What do you mean by pretty serious? I looked at three, two are about better documenting ML models/data, and one is about inferring the political leanings of an area by what type of cars are parked in it. None seem particularly groundbreaking to me...
Honestly? I don't have much experience with ML and in particular issues of bias in ML (though I have a general understanding of a lot of the former), so I don't really feel qualified to evaluate her more recent work, but her older stuff definitely appeared like what I'd expect from a machine learning practitioner, so I don't think attacking her as someone that only understands social sciences (which I perceived the parent as doing) to be fair.
The paper referenced ("Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification") has been cited 1000+ times per her Google Scholar page (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lemnAcwAAAAJ). For a 2-year old paper, this is easily a top 1% most cited paper.
You can disagree with how she and/or Google has handled this whole situation, but please do not denigrate work that has been cited (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cites=14954...) by papers accepted at the most competitive/prestigious ML conferences.
EDIT: I also do not see how in good faith you can say that VentureBeat, a company who makes the bulk of its revenue from running conferences catering to C-suite execs who can shell out thousands of dollars for a ticket, is "leftist".
"Left" and "right" carry little meaning when it comes to analyzing the divide between people. The "with/without money" bit is of a much higher order than the global "left/right" bit to me.
I don’t really care about the paper author’s fate, but it seems unsettling to me that she is discussed more than the paper itself.
We see that on average, tech founders are less likely to support vs. even Democrats generally (not just progressives):
* Banning the Keystone XL pipeline (60% vs 78%)
* The individual healthcare mandate (59% vs 70%)
* Labor unions being good (29% vs 73%)
This is to say, the average Silicon Valley type, particularly the C-suite exec or founder, tends not to be on the left wing of the Democratic party.
During the 2020 Democratic primary, even the Silicon Valley billionaires who are openly Democratic-leaning donated to candidates who were not to the left of the field (i.e. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/13/2020-democratic-presidential...):
* Eric Schmidt -> Cory Booker and Joe Biden
* Reed Hastings -> Pete Buttigieg
* Marc Benioff -> Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Jay Inslee
I'm engaging with you in good faith, and because I was intrigued that in a previous comment you mentioned that you live in Spain (though who's to say you're not a US ex-pat). But calling US tech companies "leftist" is a stretch at best.
