> Gebru has said the company wanted to suppress her criticism of its products and its efforts to increase workforce diversity.
> Bengio had defended the pair, who co-led a team of about a dozen researching ethical issues related to AI software.
From his email:
> "how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research, exploration, rigor, diversity and inclusion"
Sure, but perhaps he chose to keep his professional career as free of drama as he could while still quitting because of this. Prospective employers are now more likely to hire him, knowing that he won't be likely to blow things up on his way out.
Keep in mind that there's more to the sentence you're quoting...
>"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note, they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
If I was mildly famous and resigned as a software engineer from Amazon today, the headline might be “Xyz resigns from Amazon amid company’s union-busting efforts.” The headline would be technically the truth, but imply a completely fabricated story.
You mean also if managers under you were very publicly fired for union organization without you being in the loop and then had the whole union friendly group moved out from under you? Otherwise you're making straw man arguments.
This is a great example of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, caught in the wild!
It may very well be the case, that his leaving is related to his colleagues being fired, but there's no evidence of it in the article. So Reuters should not be strongly implying — to the extent that no reader would likely draw any other conclusion — that it is. I mean, it probably is, let's be honest, but I kind of expect better from Reuters.
I actually distrust such sources when I agree with them because I believe that I'm more vulnerable to being manipulated in that case.
And I mistrust the process of reporting anonymous sources like it, not Reuters per se. That is, I would mistrust this no matter who it is saying it because the process itself is untrustworthy and unverifiable. If I were writing such an article (and I have written quite a few news articles, mostly about scientific or legal matters), I would leave this information out entirely.
A more trustworthy way to do this is to name a source and give their basis for claiming to know that. E.G. Person X heard Bengio say XYZ or what have you. But if your source isn't willing to go on the record, I would leave it out to avoid reporting rumors.
In the interest of eliminating implications, you included a period at the end of that quote, which suggests there's nothing else to that statement. In point of fact, the full sentence is:
>"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note, they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
A farewell note is a formality for many people. I'd wager, given that this article discusses his previous statements on the matter, the firings did influence his decision. Having said that, it seems that he's departing as professionally as he possibly can, without blowing things up on the way out. Prospective employers won't have to be afraid of him making a scene even if he disagrees with them.
I would really like to hope that "people familiar with the matter" means Bengio off the record, and not some non-Bengio person with an axe to grind... impossible to know, I guess.
? Commenting on the reasons someone made a decision doesn't mean that they have an axe to grind, any more than "anonymous aide familiar with Biden's decisionmaking says X" means that this anonymous aide has it out for Biden.
It really isn't. If he really did leave for this reason this is exactly how you would expect it to be communicated, and if he didn't not only would the timing be suspicious, but there would probably be an actual reason for leaving given.
There is evidence that it is true - the timing, his defence of Timnit (which worked under him), the anonymous sources, and the deliberately vague resignation letter.
To me, that it is true seems much more likely than the reverse.
I didn't mean an axe to grind against this guy, necessarily, I meant in regards to this whole politically-charged sideshow.
And "anonymous presidential aide says X" is always a political axe-grinding act. Those people don't just say things without an agenda. Historically, it's either someone testing a messaging line with prez approval or an act of factional warfare within the administration to try and shape the narrative.
I appreciate the clarification and stand corrected, re: my statement on OP's own implication. That also explains why it appeared to be mis-quoted elsewhere in this thread.
I think most people would consider it to be highly inappropriate to air grievances with the company or with individuals as a part of a semi-public farewell letter, even if you are DEFINITELY leaving for a VERY SPECIFIC reason.
Correct, and I think it's a very common thing for people to opt not to burn those bridges if they can help it. Who among us hasn't played the whole, "Thanks [company], I've really loved my time here," bit and smiled on the way out while simultaneously thinking, "Fuck this place entirely"?
That's the way it works, right? At one of my employers, I was stunned to see a number of people's farewell letters filled with complaints and how bad their experience was. I was quite shocked personally. That said, I accept people needed to vent and it didn't really seem to burn a bridge when it comes to their colleagues (maybe the organization).
I always find this sort of news confusing and completely lacking in context. I gather this person was a high level manager, but presumably he was part of a very large team. So will this have a material impact on Google? On AI research in general? Or is this just news because it’s Google and that team has been in the news a lot lately. I honestly can’t tell and I feel like I’m the only one who is confused but reflecting on it, this seems unlikely.
nobody, and I mean nobody, is irreplaceable. anyone that thinks they are should see what actually happens in the hours and days after 'irreplaceable' people leave...somehow organizations manage to move forward. and within a week or two they are forgotten (with the possible exception of tiny teams).
You're thinking of people who think they are irreplaceable due to general intelligence. People who are unique due to knowledge of specific systems are much less easy to swap out. Money can buy general intelligence but specific domain/application knowledge is sometimes unavailable at any price.
You have apparently no idea how certain fields work. There are a lot of cases where a person stopped working on something, and then followed a 20 year complete stop of progress. Exceptional people are not replaceable. Putting a team in charge will just increase the damage.
If you follow the news in general there's been a concerted effort to remove white men from positions of power (with very few exceptions). And Google has been - for a while now - one of the poster children for this agenda.
Sundar Pichai, for instance, I believe, was chosen not just because of his browser endeavours' success, his background etc, but because he could help break into the indian market (remember that these tech companies have been eager to get into and dominate the Next Billion Users market [India, China, et al]). It was actually a smart move, IMHO.
Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a tough one to get rid of because he completely controls Facebook. But the media have been doing everything they can to get at him (privacy issues, etc). I mean, it's not that the media aren't right (about some of the issues I'm aware of), but it's the best play they can do at the moment. But this Facebook, or rather, social media and media fight is a whole 'nother and different story despite sharing some variables with this topic.
I don't see this concerted agenda to remove white men from positions of power. If you stand back and think to yourself "if we had a perfectly meritocratic world, what percentage of business leaders would be white men?", I don't think the answer is 100% (as was the case at the turn of the century).
Today the answer is about 70%. So yeah, we are trending away from 100%. And within certain groups of white men, this has created a lot of anxiety about losing their privileged position in society.
Some other evidence that the shift away from 100% white men is not some concerted agenda, but rather people who deserve it being put into positions of power.
Companies with female leadership tend to outperform the market.
You're claiming that Sundar was chosen for his skin color with no evidence other than speculation. Chrome is one of the most important products for Google. Who else was passed up for his job? How are you so sure?
I don't see this concerted agenda to remove white men from positions of power.
Then you haven't been paying attention to the whole picture. I suggest you read more about this issue and these players' business moves.
Today the answer is about 70%. So yeah, we are trending away from 100%.
You don't see a concerted agenda here yet you proved my point. And I've yet another gut feeling that it was never 100%. 100% sounds way too radical, maybe around 99%; hence _minority_.
Companies with female leadership tend to outperform the market.
I never claimed otherwise. I can read prejudice in your words. But I'm probably imagining things.
You're claiming that Sundar was chosen for his skin color with no evidence other than speculation.
No, I'm claiming Sundar was chosen because of his success with Chrome, his background (as in his professional and educational experience) _and_ his ethnicity.
In fact, this latter one not only for one reason but for _two_ reasons: because he belongs to a minority group (which from a PR perspective would look like "see? no more white men! Larry and Sergey are gone!") _and_ because, from a business perspective, it makes sense to pick him to help Google break into and establish itself in the indian market. It's actually a genius move.
Chrome is one of the most important products for Google.
I've never said otherwise. Have you read about Sundar's involvement with it from the start? Yet again, I suggest you read about it. It's just one search engine query away.
Who else was passed up for his job?
I have no clue. But I'm sure there were other people, but they weren't as fit for Google's business strategy.
How are you so sure?
All models are wrong but some are less wrong than others.
Ah, yes, and, finally, the constant barrage of negative news about this issue will most likely help Jeff leave.
> I suggest you read more ... I've yet another gut feeling ... I can read prejudice in your words ... I suggest you read about it ... I have no clue. But I'm sure there were other people ...
The repeated assertion that something is obvious, combined with the repeated choice to not provide any evidence of it, makes it hard for me to take this argument seriously.
As impressive as Dean's technical skills are, there's a point where Google would be better off without him than without all the people who decided not to work for Google because of him.
I mean it's a big leap to say that. Insinuating that he's a troublesome character to work with when most people say the opposite is quite strange. Even if it is related to his personality, sometimes people just don't get along in a workplace. The choice between Dean and Gebru for Google is a fairly easy one in this situation.
If you have something to accuse him of just go ahead and say it. Regardless the recent firings and resignations were for "AI ethics" researchers who were hired for political reasons in the first place. Real engineers wont care.
Not anymore. Also Bengio was demoted over the Gebru support, most likely by Jeff. I also would want to have Gebru on my team, but the handling of HR issues is key here.
I dunno how Reuters works, but afaik in newspapers it’s often different people that write the article and who decide what the title will be. So if Reuters is anything like that then 5 people may not have had much to do with the title.
Yoshua Bengio recently won a Turing Award, which was covered widely in the press at the time. He also appears frequently in other news articles (for example, 14 articles in the New York Times). So yes, I would expect most people in the "Technology News" section at Reuters to at least be familiar with his name.
And even if they didn't expect many readers to know who Yoshua Bengio is, he's still more well-known than Samy.
Can we fix this headline? The implication that Yoshua Bengio has resigned from Google is extremely misleading. (If you don't follow the field, the equivalent in politics would be something like "Biden calls for probe into Google" and it turns out it's not Joe Biden, the US president, but Ashley Biden, his daughter.)
Anyone who knows who Yoshua Bengio to the point that they would be confused would know that he does not work for Google and hence it would not be possible for him to resign from Google AI.
I assumed it was Yoshua Bengio, and I assumed Google had hired him without me knowing about it. There's a long gray area in the middle between "knows that X is a famous researcher in field Y" and "knows every time X changes jobs", and I am in that gray area with respect to not only Yoshua Bengio but actually at least two dozen AI researchers: Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun, Richard Greenblatt, Yann LeCun, Doug Lenat, Stuart Russell, and at least another score whose names aren't occurring to me off the top of my head but who I'd easily recognize.
So I am one of these people you are saying do not exist.
I suspect that actually the vast majority of people who know who Yoshua Bengio is at all are in this gray area with respect to X = yoshuabengio. That is, the people you are saying do not exist vastly outnumber the people who are confident that they are up to date on where Yoshua Bengio works.
I still haven't seen any improvement in AI ethics, even if the article tries to suggest it: we're getting much better models without any guarantees that they won't be misused to gain control of the world. Finding model bias is the easy part, as data is always biased.
Why is this news? Google has dozens of people resign every day. Many of them for polar opposite reasons. If one person resigns because Youtube is censoring too much and another person resigns because Youtube isn't censoring enough, you can't report on only the latter to imply that Youtube's lack of censorship is unpopular with the workforce. This kind of reporting is just flat-out dishonest and manipulative.
From TFA: “Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note, they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”
Considering I've been quoted in articles as an anonymous source on stuff I don't know anything about, I'm willing to bet no one can confirm why he left except Bengio himself.
This will be downvoted to hell, but I can't tell if Gebru really is brilliant or if she was like the emperor with no clothes, and people were praising her for reasons similar to the fable: so they aren't ostracized. The famous paper was IMO very weak, trying to say AI research is bad because [add random stuff pulled out of thin air, like energy waste].
But well, since HN nowadays is full of zealots of both sides, I don't expect to find a nuanced discussion.
> But well, since HN nowadays is full of zealots of both sides, I don't expect to find a nuanced discussion.
In my view, prefacing your comment with "This will be downvoted to hell" dilutes the quality of the conversation here. It also I think falsely suggests some sort of victimhood narrative when many of the comments in this thread and others about the subject are quite critical of Timnit.
It wasn't random stuff pulled out of thin air -- it's a well researched paper that cites 158 academic sources. Of course it will seem weak if you will dismiss its arguments and evidence out of hand rather than critically engaging it. If nuance is what you want from this site, then try it yourself, yeah?
I don't understand what people want from AI. There is no way to make AI algorithms inherently equitable. If the models are trained on white power literature they will be racist. No company needs ai ethics researchers to know that they cant put models out into the wild without being manually curated.
This sets up a false dichotomy, I think. There's no need to believe that only one of the two extremes is possible, nor to decide on and commit to a specific belief/worldview about a person. I think there's evidence that her research is great (and not every paper by brilliant people is expected to be brilliant), and also evidence that people who disagreed with her viewpoints were placed under pressure because of it (maybe not directly by her). Also, her research and her general viewpoints on social media might not all be about the same things.
What I still don't understand is what the possible up side could be for a company telling a staff researcher to withdraw or not to submit a research paper, as long as it didn't compromise trade secrets, privacy, etc..
Were they trying to avoid negative publicity? That seems to have worked out well.
> what the possible up side could be for a company telling a staff researcher to withdraw or not to submit a research paper
My org has a big focus on scientific integrity and doesn’t want to put out inaccurate information. So the upside is reputational to have high quality scientific output.
I’d guess they may also want some sort of review for IP or trade secrets to make sure info is appropriate for release.
Finally, I’ve worked places where there is comms and branding review where the org wants all the right product names and stuff to line up.
Let's review. Samy Bengio, co-founder of Google Brain and Google AI scientist of 14 years, unexpectedly resigns in the aftermath of Timnit Gebru and Margaret (Meg) Mitchell's firings. Gebru and Mitchell were the founders of Google's Ethical AI team, whose work on AI fairness was previously celebrated by Google AI leadership.
Furthermore, Samy Bengio was Timnit's direct manager, but was completely blindsided by Timnit's firing, saying "I was stunned by what just happened to Timnit Gebru, who was in my team until a few days ago ... I stand by you, Timnit". Timnit was notified of her termination by Megan Kacholia, the Vice President of Google Research, who has since been removed from overseeing the remaining members of the Ethical AI team.
Regarding the publication which precipitated Timnit's ousting, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots ...", Samy Bengio granted publication approval for the submission. It was only after this approval that the Google Ethics AI researchers were told to rescind their names from the paper (they could not withdraw the paper entirely, since it was a collaboration with external academic researchers).
Mitchell was fired shortly thereafter for allegedly violating the company's code of conduct and security policies.
Now, only a few months after Gebru and Mitchell's firings, Samy Bengio has also resigned.
Considering the sequence of events reviewed above, it seems clear to me that Samy Bengio's resignation is directly the result of Google's mishandling of this situation. If Timnit had not been fired while away on vacation, and Google leadership had instead found a way to address her concerns, or even accept her resignation more tactfully, then this debacle would have never unfolded in this manner, and Samy Bengio would still be at Google.
I am not particularly surprised by Google's mishandling of this situation though, as it seems completely predictable and even cliche that such corporate behemoths often handle these situations in the most ham-handed ways.
What I do find astonishing is the willingness of some Hacker News commenters to read into Timnit's actions and motivations, often with the most negative interpretations, but when it comes to Samy Bengio's resignation, they seem completely unable to read between the lines, and instead raise their burden of proof, so that they can deny any connection between this chain of events. Resignation letters and company wide farewell emails almost never disclose the real reasons behind a departure. Just because Samy Bengio has not explicitly said something like, "I am resigning because I stand in solidarity with Timnit Gebru", does not mean that these events are not linked, despite the assertions of some comments in this thread. In fact, it's seems to me that one would need to willfully ignore the evidence so far to conclude that these events are not linked, at least to some degree.
Bengio and Gebru have very different public personas -- Bengio doesn't seem to have any Twitter presence at all -- and I think HN is a lot more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to somebody who relatively silently does ML research than to give benefit of the doubt to somebody who is very actively confrontational (perhaps for good reason) on Twitter.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadBut the email excerpts quoted in article do not support that conclusion.
> Gebru has said the company wanted to suppress her criticism of its products and its efforts to increase workforce diversity.
> Bengio had defended the pair, who co-led a team of about a dozen researching ethical issues related to AI software.
From his email:
> "how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research, exploration, rigor, diversity and inclusion"
No need for sarcasm.
This article says that "He did not mention their firings in his farewell note.".
Keep in mind that there's more to the sentence you're quoting...
>"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note, they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
No, that's a different sentence, that replaced the one I read. The article was edited after I wrote my comment.
When I wrote my comment, that sentence said "He did not mention their firings in his farewell note."
You can see this original sentence here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210406202729/https://www.reute...
"He did not mention their firings in his farewell note."
It may very well be the case, that his leaving is related to his colleagues being fired, but there's no evidence of it in the article. So Reuters should not be strongly implying — to the extent that no reader would likely draw any other conclusion — that it is. I mean, it probably is, let's be honest, but I kind of expect better from Reuters.
The article mentions multiple links and things he said.
That's not quite correct, but true that the evidence presented is weak (e.g. anonymous "sources familiar")
I find that people tend to trust anonymous sources on issues that they agree with, and distrust on issues they don't.
And I mistrust the process of reporting anonymous sources like it, not Reuters per se. That is, I would mistrust this no matter who it is saying it because the process itself is untrustworthy and unverifiable. If I were writing such an article (and I have written quite a few news articles, mostly about scientific or legal matters), I would leave this information out entirely.
A more trustworthy way to do this is to name a source and give their basis for claiming to know that. E.G. Person X heard Bengio say XYZ or what have you. But if your source isn't willing to go on the record, I would leave it out to avoid reporting rumors.
>"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note, they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
A farewell note is a formality for many people. I'd wager, given that this article discusses his previous statements on the matter, the firings did influence his decision. Having said that, it seems that he's departing as professionally as he possibly can, without blowing things up on the way out. Prospective employers won't have to be afraid of him making a scene even if he disagrees with them.
So assuming that it’s true is not a good idea since there’s no evidence that it’s true.
To me, that it is true seems much more likely than the reverse.
And "anonymous presidential aide says X" is always a political axe-grinding act. Those people don't just say things without an agenda. Historically, it's either someone testing a messaging line with prez approval or an act of factional warfare within the administration to try and shape the narrative.
Sundar Pichai, for instance, I believe, was chosen not just because of his browser endeavours' success, his background etc, but because he could help break into the indian market (remember that these tech companies have been eager to get into and dominate the Next Billion Users market [India, China, et al]). It was actually a smart move, IMHO.
Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a tough one to get rid of because he completely controls Facebook. But the media have been doing everything they can to get at him (privacy issues, etc). I mean, it's not that the media aren't right (about some of the issues I'm aware of), but it's the best play they can do at the moment. But this Facebook, or rather, social media and media fight is a whole 'nother and different story despite sharing some variables with this topic.
Today the answer is about 70%. So yeah, we are trending away from 100%. And within certain groups of white men, this has created a lot of anxiety about losing their privileged position in society.
Some other evidence that the shift away from 100% white men is not some concerted agenda, but rather people who deserve it being put into positions of power.
Companies with female leadership tend to outperform the market.
https://www.consultancy.com.au/news/2362/companies-with-wome...
You're claiming that Sundar was chosen for his skin color with no evidence other than speculation. Chrome is one of the most important products for Google. Who else was passed up for his job? How are you so sure?
In fact, this latter one not only for one reason but for _two_ reasons: because he belongs to a minority group (which from a PR perspective would look like "see? no more white men! Larry and Sergey are gone!") _and_ because, from a business perspective, it makes sense to pick him to help Google break into and establish itself in the indian market. It's actually a genius move.
I've never said otherwise. Have you read about Sundar's involvement with it from the start? Yet again, I suggest you read about it. It's just one search engine query away. I have no clue. But I'm sure there were other people, but they weren't as fit for Google's business strategy. All models are wrong but some are less wrong than others.Ah, yes, and, finally, the constant barrage of negative news about this issue will most likely help Jeff leave.
The repeated assertion that something is obvious, combined with the repeated choice to not provide any evidence of it, makes it hard for me to take this argument seriously.
You mean: directly attributed to him and Megan Kacholia.
But it's not just me who figures that people will be less inclined to want to work there including this Google employee https://twitter.com/vickitardif/status/1334499064457650176 and this person who co-authored a paper with Timnit https://twitter.com/emilymbender/status/1370463074692472834
Edit: oh and that time their sponsorship of the FAccT was cancelled. https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/ai-ethics-research-confer...
This headlines are hairpulling the issue in every news.
It's kind of incredible that at least 5 people at Reuters worked on this story, yet nobody stopped to think that this would be a confusing headline.
Or, if you want to be cynical, maybe they knew it would be confusing, but also that it would get more clicks...
And even if they did, why would expect a non trivial portion of readers to know?
And even if they didn't expect many readers to know who Yoshua Bengio is, he's still more well-known than Samy.
So I am one of these people you are saying do not exist.
I suspect that actually the vast majority of people who know who Yoshua Bengio is at all are in this gray area with respect to X = yoshuabengio. That is, the people you are saying do not exist vastly outnumber the people who are confident that they are up to date on where Yoshua Bengio works.
I still haven't seen any improvement in AI ethics, even if the article tries to suggest it: we're getting much better models without any guarantees that they won't be misused to gain control of the world. Finding model bias is the easy part, as data is always biased.
Any newspapers that don’t have this kind of gossip?
But well, since HN nowadays is full of zealots of both sides, I don't expect to find a nuanced discussion.
In my view, prefacing your comment with "This will be downvoted to hell" dilutes the quality of the conversation here. It also I think falsely suggests some sort of victimhood narrative when many of the comments in this thread and others about the subject are quite critical of Timnit.
Were they trying to avoid negative publicity? That seems to have worked out well.
Or were they afraid of being sued?
My org has a big focus on scientific integrity and doesn’t want to put out inaccurate information. So the upside is reputational to have high quality scientific output.
I’d guess they may also want some sort of review for IP or trade secrets to make sure info is appropriate for release.
Finally, I’ve worked places where there is comms and branding review where the org wants all the right product names and stuff to line up.
Furthermore, Samy Bengio was Timnit's direct manager, but was completely blindsided by Timnit's firing, saying "I was stunned by what just happened to Timnit Gebru, who was in my team until a few days ago ... I stand by you, Timnit". Timnit was notified of her termination by Megan Kacholia, the Vice President of Google Research, who has since been removed from overseeing the remaining members of the Ethical AI team.
Regarding the publication which precipitated Timnit's ousting, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots ...", Samy Bengio granted publication approval for the submission. It was only after this approval that the Google Ethics AI researchers were told to rescind their names from the paper (they could not withdraw the paper entirely, since it was a collaboration with external academic researchers).
Mitchell was fired shortly thereafter for allegedly violating the company's code of conduct and security policies.
Now, only a few months after Gebru and Mitchell's firings, Samy Bengio has also resigned.
Considering the sequence of events reviewed above, it seems clear to me that Samy Bengio's resignation is directly the result of Google's mishandling of this situation. If Timnit had not been fired while away on vacation, and Google leadership had instead found a way to address her concerns, or even accept her resignation more tactfully, then this debacle would have never unfolded in this manner, and Samy Bengio would still be at Google.
I am not particularly surprised by Google's mishandling of this situation though, as it seems completely predictable and even cliche that such corporate behemoths often handle these situations in the most ham-handed ways.
What I do find astonishing is the willingness of some Hacker News commenters to read into Timnit's actions and motivations, often with the most negative interpretations, but when it comes to Samy Bengio's resignation, they seem completely unable to read between the lines, and instead raise their burden of proof, so that they can deny any connection between this chain of events. Resignation letters and company wide farewell emails almost never disclose the real reasons behind a departure. Just because Samy Bengio has not explicitly said something like, "I am resigning because I stand in solidarity with Timnit Gebru", does not mean that these events are not linked, despite the assertions of some comments in this thread. In fact, it's seems to me that one would need to willfully ignore the evidence so far to conclude that these events are not linked, at least to some degree.