So she threatened to resign? Sorry, but doing that is always fair game for immediate dismissal. In fact, getting dismissed is a strictly better scenario for her in such a situation. Now she was fired instead of having quit, qualifying for unemployment and triggering any contractual parachute obligations on Google's part.
And given that, her behaviour is likely just trying to introduce spin in order to land her next job easier. By making it about race and gender, it's not something behavioural and so clears the situation for future employers.
>And given that, her behaviour is likely just trying to introduce spin in order to land her next job easier. By making it about race and gender, it's not something behavioural and so clears the situation for future employers.
What's the point of this cynical and baseless speculation? They hired an ethicist who they wanted to toe the line. If you are truly an ethicist, it is your job to speak up about unethical and immoral behavior. I am glad that at least 1 person in SV is willing to bang a drum about big tech companies making superficial moves to look good on paper, but then keep everyone quiet inside the castle walls.
Because I'm a cynic, and because at the executive level this is how things work. I could equally ask you to justify your cynical view of "big tech companies". But I won't because I'm perfectly fine working with your chosen bias. Especially since you were so up front about it.
Personally, I'm no fan of Google either, and I accept this cynical view of them. But there's plenty of space for cynicism on both sides in this situation. She was pressing the nuclear option by threatening to resign, so I assume that the relationship was already strained. And I severely doubt that it was entirely over the one cited instance. Therefore, I doubt she's going public to try to win her job back.
She could solely be trying to give Google a black eye on her way out, whether out of disgust or altruism. But doing so requires her to paint Google as "the bad guy", and that in turn requires her to paint herself as "the good guy". So net effect is the same, regardless of motivation.
You accept insane money and insane stock options at insane growth.
In exchange, all you have to do is pretend the company you are working for is a warrior of “don’t be evil”. Somehow different than any other company.
Stir the pot a little, make some noise, be loud enough to let others in the world know you exist, and then simply ignore all the real problems of big tech.
Literally “Mob” money. But the contract was broken here. Too much noise in wrong direction.
The crazy thing is these employees sell out by taking jobs at Google and Facebook in first place (who wouldn’t) but then act surprised their role is simply a social tax strategy to keep heads turned.
I hope she brings the whole thing down. It’s pure evil
Respect to Timnit Gebru for having tried but I don't think it could ever work.
1. Google profits (massively) from AI.
2. Google founds a research team for ethics in AI.
How on earth could 2. be independent research? It's like a tobacco company funding research into the health effects of tobacco. I can't see it as anything other than a PR move and maybe also trying to steer the ethics research into directions that don't hurt 1.
"Former Googler Leslie Miley said he does not believe Google would have handled it the same way if Gebru were a white man. "
James Damore was also fired from Google, also in a controversy about ethics. I think this is really about freedom of expression, and debate. It's impossible to have this within (and outside) a corporation, because employees are not protected enough.
This could be solved by having stronger unions. Unfortunately, the minority card is now used to divide the employees. I suggest listening to something of what Adolph Reed says about this.
Unions at best enact the will of the workers and I wonder if most Google employees would prefer all this ethical drama to just stop. In that case a union would most likely have a rule banning all debates on controversial or non-work topics (on the job using google equipment). Which would lower the amount of debate rather than increase it. Unions aren't a magical solution to all problems.
If they wanted genuinely independent research they would just put x million dollars into some trust which would fund ring fenced research positions at a University for the next ten or twenty years.
The idea of someone being independent while directly on payroll (and reporting to Google management or even the Alphabet board) is ridiculous.
Technically Google makes money from advertising not search. And advertising has been driven by AI for the last two decades. You can't do proper ctr, conversion, bid, etc. predictions otherwise.
edit: Even search uses state of the art language models right now but I assume the gains are incremental. Advertising on the other hand is based on predicting the CTR and the gains from doing that versus naive bid approaches are 40%+.
Not that it really matters, but is it only me or she is not actually "black" but most likely of mixed race (almost certainly mostly white, given her skin tone)? I mean, people seem to quite literally only see races in black/white, where any hint of non-white blood makes you black, as if white were the only pure race... they consider people "black" whenever they are very slightly tanned or have curly hair? It's interesting to me how when you have a white parent and a black parent, you're going to be called "black" (even though having half white and half black genes, you might be equally called white) as if that were a problem you have.
> Not that it really matters, but is it only me or she is not actually "black" but most likely of mixed race (almost certainly mostly white, given her skin tone)?
I'm sure it isn't "just you", but this is wrong.
Gebru was born in Ethiopia to parents from Eritrea, a West African nation whose inhabitants are often much lighter skinned than the "African" stereotype.
Well, the reason they are lighter no doubt is due to mixing with nearby Arabs, who are predominantly white, throughout history, no? Just because you're African it doesn't mean you're black (See South Africa and Tunisia for example)...
Wikipedia seems to confirm that: "approximately 40% of their autosomal ancestry to be derived from an ancient non-African back-migration from the near East, and about 60% to be of local native African origin "...
Not to mention there's no single black race... Africa has more genetic diversity than the rest of the world combined... Calling them all simply "black" is even worse than calling everyone else (Europeans, Native Americans, Asians, Australians, Polynesians) by a single term (brown/white/yellow people, oh man, that' terrible)... just doesn't make any sense.
Of course race makes no sense if you look at it genetically. Race has no real basis in genetics, it's a sociopolitical construct that loosely correlates to superficial traits like skin color and eye shape.
I think that in the future, categorising people by their made up race will be as absurd as categorising people by their eye colour or hair colour (see how skin colour falls into the same kind of trait?).
Imagine a group of people who discriminate all red headed people. Makes as much sense as discriminating all people of a certain skin colour.
To answer your question: in this hypothetical world where red heads have a hard time: imagine someone being fired for fighting for the rights of redheads while actually looking blonde with a tiny amount of red in their hair colour! That's the situation we seem to be in.
Fine. But we're not in that future yet. So, are you arguing that in today's world, stating that Gebru is a member of the sociopolitically constructed category "Black" is a miscategorization, or that the category is nonsensical?
Personally, I think that Gebru is absolutely correct to categorize herself as a Black Woman for purposes of fighting against the discrimination she experiences.
Sometimes I worry that attempts at purposeful diversity are slowing down natural integration. Like the harder we try to make things look good on paper the more people want to stand apart in the real world.
That's probably because you have not suffered to be the only people of your country/race/culture in a company. It's an awful feeling. The rest of colleagues have many common cultural references that you cannot identify with.
A forced bootstrap is a good idea, once the doors are open it is easier to get some level of natural integration. Without a critical mass diversity is extremely hard on the ones that venture beyond their stereotypical place in society.
> That's probably because you have not suffered to be the only people of your country/race/culture in a company.
A whole lot of immigrants have gone through this. None of them are represented by the usual minority voices. The only minorities that ever get attention are women and blacks.
And the reason for that is that these minorities have disproportionate influence and visibility in the public sphere.
That's because companies and society in general is afraid of women and blacks. Asians are routine discriminated against in academia, but nobody fears them. Hispanics and Latinos are horribly abused by companies and the labor market, not to mention the government, but nobody fears them. Women and blacks will sue you, riot, and drag you through the mud with no proof other than their own personal outrage. The media picks it up and amplifies it with disregard to the truth. That's the only reason society responds to them, not out of concern, but fear, which is the worst possible motive.
Country and culture no, race yes. It was really weird for a few weeks but eventually you stop really noticing it once the people around you have names and aren't strangers.
Is there any new info here compared to the thread yesterday? In any Gebru thread the same debate starts from scratch again. Same arguments and links repeated again and again... Read the megathread on the machine learning subreddit to understand the background. It even has input from alleged Googlers (who nonetheless present verifiable insider info).
Diversity is not a natural occurrence. When left to their own devices, companies, communities, and people will always gravity to what is most similar to them. Diversity is only possible at the end of a government bayonet, which only makes the problem worse. When you force people to accept a specific view, you're going to have blowback.
> Diversity is only possible at the end of a government bayonet, which only makes the problem worse.
I don’t agree, there’s tons of diversity. The US has tons of it. What’s miraculous and wonderful is the capacity for acculturation and assimilation where there’s an exchange of cultural knowledge and character.
Obviously forcing social ideas (as academic, theoretical and blatantly activist political as CRT) is bound to be met with anger. But rightly so - diversity training and corporate HR types are insufferable and making them agents of social change is a disaster in the making if you’re trying to be persuasive to people about diversity.
Same. The whole "Google will pay me as long as I do what they say" has nothing to do with equality, it's how things work. Pushing this so hard in the media screams "I want attention and favouritism" for my activism. Good for her for speaking up, and good for Google for protecting their business, I guess.
Personally, I want someone with an activist mindset doing research in ethics in AI. There's too much passivity and techno-worship in AI already. I don't extend this to every domain of work or technology, but I want someone who is committed to not institutionalizing the same biases in technology that are already institutionalized in society.
Maybe that makes me too "woke" or whatever from the libertarian segment of HN.
I don’t really know what to make of this whole thing. In the one hand, maybe she was fired because she asked uncomfortable questions that Google didn’t want to be presented with, and Google is in the wrong. On the other hand, maybe she’s just an asshole to work with in person, and someone there had enough of it already (and if that’s the case, it’s not like Google can just release a PR bit “she is a pain in the ass...”).
People talk about ethics or "right thing to do" as long as they are not directly involved in a controversy. As soon as they are directly involved and at the receiving end the only "right thing to do" is forget about all ethics and save once a$$. This is exactly what Google tried to do and rightly so seems to have backfired big time!
Contrast all these "they were right to fire her" comments with the "how could they, he was just sharing a document" apologists when James Damore was let go for something a lot more serious.
Damore highlighted a serious issue in silicon valley hiring practices. This researcher is just angry Google called her bluff and fired her. It's fact versus spilled grapes.
And given that, her behaviour is likely just trying to introduce spin in order to land her next job easier. By making it about race and gender, it's not something behavioural and so clears the situation for future employers.