4 ms·

I think Google fired the biggest "anti-racism" and "ML-fairness" proponent?

google234123 3y ago
They fired the single one that was way too outspoken- Also she literally went against explicit rules about publishing I think
- hemogloben 3y ago
  As I understand it, Timnit Gebru was fired for suggesting that the power usage of training ML/AI was significant. Her other 'woke' views didn't contribute as much to her firing. (Though her firing did set off a firestorm about those issues) I think from your tone, I disagree with you about her other views. But it seems her firing was more about making Google look anti-environmental than anti-woke. MITs summary of the paper: 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... Only one section deals with already well known problem of bias.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    She was mainly fired for not withdrawing a paper when it was requested by a leader in research (the leader who asked for this had no research background and asked for a retraction, which doesn't make sense because the paper hadn't been published yet). But there were other important factors; for example, she attacked other googlers (prominent ones working on LLMs) on internally public mailing lists (about woke things). Realistically, the world would have been better off if she hadn't been hired in the first place because she was always going to eventually have a conflict with leadership over publishing works like this. I think she would have done much better to become a professor at some liberal university where she would be free to publish her work. I kind of wish the stochastic parrots paper had focused entirely on stochastic parrots, and not on energy consumption. In my opinion, Google has actually been a responsible steward of energy usage (way ahead of everybody else for at least a decade), and ML isn't really the source of most of the energy consumption in computing anyway.
  - alexey-salmin 3y ago
    I don't know of true reasons inside Google but the quality of the work alone would've justified termination for a high-ranking position. If you read the famous "Stochastic Parrots" it's not a scientific work at all, it's a piece of journalism that just throws together as many unrelated AI-scares as the author could find. A good article for Vogue or Medium but unworthy of someone who claims to be a scientist.
bitcharmer 3y ago
She tweeted things like kill all white men. Its was nuts
- neocritter 3y ago
  Was that the situation where the tweet was from over a decade before when she was a teenager, and she said she learned to be more thoughtful as an adult?
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    Teenagers are a big range from 13 to 19. The difference in mental maturity and faculties at those ages are immense.
    - rocketbop 3y ago
      That's true, but between 19 and 22 also immense. Regardless, the point is it's deciding that a person's moral value should be based on what they did in the past and not what they do now.
      - antisthenes 3y ago
        Unfortunately, the past is still the best indicator we have of current and future behavior.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    That could be believable if that kind of lenience would be applied to other opinions aside for very selective ones. That would be real tolerance. I haven't seen anything worthwhile in that regard from Google yet. Or any corporation for that matter.

They fired the single one that was way too outspoken- Also she literally went against explicit rules about publishing I think

hemogloben 3y ago
As I understand it, Timnit Gebru was fired for suggesting that the power usage of training ML/AI was significant. Her other 'woke' views didn't contribute as much to her firing. (Though her firing did set off a firestorm about those issues) I think from your tone, I disagree with you about her other views. But it seems her firing was more about making Google look anti-environmental than anti-woke. MITs summary of the paper: 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... Only one section deals with already well known problem of bias.
- dekhn 3y ago
  She was mainly fired for not withdrawing a paper when it was requested by a leader in research (the leader who asked for this had no research background and asked for a retraction, which doesn't make sense because the paper hadn't been published yet). But there were other important factors; for example, she attacked other googlers (prominent ones working on LLMs) on internally public mailing lists (about woke things). Realistically, the world would have been better off if she hadn't been hired in the first place because she was always going to eventually have a conflict with leadership over publishing works like this. I think she would have done much better to become a professor at some liberal university where she would be free to publish her work. I kind of wish the stochastic parrots paper had focused entirely on stochastic parrots, and not on energy consumption. In my opinion, Google has actually been a responsible steward of energy usage (way ahead of everybody else for at least a decade), and ML isn't really the source of most of the energy consumption in computing anyway.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  I don't know of true reasons inside Google but the quality of the work alone would've justified termination for a high-ranking position. If you read the famous "Stochastic Parrots" it's not a scientific work at all, it's a piece of journalism that just throws together as many unrelated AI-scares as the author could find. A good article for Vogue or Medium but unworthy of someone who claims to be a scientist.

bitcharmer 3y ago

She tweeted things like kill all white men. Its was nuts

neocritter 3y ago
Was that the situation where the tweet was from over a decade before when she was a teenager, and she said she learned to be more thoughtful as an adult?
- antisthenes 3y ago
  Teenagers are a big range from 13 to 19. The difference in mental maturity and faculties at those ages are immense.
  - rocketbop 3y ago
    That's true, but between 19 and 22 also immense. Regardless, the point is it's deciding that a person's moral value should be based on what they did in the past and not what they do now.
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      Unfortunately, the past is still the best indicator we have of current and future behavior.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  That could be believable if that kind of lenience would be applied to other opinions aside for very selective ones. That would be real tolerance. I haven't seen anything worthwhile in that regard from Google yet. Or any corporation for that matter.