9 ms·

Timnit Gebru on her sacking by Google, AI’s dangers and big tech’s biases

29 points by biorach 3y ago

curiousgal 3y ago
> The Ethiopian-born computer scientist lost her job after pointing out the inequalities built into AI. I am glad they included that at the start of the article so I know to completely skip reading it!
- ggm 3y ago
  You're doing yourself no favours. Even if you disagree with her you should inform yourself of her line of reasoning. I think the guardian article is a reasonable write up of the issues.
  - curiousgal 3y ago
    I don't disagree with her. My gripe is wit the the article itself. If the reporter openly misrepresents (read lies) about obvious facts, I don't see how their take on more nuanced issues would be..nuanced and unbiased. She quit/was fired for submitting a paper without following company procedure. Saying she lost her job after pointing out AI ethics issues paints a completely different picture and is not productive at all.
    - ggm 3y ago
      Sorry, it wasn't clear from your statement you had access to information which invalidated the article. Could you be explicit what they got wrong please?
      - curiousgal 3y ago
        I edited my comment with more details.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > lost her job after pointing out the inequalities built into AI. I think that this is a simplistic and incorrect summary of why she no longer works for Google. It would be as accurate as if the article started with “lost her job after violating Google’s publishing clearance procedures and sending out inaccurate and accusatory emails to internal listservs”
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    I read the article. While it does mention the keywords promised on the title, it's also very long winded as it recounts many of her personal life experiences. Honestly, a very boring read. Brings nothing new to the discussion, and at times feels just shy on gushing about the subject matter. As for her being fired from Google... Google being Google, thet're probably in the wrong. But it is not surprisingly in the slightest that this sort of activist employee ends up being sacked when they start to be troublesome in their activism. Hell, I wonder why Google even hired her in the first place. My guess is that they hoped that by receiving a paycheck, she would be neutered.
  - rg111 3y ago
    Her life's biggest highlight is being sacked by Google whom she had given an ultimatum which to me was unfair.
aaron695 3y ago
Ethics employees are the lowest on the Bullshit jobs scale. They bike shed all day. Just regurgitate old stories and what ifs. They never do anything quantifiable, they don't have the technical skills. Unlike middle Bullshit jobs that do nothing, they instead drag down employees around them. Case in point here and as we can see Google is currently losing the AI battle.
- mempko 3y ago
  Except Timnit Gebru did quantifiable research on AI bias and was punished for it.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Here is Jeff Dean's email about the situation when it happened https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Hi everyone, I’m sure many of you have seen that Timnit Gebru is no longer working at Google. This is a difficult moment, especially given the important research topics she was involved in, and how deeply we care about responsible AI research as an org and as a company. Because there’s been a lot of speculation and misunderstanding on social media, I wanted to share more context about how this came to pass, and assure you we’re here to support you as you continue the research you’re all engaged in. Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google. Given Timnit's role as a respected researcher and a manager in our Ethical AI team, I feel badly that Timnit has gotten to a place where she feels this way about the work we’re doing. I also feel badly that hundreds of you received an email just this week from Timnit telling you to stop work on critical DEI programs. Please don’t. I understand the frustration about the pace of progress, but we have important work ahead and we need to keep at it. I know we all genuinely share Timnit’s passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive. No doubt, wherever she goes after Google, she’ll do great work and I look forward to reading her papers and seeing what she accomplishes. Thank you for reading and for all the important work you continue to do. -Jeff
lakomen 3y ago
"AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male," I stopped reading there. I'm white I'm male I have 0 advantages because of that. Always the same lies everywhere. I'm tired of it.
- laratied 3y ago
  [flagged]
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  You have to be able to see the problem with this reasoning right? https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1031008855210123264 https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1031008855210123264
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    I'm not white. I don't believe that my "way of thinking" is meaningfully different from the way of thinking of a white person, language and cultural differences accounted for. Actually, I firmly believe that implying that is profoundly racist. It's small wonder that I see most dangerously racist bullshit being parroted in progressive circles.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      The point is that people can treat you differently based on their perception of you, mediated by apparent ethnicity. Your way of thinking doesn't factor in.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago
        > "AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male," This was the claim. And I refuse this notion. The worst atrocities humans inflicted upon one another were derived from a fundamental belief that the "others" being oppressed were meaningfully different from the oppressors, and therefore was ok to oppress them. And about people treating you differently based on their perception of you, that is a different claim. And that is just basic human nature. Everyone (man or woman, white or black) judges based on appearances, especially when that is the first (and sometimes only) information you have to navigate.
SilverBirch 3y ago
I find it fascinating that in the middle of a hype cycle here, where really central people to AI are saying we should be worried (Altman, Hinton etc.), there's still just outright animosity towards people who are actually interested in studying these problems. It's also very far from a theoretical problem, did you know that crash test dummies are men? Literally, until extremely recently crash test dummies were all designed to be 50th percentile men[1]. Surely they test women dummies too? Oh yeah! They put a small woman dummy in the passenger seat. But still, they've presumably measured women and designed something appropriate? Nope! The small female dummy is defined as a scaled version of the male dummy. It's genuinely astonishing how short sighted engineers can be in designing technology and it's wild how angry they get when anyone tries to actually fix it. [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457519303483#sec0015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751...
- mempko 3y ago
  Exactly. Same problem with facial recognition which simply didn't work on anyone with dark skin. The bigger the models the less obvious the bias becomes but is still there. Gebru did good work quantifying that but google shut it down. And it's sad that many of the comments here are reactionary and hostile towards Gebru. Why is the community here so bad? I thought it's supposed to be full of smart people with computers?
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    > hostile towards Gebru Her paper aren't really high quality. Her carbon footprint calculations had all of Google's compute running from jet fuel. [0] In her "Gender Shades" paper she completely ignored the existence of the Asian race. That's a pretty big limitation for a paper named in such general terms. In another place she labels Asians as "white adjacent". She can't argue about technical subjects (here's an example [1]) because she isn't technical. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a... [1] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...
rayiner 3y ago
> The thing that was very confusing to me as an immigrant was that liberal type of racism,” she says. “People who sound like they really care about you, but they’d be like: ‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard for you?’ This is why I object to teaching kids about racism in schools. Maybe the teacher was racist. Or maybe she got good grades—which isn’t hard to do in American high schools—but her teachers didn’t think she was one of the exceptional kids who could go on to excel in the field as a career. If you aren’t socialized to think of yourself as the target of racism, the natural response is to probe further. “But my grades are good!” The explanation that comes next might lead to learning and growth, or at least renewed motivation (“I’ll show him!”) But if a kid has been socialized to perceive such interactions in terms of racism, there are, they can’t learn from such conversations. After all it’s pointless arguing with a racist, nor can you learn anything valuable about yourself from a racist. I moved to Virginia from Bangladesh back in the 1980s, to a school and neighborhood that was nearly 100% white. At the time, northern Virginia where we were was solidly Republican. But my parents never taught me about “racism” and it was a tremendous blessing. I never wondered whether the ordinary negative interactions of life were racially motivated. Was that kid being a bully because I was brown, or because I was a book worm? What good would it have done me to recognize it anyway? I’m extremely worried about how the discourse is going to affect my kids. It’s impossible to protect your kids these days from folks like Gebru.
- prepend 3y ago
  > ‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard for you‘ I found this curious when reading the article and expected more context as to why this was racist. Why did Gebru consider this was due to her race or immigrant status? I got this comment through my whole life too even though I don’t share Gebru’s background or demographic factors. Were my teachers racist? Or were they concerned? Or was the subject just really hard? Or were they classist against my poverty? It seems more info is needed and attributing this to racism (or sexism or xenophobia) seems like an unsupported conclusion. Although it seems Gebru felt it was racist and significant enough to mention in the background for this article. I think this is what makes measuring micro aggressions so difficult. It’s rare to confirm the intent of the person who did something that is perceived as micro aggressions but the recipient feels and infers an intent. I don’t know how to fix this but I want to. I remember once remarking to a coworker that they had a nice car. It was a new 7-series and looked really nice. I thought nothing of it as it was just small talk and I frequently make such small comments to note something positive. A few months later we were having a large zoom call after the George Floyd murder where people were recounting persistent and systematic racism. My coworker shared an example of what he called everyday racism when someone said he had a nice car and he assumed it was because he was black and couldn’t afford such a nice car. He seemed really hurt and spoke for 5 minutes about it and how he worked really hard to afford the car and his spouse had a high income as well. He didn’t name me as the person who made the comment but it sounded like my small comment. I was so confused as to how all that could be inferred from “nice car.” I don’t know him well enough to ask about it and clear it up. I felt bad he was hurt, even though I just intended it as a small comment recognizing a nice car from a coworker and would have made the comment regardless of his race. So I don’t think I did anything wrong but still feel bad. And there’s no way I could predict such a response. I don’t compliment coworkers cars any longer.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Large models are indeed dangerous, because they threaten to concentrate power in the hands of a small number of tech companies with the resources to do the training, and because, once those models exist, they devalue human labor. Some technologies are leveling. It may be debatable, but I've heard it argued that the musket was one of these. The musket was cheap. It rendered expensive mounted plate-armored aristocratic warriors obsolete. Down came the whole feudal hierarchy necessary to keep those horses fed. These AI models are the opposite. They do not spread power around; they centralize it. They increase dependence. So in many ways she's right. What I would like to ask, though, is -- instead of deepening the intersectional cuts that were used to dismember Occupy, what can a technologist do to both reduce centralization and increase solidarity? Is it possible to have a broad-based populism that isn't particularist? What technologies could be in its arsenal? Possibly AI (which is really compression) can be part of this if it enables offline, disconnected "compressed Internet"s to exist off-the-grid, like solar panels? How do we reduce dependence on the platforms? The different ethnic factions wouldn't fight each other if they were more self-sufficient. If they weren't made to compete with each other for access to a small number of economic chokepoints. How do we destroy the chokepoints? "Fuck your Suez, your Panama -- we have airplanes."
nh23423fefe 3y ago
> After her departure, Gebru founded Dair, the Distributed AI Research Institute, to which she now devotes her working time. “We have people in the US and the EU, and in Africa,” she says. “We have social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, refugee advocates, labour organisers, activists … it’s a mix of people.” Virtue signal by donating to my slush fund.
- revelio 3y ago
  Amazing that these people don't even pretend. Refugee advocates and labour organisers have what to do with AI research? Nothing? Like La Sombrita and how the attempt to design a bus stop somehow became connected to female empowerment. The left asks for money to do X and then happily and very publicly spend it their usual ideological goals, even though they have nothing to do with X. Wonder when this crosses the line and becomes some sort of fraud. Did they tell people they'd spend grants on AI research? A lot of their stuff seems very close to political advocacy and lobbying. They flat out state they hired activists and advocates. A 501c3 is supposed to have tight controls on political operations though.

29 points by biorach 3y ago

> The Ethiopian-born computer scientist lost her job after pointing out the inequalities built into AI. I am glad they included that at the start of the article so I know to completely skip reading it!

ggm 3y ago
You're doing yourself no favours. Even if you disagree with her you should inform yourself of her line of reasoning. I think the guardian article is a reasonable write up of the issues.
- curiousgal 3y ago
  I don't disagree with her. My gripe is wit the the article itself. If the reporter openly misrepresents (read lies) about obvious facts, I don't see how their take on more nuanced issues would be..nuanced and unbiased. She quit/was fired for submitting a paper without following company procedure. Saying she lost her job after pointing out AI ethics issues paints a completely different picture and is not productive at all.
  - ggm 3y ago
    Sorry, it wasn't clear from your statement you had access to information which invalidated the article. Could you be explicit what they got wrong please?
    - curiousgal 3y ago
      I edited my comment with more details.
- prepend 3y ago
  > lost her job after pointing out the inequalities built into AI. I think that this is a simplistic and incorrect summary of why she no longer works for Google. It would be as accurate as if the article started with “lost her job after violating Google’s publishing clearance procedures and sending out inaccurate and accusatory emails to internal listservs”
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I read the article. While it does mention the keywords promised on the title, it's also very long winded as it recounts many of her personal life experiences. Honestly, a very boring read. Brings nothing new to the discussion, and at times feels just shy on gushing about the subject matter. As for her being fired from Google... Google being Google, thet're probably in the wrong. But it is not surprisingly in the slightest that this sort of activist employee ends up being sacked when they start to be troublesome in their activism. Hell, I wonder why Google even hired her in the first place. My guess is that they hoped that by receiving a paycheck, she would be neutered.
- rg111 3y ago
  Her life's biggest highlight is being sacked by Google whom she had given an ultimatum which to me was unfair.

aaron695 3y ago

Ethics employees are the lowest on the Bullshit jobs scale. They bike shed all day. Just regurgitate old stories and what ifs. They never do anything quantifiable, they don't have the technical skills. Unlike middle Bullshit jobs that do nothing, they instead drag down employees around them. Case in point here and as we can see Google is currently losing the AI battle.

mempko 3y ago
Except Timnit Gebru did quantifiable research on AI bias and was punished for it.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Here is Jeff Dean's email about the situation when it happened https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-an-ethical https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a... Hi everyone, I’m sure many of you have seen that Timnit Gebru is no longer working at Google. This is a difficult moment, especially given the important research topics she was involved in, and how deeply we care about responsible AI research as an org and as a company. Because there’s been a lot of speculation and misunderstanding on social media, I wanted to share more context about how this came to pass, and assure you we’re here to support you as you continue the research you’re all engaged in. Timnit co-authored a paper with four fellow Googlers as well as some external collaborators that needed to go through our review process (as is the case with all externally submitted papers). We’ve approved dozens of papers that Timnit and/or the other Googlers have authored and then published, but as you know, papers often require changes during the internal review process (or are even deemed unsuitable for submission). Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted. A cross functional team then reviewed the paper as part of our regular process and the authors were informed that it didn’t meet our bar for publication and were given feedback about why. It ignored too much relevant research — for example, it talked about the environmental impact of large models, but disregarded subsequent research showing much greater efficiencies. Similarly, it raised concerns about bias in language models, but didn’t take into account recent research to mitigate these issues. We acknowledge that the authors were extremely disappointed with the decision that Megan and I ultimately made, especially as they’d already submitted the paper. Timnit responded with an email requiring that a number of conditions be met in order for her to continue working at Google, including revealing the identities of every person who Megan and I had spoken to and consulted as part of the review of the paper and the exact feedback. Timnit wrote that if we didn’t meet these demands, she would leave Google and work on an end date. We accept and respect her decision to resign from Google. Given Timnit's role as a respected researcher and a manager in our Ethical AI team, I feel badly that Timnit has gotten to a place where she feels this way about the work we’re doing. I also feel badly that hundreds of you received an email just this week from Timnit telling you to stop work on critical DEI programs. Please don’t. I understand the frustration about the pace of progress, but we have important work ahead and we need to keep at it. I know we all genuinely share Timnit’s passion to make AI more equitable and inclusive. No doubt, wherever she goes after Google, she’ll do great work and I look forward to reading her papers and seeing what she accomplishes. Thank you for reading and for all the important work you continue to do. -Jeff

lakomen 3y ago

"AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male," I stopped reading there. I'm white I'm male I have 0 advantages because of that. Always the same lies everywhere. I'm tired of it.

laratied 3y ago
[flagged]
giraffe_lady 3y ago
You have to be able to see the problem with this reasoning right? https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1031008855210123264 https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/1031008855210123264
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I'm not white. I don't believe that my "way of thinking" is meaningfully different from the way of thinking of a white person, language and cultural differences accounted for. Actually, I firmly believe that implying that is profoundly racist. It's small wonder that I see most dangerously racist bullshit being parroted in progressive circles.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    The point is that people can treat you differently based on their perception of you, mediated by apparent ethnicity. Your way of thinking doesn't factor in.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      > "AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male," This was the claim. And I refuse this notion. The worst atrocities humans inflicted upon one another were derived from a fundamental belief that the "others" being oppressed were meaningfully different from the oppressors, and therefore was ok to oppress them. And about people treating you differently based on their perception of you, that is a different claim. And that is just basic human nature. Everyone (man or woman, white or black) judges based on appearances, especially when that is the first (and sometimes only) information you have to navigate.

SilverBirch 3y ago

I find it fascinating that in the middle of a hype cycle here, where really central people to AI are saying we should be worried (Altman, Hinton etc.), there's still just outright animosity towards people who are actually interested in studying these problems. It's also very far from a theoretical problem, did you know that crash test dummies are men? Literally, until extremely recently crash test dummies were all designed to be 50th percentile men[1]. Surely they test women dummies too? Oh yeah! They put a small woman dummy in the passenger seat. But still, they've presumably measured women and designed something appropriate? Nope! The small female dummy is defined as a scaled version of the male dummy. It's genuinely astonishing how short sighted engineers can be in designing technology and it's wild how angry they get when anyone tries to actually fix it. [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457519303483#sec0015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751...

mempko 3y ago
Exactly. Same problem with facial recognition which simply didn't work on anyone with dark skin. The bigger the models the less obvious the bias becomes but is still there. Gebru did good work quantifying that but google shut it down. And it's sad that many of the comments here are reactionary and hostile towards Gebru. Why is the community here so bad? I thought it's supposed to be full of smart people with computers?
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > hostile towards Gebru Her paper aren't really high quality. Her carbon footprint calculations had all of Google's compute running from jet fuel. [0] In her "Gender Shades" paper she completely ignored the existence of the Asian race. That's a pretty big limitation for a paper named in such general terms. In another place she labels Asians as "white adjacent". She can't argue about technical subjects (here's an example [1]) because she isn't technical. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a... [1] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter-amid-acrimonious-exchanges-on-ai-bias/ https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...

rayiner 3y ago

> The thing that was very confusing to me as an immigrant was that liberal type of racism,” she says. “People who sound like they really care about you, but they’d be like: ‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard for you?’ This is why I object to teaching kids about racism in schools. Maybe the teacher was racist. Or maybe she got good grades—which isn’t hard to do in American high schools—but her teachers didn’t think she was one of the exceptional kids who could go on to excel in the field as a career. If you aren’t socialized to think of yourself as the target of racism, the natural response is to probe further. “But my grades are good!” The explanation that comes next might lead to learning and growth, or at least renewed motivation (“I’ll show him!”) But if a kid has been socialized to perceive such interactions in terms of racism, there are, they can’t learn from such conversations. After all it’s pointless arguing with a racist, nor can you learn anything valuable about yourself from a racist. I moved to Virginia from Bangladesh back in the 1980s, to a school and neighborhood that was nearly 100% white. At the time, northern Virginia where we were was solidly Republican. But my parents never taught me about “racism” and it was a tremendous blessing. I never wondered whether the ordinary negative interactions of life were racially motivated. Was that kid being a bully because I was brown, or because I was a book worm? What good would it have done me to recognize it anyway? I’m extremely worried about how the discourse is going to affect my kids. It’s impossible to protect your kids these days from folks like Gebru.

prepend 3y ago
> ‘Don’t you think it’s going to be hard for you‘ I found this curious when reading the article and expected more context as to why this was racist. Why did Gebru consider this was due to her race or immigrant status? I got this comment through my whole life too even though I don’t share Gebru’s background or demographic factors. Were my teachers racist? Or were they concerned? Or was the subject just really hard? Or were they classist against my poverty? It seems more info is needed and attributing this to racism (or sexism or xenophobia) seems like an unsupported conclusion. Although it seems Gebru felt it was racist and significant enough to mention in the background for this article. I think this is what makes measuring micro aggressions so difficult. It’s rare to confirm the intent of the person who did something that is perceived as micro aggressions but the recipient feels and infers an intent. I don’t know how to fix this but I want to. I remember once remarking to a coworker that they had a nice car. It was a new 7-series and looked really nice. I thought nothing of it as it was just small talk and I frequently make such small comments to note something positive. A few months later we were having a large zoom call after the George Floyd murder where people were recounting persistent and systematic racism. My coworker shared an example of what he called everyday racism when someone said he had a nice car and he assumed it was because he was black and couldn’t afford such a nice car. He seemed really hurt and spoke for 5 minutes about it and how he worked really hard to afford the car and his spouse had a high income as well. He didn’t name me as the person who made the comment but it sounded like my small comment. I was so confused as to how all that could be inferred from “nice car.” I don’t know him well enough to ask about it and clear it up. I felt bad he was hurt, even though I just intended it as a small comment recognizing a nice car from a coworker and would have made the comment regardless of his race. So I don’t think I did anything wrong but still feel bad. And there’s no way I could predict such a response. I don’t compliment coworkers cars any longer.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Large models are indeed dangerous, because they threaten to concentrate power in the hands of a small number of tech companies with the resources to do the training, and because, once those models exist, they devalue human labor. Some technologies are leveling. It may be debatable, but I've heard it argued that the musket was one of these. The musket was cheap. It rendered expensive mounted plate-armored aristocratic warriors obsolete. Down came the whole feudal hierarchy necessary to keep those horses fed. These AI models are the opposite. They do not spread power around; they centralize it. They increase dependence. So in many ways she's right. What I would like to ask, though, is -- instead of deepening the intersectional cuts that were used to dismember Occupy, what can a technologist do to both reduce centralization and increase solidarity? Is it possible to have a broad-based populism that isn't particularist? What technologies could be in its arsenal? Possibly AI (which is really compression) can be part of this if it enables offline, disconnected "compressed Internet"s to exist off-the-grid, like solar panels? How do we reduce dependence on the platforms? The different ethnic factions wouldn't fight each other if they were more self-sufficient. If they weren't made to compete with each other for access to a small number of economic chokepoints. How do we destroy the chokepoints? "Fuck your Suez, your Panama -- we have airplanes."

nh23423fefe 3y ago

> After her departure, Gebru founded Dair, the Distributed AI Research Institute, to which she now devotes her working time. “We have people in the US and the EU, and in Africa,” she says. “We have social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, refugee advocates, labour organisers, activists … it’s a mix of people.” Virtue signal by donating to my slush fund.

revelio 3y ago
Amazing that these people don't even pretend. Refugee advocates and labour organisers have what to do with AI research? Nothing? Like La Sombrita and how the attempt to design a bus stop somehow became connected to female empowerment. The left asks for money to do X and then happily and very publicly spend it their usual ideological goals, even though they have nothing to do with X. Wonder when this crosses the line and becomes some sort of fraud. Did they tell people they'd spend grants on AI research? A lot of their stuff seems very close to political advocacy and lobbying. They flat out state they hired activists and advocates. A 501c3 is supposed to have tight controls on political operations though.