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Google has since fired other folks on her team and was in crisis mode to protect Dean. Like, I’m not really going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

Google has since fired other folks on her team and was in crisis mode to protect Dean. Like, I’m not really going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this. When people brought Dean up Timnit came up as something to consider, it’s interesting to see how all anyone has to say in these threads is reverence towards him. People should try to see the whole picture.

opportune 3y ago
Being somewhat involved in one bad thing doesn’t justify cancelling someone. To my knowledge Dean was essentially doing post-hoc damage control for what one of the middle managers in his org did. Even if they did want Timnit gone (as others mention, you are getting only one side of the story in media) they did it in a bad way, for sure. At the same time I don’t think one botched firing diminishes decades of achievements from a legitimately kind person.
jeffbee 3y ago
Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd who got fired from Google seem like some of the most ignorant people around. I don't defend Dean reflexively, it just seems like he is on the right side of the issue. For example, here is Emma Strubell accusing Dean of creating a "toxic workplace culture" after he and David Patterson had to refute her paper in print. https://twitter.com/strubell/status/1634164078691098625?lang=en https://twitter.com/strubell/status/1634164078691098625?lang... The thing is if David Patterson and Jeff Dean think your numbers for the energy cost of machine learning might be wrong, then you are probably wrong. These ML meta-researchers are not practitioners and appear to have no idea what they are talking about. Keeping a person like Timnit or Strubell on staff seems like it costs more than its worth.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd Timnit is ex-Google, but very much not ex-ML ethics (fouded Distributed AI Research Institute focussed on the field in late 2021). Very much also true of Margaret Mitchell, who has been at Hugging Face since 2021.

opportune 3y ago

Being somewhat involved in one bad thing doesn’t justify cancelling someone. To my knowledge Dean was essentially doing post-hoc damage control for what one of the middle managers in his org did. Even if they did want Timnit gone (as others mention, you are getting only one side of the story in media) they did it in a bad way, for sure. At the same time I don’t think one botched firing diminishes decades of achievements from a legitimately kind person.

jeffbee 3y ago

Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd who got fired from Google seem like some of the most ignorant people around. I don't defend Dean reflexively, it just seems like he is on the right side of the issue. For example, here is Emma Strubell accusing Dean of creating a "toxic workplace culture" after he and David Patterson had to refute her paper in print. https://twitter.com/strubell/status/1634164078691098625?lang=en https://twitter.com/strubell/status/1634164078691098625?lang... The thing is if David Patterson and Jeff Dean think your numbers for the energy cost of machine learning might be wrong, then you are probably wrong. These ML meta-researchers are not practitioners and appear to have no idea what they are talking about. Keeping a person like Timnit or Strubell on staff seems like it costs more than its worth.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd Timnit is ex-Google, but very much not ex-ML ethics (fouded Distributed AI Research Institute focussed on the field in late 2021). Very much also true of Margaret Mitchell, who has been at Hugging Face since 2021.