https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55281862
It's good to be critical and reflect on the company you're working for. There are bad cultures and attitudes in any big company, not just tech.
But if you're going to sprout your opinions publically about your (ex)-employer like that, sorry, but I wouldn't want her in my team. She sounds like too much of a headache to deal with. Her work must be truly extraordinary to warrent having that headache.
I'm pretty sure her work as an ethicist can be summarized as "Any application of AI/ML must be stopped until it is absolutely GUARANTEED that there won't be anything that could be deemed discriminatory by proponents of critical race/gender theory." Which is obviously an untenable position for a tech company.
I think she will be happy when we develop natural language understanding to the degree where we could implement an automatic critical theory censor, that would check for undesirable biases.
That sounds like more of a nightmare scenario than having to deal with this person... Its hard to even know where to begin with how something like this could go off the rails easily.
Actual racism is very rare in America. Prejudice is commonplace and has a lot more to do with the inherent tribalism of humanity than it does actual malice for someone's "race". And to take it even further, I think if people were honest, what they really dislike is cultural differences that vary dramatically from theirs.
To me this is just like trans issues... we'll never get anywhere significant with this stuff, because in order to come up with meaningful answers, you have to ask meaningful, hard questions. No one wants to ask these kinds of questions, because no one wants to have to deal with the answers that may come up, because that will also invite further study and further difficult, unpleasant conversations.
Yeah and your average software engineer is roses.
Difference is engineers positively impact the bottom line and society is less tolerant (empirically researched fact) of pushback from women or people of color.
For sure there may be complications on both sides of this issue but let’s not pretend that this shit isn’t real.
Critical to that credibility is actually having the same standards as Harvard with respect to allowing the researchers to publish what they will, whether or not they're the target. By appearing to fire Gebru because her paper was insufficiently pro-Google, they damaged their whole purpose of having an ethical AI group.
The demands of the group may seem childish or absurdly far-reaching, but if Google wants to rebuild their credibility here, this is the standard they have to hit. Otherwise, their own researchers have less credibility because their output will be viewed as "approved by Google management", not real research. This is critical if they need to say "our own AI ethicists say this is ok."
And I don't think anyone's disputing her desire to promote and encourage ethical implementations of AI technology. The crux of this issue is how you handle yourself, and it seems the more I read about how she handled these things, the more it seems like how children act.
"If I don't get my way, I'm quitting!"
Yeah, you get to sit atop your high horse and lord your morality over the rest of the mortals beneath you. You don't actually get to do shit, though, and you've actively lost the ability to control how this unfolds, at least at Google.
They're clearly unhappy, and so are many google employees. This clearly isn't just one person, this clearly is bigger than that.
> You'd be hard-pressed to find an ethical issue with how Edward Snowden handled the revelation of mass illegal spying on the American people.
What ethical issue is there with the revelation of problems in the ethical AI division of google? You just "don't like how they act." I've heard many people say the same of individuals on street corners...not a great look.
Their job is to build a bulwark for the company to guard it against negative press, and that will allow Google to create an AI that leverages all its data and currently existing infrastructure to increase shareholder value. They actually think their job is to prevent bad things from happening. Its not, and that's where the confusion is occurring. That confusion is turning into frustration, which in turn becomes anger.
You'll probably say something like, "Well that's a cynical viewpoint..."
Any company's "Ethics" committee/board is there to do that. Just like Human Resources is there to protect the company from you, not you from the company.
The only problem is that entirely too many Googlers think they're actually employed to make the world a better place. They're employed to create shareholder value. Sometimes making the world a better place will align with increasing shareholder value. Sometimes it won't.
Just because it's their "job" doesn't make it right or not worthy of whistleblowing.
If companies are doing bad things we want whistleblowers to tell us. I just don't understand your argument - "you can do bad things if it's your job." No. It doesn't work that way.
You can't do illegal things. Difference.
Either way if we didn't have whistleblowers for very bad things that weren't illegal, we would never make laws to make them as such.
Did he contact any of the number of Congressmen or Senators who are sympathetic to his concerns to see what could be done before committing treason?
Maybe the reason it isn't praised in this case isn't due to her being a woman of color but due to other differences in this case and those that are praised?
Perhaps we shouldn't just sweep it under the rug. It seems there is very real merit, this was not just a disgruntled employee. The subject matter is directly related to diversity - to remove race is to, again, cover up the systemic race issues we face as a society.
HN has a large audience with a broad range of opinions. In my opinion, Snowden and Manning are traitors and the latter should have been left in prison.
> Had a white male done this, it's hard not to think he'd be praised as a hero on here.
I'd be equally dismissive of any person who committed the following actions.
1. Griping about the racist reviewers of her paper on Twitter.
2. Sending an email to a internal list criticizing Google's behavior and telling people to stop working on diversity.
3. Demanding the names of reviewers and threatening to resign if they weren't provided.
Just like any large audience a hive mind exists. There are more posts in favor of Snowden/Assange on here than in favor of this google employee. In general, more come to their defense, than hers, despite doing similar things.
Those aren't why you're dismissive. You've made up your mind on her, and make those items "dismissive" to support your POV, because you can't actually prove one way or the other. Perhaps some of the reviewers are racist. We've seen in the past 4 years that racism is alive and well in this country.
I don't see a problem with sending an internal email to colleagues. Should everyone just fall in line and do everything asked ever and never want change?
If she is publicly publishing a paper, reviewers should publicly publish their reviews, especially if they're negative. At this point, if we don't know the reviewers, we can't tell if they're genuine reviews, or not.
These cases are completely different.
Snowden and Assange exposed a global surveillance network that many are opposed to. I think of Snowden as the Kim Philby of the 21st century but that's a different discussion.
Dr. Gebu disagreed with the peer reviews of a paper, threatened to resign, and Google accepted her resignation.
> Those aren't why you're dismissive. You've made up your mind on her, and make those items "dismissive" to support your POV, because you can't actually prove one way or the other. Perhaps some of the reviewers are racist. We've seen in the past 4 years that racism is alive and well in this country.
She may feel that her paper was rejected because the reviewers are racist; I think it's more likely that they disagreed with the quality of the work. There was probably an administrative screw-up with its submission, though.
Neither of us can prove anything. It's unlikely that all the facts will come out in any event; Google would settle the case if it went to court.
> I don't see a problem with sending an internal email to colleagues. Should everyone just fall in line and do everything asked ever and never want change?
Have you read the email (https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...) that she sent? Would you expect to keep your job if you sent a similar email at work? Diversity is the third rail of modern companies - criticize or discourage it and you're gone.
> If she is publicly publishing a paper, reviewers should publicly publish their reviews, especially if they're negative. At this point, if we don't know the reviewers, we can't tell if they're genuine reviews, or not.
Anonymous peer reviews are a standard practice in industry and academia. If you demand the names of reviewers and threaten to resign if they aren't provided then don't be surprised if your employment ends.
When you append, "Or I will leave" to a request and the company isn't interested in your request, you're resigning. You can dress it up in fancy language, but that's the bottom line.
Or did I miss something about this story?
[1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1334364735446331392
An any rate, this seems to me to be an excellent case study in ultimatums. Namely, don't give one to someone more powerful than you.
She expected she would have to leave after her ultimatum. She was fired for a different email.
That's not toxic, that's anger. One angry incident, justified or not, does not make the case for firing a "toxic" employee.
1. Absolutely refusing to update her paper with feedback from a colleague - the whole purpose of the internal review
2. Demanding that Google reveal who gave her critical feedback - presumably to attack them in some way
3. Sending an e-mail to her superiors/colleagues, making ultimatums and threatening to leave if her demands were not met
4. Sending a message to a group at Google, telling them to abandon any attempts to help Google with diversity initiatives and instead start attacking their co-workers
5. Publicly blaming Google and saying that she was "fired" for an e-mail. She was relying on information assymetry, knowing that Google would be hesitant to respond fully to all allegations
What about the paper trail she left on Twitter?
That's not being professionally assertive.
When companies like Google or IBM employee researchers, they're positioning themselves as supporting that model of inquiry, and the benefit for them is the credibility that comes from participation in scientific inquiry. Gebru attacking Google's AI practices actually lends Google credibility for disinterestedly supporting basic research and taking its results seriously.
A company that employs an ethicist and takes that ethicist's output seriously even when it challenges the company is a company that genuinely cares about the academic standard in that field. A company that hires an ethicist and then fires them when they point out the company's wrongdoing is sounding an alarm about their own unethical conduct.
The part I struggle to understand here is how Google could be so stupid. Who cares, from a commercial perspective, if an academic they employ drags them? Keeping Gebru on payroll was straightforwardly purchased ethical credibility; firing her is a PR disaster and an open statement that their ethics AI group is a propaganda unit rather than a genuine research entity. It would have been trivial, even beneficial, to air the academic dispute. They gained nothing by retracting her paper and then firing her.