Oh I'm sure we can trust the guy who runs the company He doesn't. > that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI They didn't. They fired one person for pointing out internal race and gender issues at the company, and particularly management dishonesty in the handling of those issues (part of that firing process was a constructive termination campaign—an effort to make the workplace hostile enough to them that they would quit—that involved, among other things, subjecting her research to review processes not used for other researchers at Google in the same area, which came to light around a piece on the harms of AI, which, sure, it was in the company's interest to suppress, but the only reason that even became an issue is because of the process they had already focussed on her to force her out.) Then they fired a number of other people for things like pointing out holes in the narrative around firing the first person, including pointing out the unusual research oversight process. In the process, a number of people also quit the company over those events.

oh_sigh 5y ago

> that fired a bunch of people for publishing research about the harms of AI You're either extremely misinformed or are intentionally lying, but either way, this is just a flat out incorrect statement on multiple levels. You can just google "Timnit Gebru" to find out all the details of her dismissal. And Eric Schmidt doesn't run Google, and had literally zero to do with Timnit and others getting fired(which - to be clear, was entirely because of their response to Google's response to their paper, not because of the paper itself).