"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. "

And:

"But the paper itself had some important gaps that prevented us from being comfortable putting Google affiliation on it. For example, it didn’t include important findings on how models can be made more efficient and actually reduce overall environmental impact, and it didn’t take into account some recent work at Google and elsewhere on mitigating bias in language models. Highlighting risks without pointing out methods for researchers and developers to understand and mitigate those risks misses the mark on helping with these problems. As always, feedback on paper drafts generally makes them stronger when they ultimately appear."

I'd be surprised, having read this, if Gebru and coauthors made the requested adjustments, the paper wouldn't have been approved by Google. That's my intuition at least, maybe I'm off.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...

I don't know the lady well, but given her background I assume she's intelligent. So, this isn't to degrade her but that trait in general - in what job can your role be to just tell people that they're wrong? How long would a roofer last that just stood on the ground and yelled up they were doing it wrong...even if the roofers really were? Or a programmer who denies your PR because it's wrong? Communication is an invaluable life skill. Handling disagreements with tact and real suggestions in hand will always be better received.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a...