anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

It is regrettable that Timnit Gebru chose the public route, first writing to the 'Brain Women and Allies' mailing list, where she implied that the rejection of her paper is part of a pattern of 'constant dehumanization' (a person holding one of the highest status technical jobs in tech, TL of an AI research group at Google Brain), and then going straight to Twitter and telling half truths under the cover of potential legal action. Not sure what is customary in AI research these days, back in my day it was common to polish and resubmit to the next conference. ICML deadline is Tue 29 Dec 2020, less than a month ahead. There is also ACL, the top NLP conference, Mon 01 Feb 2021, two months ahead.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Complaining about life adversities on social media in a hyperbolic race / gender wrapping, 'constantly dehumanized', is a recent widespread phenomenon. The heroine of this story happens to embody this novel behavior, which used to be a whole lot more private and a whole lot less race / gender driven. Not sure where 'ideology' enters the picture, it's a reasonably truthful observation from someone that is old enough to remember life before social media.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Her technical work and credentials are solid. Working on better datasets is valuable and important. What is questionable is acting as if every dataset out there that can be found to have one dimension with any bias against some race/gender deemed underprivileged is a malicious crime against humanity. When there are many many biases, cutting both ways in those datasets. When there are many many alternate explanations to this state of affairs besides malicious discrimination and oppression. When reasonable courses of action include the constructive contribution of building and using better datasets.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Would you please elaborate?

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Well written, well sourced and very narrow for someone that fashions themselves as 'ethicist'. There are more things in life beyond race and gender as seen through the prism of critical race/gender theory. I heard somewhere of this strange word 'love', something to look into. She's young, smart, capable and possibly well meaning in spite of her unbecoming behavior. Perhaps one day she'll grow to see the struggle common to all born of a woman.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

While there is some overlap, generally speaking Identity Politics != Ethics. She's an Identity Politics researcher, narrowly focused on race and gender topics. Not some philosopher or religious figure interested in the flourishing of humanity at large. Here is an abstract from a larger work, presumably her PhD thesis: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.06165.pdf. Critical gender and race theory through and through.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

"Who do they hire to replace her?". That is an excellent question, and a good time to remember that Identity Politics != Ethics. Most big ethical questions in AI have nothing to do with race or gender, instead affect us all. Some say AI is an existential risk for Humanity at large.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

Nitpick. Jesus Christ raised the bar to 'love your enemies'.

43 You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

a. Yes, but you can post 'women and minorities encouraged' job ads. b. No.

People invested in identity politics are, by their own admission, interested in outcomes. In this world view, the legal system is a tool for achieving the desired outcomes. The same set of rules can be illegal if it rejects certain identities in a context, and at the same time legal if it promotes those identities in a different context. 'Heads I win, tails you lose', but dead serious.

A thread discussing the pervasive 'women and minorities encouraged' mindset is in western academia:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/95011/is-it-con...

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

In light of Jeff Dean's email, which you can find in the updated original post, it appears that Timnit Gebru threw a public tantrum when one of the many papers she collaborated on was deemed unsuitable for Google Brain technical standards. That's the point: adults handle minor setbacks like adults, instead of rushing to social media to vent in public about their 'constant dehumanization'.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

From Jeff Dean's email:

> 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.

anonvenger

il y a 6 ansdiscuss

The character revealing bit is this:

> Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback” on a paper through a privileged and confidential document to HR? Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized?

She was told by her bosses boss to retract a paper. Whatever is it that paper, and whatever the reasons or the delivery method are, there is nothing somebody in her position can do about it, short of resign and, assuming the paper does not depend on proprietary information, independently publish. She instead decides to complain on an internal forum and call it 'constant dehumanization'. That is a serious accusation that she needs to back up, not just throw it around unsubstantiated.

This is the fundamental victim mindset of the social media woke: any setback is chalked up to identity based oppression. Reality check: everybody has setbacks, most of them unfair, or at least easily perceived as unfair, and definitely frustrating. Most have the decency to deal with it, pick up and go on without making a disgraceful spectacle by venting on social media. As it happens, I am aware of a similar situation between two people I highly respect at Google, where a VP told a paper author to abstain from publishing, in that case presumably to avoid spilling 'special sauce' information to the public. You never heard of it, and that's a good thing.

Something all of us need to ponder as we are ushered in the brave new social media era. Old school venting is ephemeral and limited to a small group of trusted confidents. Social media venting is permanent, and has the possibility to go viral. Proceed with caution.

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