Google CEO Pledges To Investigate Exit of Top AI Ethicist (axios.com) 83
Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized Wednesday for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate the events and work to restore trust, according to an internal memo sent companywide and obtained by Axios. From the report: Gebru's exit has provoked anger and consternation within Google as well as in academic circles, with thousands of people signing an open letter urging Google to reexamine its practices. In the note, Pichai acknowledged the depth of the damage done by the company's actions and said the company would look at all aspects of the situation, but stopped short of saying the company made a mistake in removing Gebru.
"I've heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru's departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," Pichai said in the memo. " I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust." While Pichai's memo strikes a contrite tone, it's unclear how far it will go to addressing the significant upset within Google's ranks, especially among those concerned with its commitments to diversity and academic freedom.
"I've heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru's departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," Pichai said in the memo. " I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust." While Pichai's memo strikes a contrite tone, it's unclear how far it will go to addressing the significant upset within Google's ranks, especially among those concerned with its commitments to diversity and academic freedom.
don't be evil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:don't be evil (Score:5, Funny)
Find someone who plays Dungeons and Dragons, then ask them to look it up in the Monster Manual. It says so for each entry, right under "Alignment".
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Not just "Don't be evil": Have healthy management. (Score:3)
The issue is not only about one employee. The issue is the overall lack of healthy social functionality of Google management.
Re:Not just "Don't be evil": Have healthy manageme (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe staff expects 100% free speech on company matters, and maybe deep down that’s the image Google management wanted to portray as well. But unless they really raised false expectations in Gebru, her getting fired is her own fault. And it’s not something that should be up to staff, just because she was speaking out on an issue close to their heart. She got fired for her conduct rather than her opinions.
CEO social mistakes are seen as permission. (Score:4)
I don't agree with that. My perception is that Google has been sloppy about management since Sundar Pichai began as CEO.
An excellent CEO must guide an entire company both socially and technically. It seemed to me that, in the early years, Google had a social health it doesn't have now.
When CEOs make social mistakes, that causes some employees to believe they can cause social difficulties, also.
My opinion.
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An excellent CEO must guide an entire company both socially and technically. It seemed to me that, in the early years, Google had a social health it doesn't have now.
That’s fair enough. Perhaps in the early years the company had more unity of purpose. And keep in mind that the workforce has changed as well: 2 decades ago, many employees still thought that a company did not need a stance on ethics, moral, or political issues: a company’s function was to turn a profit, and being amoral was fine. 1 decade ago, employees started to look for companies with ethical goals that aligned with their own. Nowadays employees demand to have a say in what those goals are.
Re:CEO social mistakes are seen as permission. (Score:4, Insightful)
2 decades ago, many employees still thought that a company did not need a stance on ethics, moral, or political issues:
Two decades ago google was still touting their official motto as "Don't Be Evil". They had an ethics policy of sort, way way before this kind of thing was so publicly mainstream.
Now in the context of the day, it was pretty tech focussed. It was clearly a dig at Microsoft who were using every dirty trick in the book and a bunch of illegal ones to suppress competition. Every nerd knew that and many of us despised M$ (remember that?) for it. So, formed out of a bunch of young, idealistic nerds, they had a policy that was decidedly not "profit at all costs" because we all knew where that lead.
And back then google was considered a great employee, and I think that was a part of it.
I agree with your points overall, I think ironically google of 20 years ago was something of an exception.
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I think you are being harsh on the CEO. Can you actually show how Google was "good" before and point to some particular decision taken by Pichai to change that? You can't.
Google's problems are well known and well documented. It needs to attract the best talent all over the world to make sure its business model isn't threatened. For that it has, from day 1, portrayed a liberal utopia kind of image for its campus and culture. The problem is that once you grow to a certain size you need to have order and struc
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Get real, it is was all a cynical exercise in marketing. Google virtue signalled on all sorts of issues to become the number one advertising agency on the internet selling mass consumption in a time of catastrophic climate, no shits given, except the virtue signalling ones. Now that the virtual signalling marketing campaign is running dry, they are backing away from the money wasting virtue signalling and going hard economic to bleed out as much profit as they can.
They are manoeuvring around less marketing
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She was an "AI Ethicist". Objective performance measures are literally impossible for that job description.
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Here's the email he sent to all employees: https://www.axios.com/sundar-p... [axios.com]
It certainly sounds like he thinks he fucked up. Could be insincere but does he really think Google staff are going to fall for that?
So? (Score:2)
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Of course (Score:2, Insightful)
but stopped short of saying the company made a mistake in removing Gebru.
Why would he say that before the investigation?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets listen to only the people who cry really loud and complain the company I work for doesn't do exactly what I want.
What about all the others who work at Google? How do they feel? Notice they are most likely just working and to afraid to say something.
If your boss says this is the way it is, then deal with it or quit. No one is forcing you to work there. Has everyone always agreed with the positions of a company they work for?
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Well, when I didn't agree, I got a new job at a different employer. I didn't complain, but then I wasn't hired as an ethicist. If you're supposed to be promoting ethics, and you're being ignored, then perhaps making a noise about the situation is the proper move.
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Google is a business, not a goddamned academic campus. You've got work to do.
-jcr
Did you choose your words to appear as a man screaming at a cloud ;) Because such diction appears to be...screaming at a cloud.
Google deliberately designed its campus to mirror the repeated accidents of random meetings that occur on academic campuses. Google deliberately abandoned cubicles and glassed corner offices to indicate hierarchy and authority. Google deliberately made recreation an aspect of its work expectations-- a work hard, play hard ethos.
I don't know the circumstances or instances of what a
Re: Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:1, Troll)
You're an absolute treasure. I masturbate to responses like yours.
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Google deliberately designed its campus to mirror the repeated accidents of random meetings that occur on academic campuses. Google deliberately abandoned cubicles and glassed corner offices to indicate hierarchy and authority. Google deliberately made recreation an aspect of its work expectations-- a work hard, play hard ethos.
It sounds like Google also had to grow up and get a real job.
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On the other hand, it's pretty stupid to hire an ethicist and then freak out when the ethicist says something that makes something you're doing look questionable. That's what ethicists do, and their work is sufficiently arcane that almost nobody is going to ever hear about it... unless you do something monumentally stupid.
Re: Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:1)
Not really. When you hire a cyber security expert, you expect that they help make your product more secure, not write public papers exposing all the holes found in your product during the audit. Same goes for an ethics expert.
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+1 out of mod points, mod up please
Re: Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:1)
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Google is a business, not a goddamned academic campus. You've got work to do. Sucking up to every SJW who throws a tantrum wastes management time and shareholders' money.
And that's why they fired James Damore. So, Are you happy with that?
Incoming downmods because I didn't kowtow to Saint Damore in 3... 2...
Re: Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:2)
So you admit Damore was fighting for social justice?
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So you admit
There are a lot of assumptions you've made about me piled into three short words.
Damore was fighting for social justice?
I expect Damore believes he was, after a fashion. But belief you're doing something doesn't mean you actually are.
Re: Stop groveling, for fuck's sake. (Score:2)
That's certainly true of all social justice warriors. That is why SJW is a pejorative. If everyone agreed on what social justice was, no one would have to go to war over it.
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I had to go see what other BS you were spouting given the poor quality reply you made to me... now we see this beauty.
Compare and contrast:
vs
The amount of cognitive dissonance is astounding, but then, I would expect that from a person who not that long ago we'd simply call a 'bully'
Swearing at an inte
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They want to be both. They want the research, the pure academic enquiry, but they also want to spin it into a business.
Why do you think there are so many headstones in the Google graveyard? And those are just the ones that made it to the public.
Allowed to do evil after 2018 (Score:3)
Who missed Google quietly throwing their beloved 'do no evil' motto under the bus in 2018?
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You think 2018 is when they turned into evil money and power grubbing whores??!!!
Google former CEO Eric Schmidt "The phrase was never meant to be a declaration of human rights."
They never actually meant they wouldn't be evil to people, lolz.
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You think 2018 is when they turned into evil money and power grubbing whores??!!!
No but I sort of admire the honesty of publicly stating stating "you know what fuck it, we'll be evil for money".
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Not this black duck - a disappointing day indeed.
won't talk to us (Score:2)
"Privacy and Electronic ethics are really important to us, so I really want to get to the bottom of this ASAP. I was going to call him but I accessed his phone metadata and saw he was talking to his mother so I held off. While I was waiting I did some sentiment analysis in his personal gmail account with all emails that included the words "ethics" and "google" and jeez... it doesn't look good. "
more like "don't be stupid" (Score:2)
What a load! (Score:1, Troll)
Ethics... (Score:5, Interesting)
As an ethicist, she should be very aware that in targeting women to be employed in preference to men, she is advocating discrimination against men, and sending mails to people saying she's unhappy that effectively men aren't discriminated against enough for her tastes is a gross violation of ethics, not to mention actually illegal. Wrapping it up in saying "You don't hire enough women" is just a nicer way of saying "You hire more men than I'm happy with".
If she's not aware of this, then I don't actually rate her as an ethicist in practice.
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But when you look at employees as a whole and see statistically impossible biases against particular groups,
Wait, what statistics do you have that show companies are biased against female computer programmers?
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Wait, what statistics do you have that show companies are biased against female computer programmers?
I google'd "companies are biased against female computer programmers" and the first result was The Strong Bias Against Women in Coding [howstuffworks.com], which kicks off with a link to a study (link updated to new URL) which demonstrates a general bias against female computer programmers. Not much farther down the results is Women built the tech industry. Then they were pushed out. [washingtonpost.com], a WaPo article which pretty well sums up the situation. It's not that the tech industry is specially biased against women, necessarily, but that
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I don't see any statistics in there that shows companies are biased against female computer programmers. Certainly companies hire more men, but obviously that doesn't mean they are biased. The closest one is the GitHub example, but it's not clear that the difference is significant.
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I think any ethicist, like any lawyer, needs to be able to argue either side of that case.
Deciding between an obvious right versus obvious wrong is easy, you don't need an ethicist for that. If you're considering embezzling money from your employer or mugging a pedestrian you don't consult an ethicist, you consult your conscience.
Ethicists specialize in hard questions. Situations where honoring one person's rights infringes anothers'; or where avoiding harm in one place does harm in another. Questions li
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i described anyone who uses reason to deal with complex real world problems rather than indoctrination.
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That's a tricky one on lots of levels. I pretty much agree with you, but with lots and lots of caveats. A lot of the time there don't look to be any good answers.
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Logical fallacy. Noticing that there is a bias in a system and wanting to correct it is not an attack on the thing that happened to benefit from the bias.
The argument has moved on from "there is no problem" to "you can't do anything about it because that would be unfair!"
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You are assuming that preferences are not the result of bias, when we know (because there are decades of research on the subject) that they are. If preferences were unaffected by external biases then advertising wouldn't work, there would be no fashion or trends.
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citation needed - I find generalistic stuff not specific to boy/girl discrimination
The accusation is AI discrimination - got a cit that shows AI should be placing girls before boys?
Not what it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of asking to remove the BERT model from Google search she should have asked for a disclaimer and concrete investigations into the actual effects of the supposed bias. It would make search worse for everyone if we removed the latest technology from it.
The way I see it, some things are inherently biased: people, political parties, organisations, media, books, art and private companies. Other things should not be biased: justice, education, health, police, banking, housing, transportation, energy, science and hiring. Where do you think Google should fall? It is to be treated like a public utility? Should it be more unbiased than newspapers, TV and books?
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but contains no concrete steps or methods
and no proof. Sometimes, the facts are biased.
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but contains no concrete steps or methods
and no proof. Sometimes, the facts are biased.
Sounds like a good candidate for the Trump team trying to overturn the election results.
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This is how academic papers work. You can't just skip to the solution, you have to prove the problem exists and define it in a way that fixes can be measured against.
We know about these issues from media reports, but now we also have some scientific analysis to work with.
Reprocussions (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I told my boss "do this or I will leave" I would expect to be canned immediately. Why does this woman think that this does not apply to her?
Because she was hired as an "ethicist". The job title has little - if any - meaning, and had she had simply wrote some papers now and then and kept her head down she'd be pulling an easy 6-figures for life while literally doing nothing of any value to anybody.
Instead, it turns out that she's a misandrist (knock me over with a feather!) and can't keep her mouth shut. She can be replaced with literally anybody, but the fact that they chose her to begin with means she hit all the right woke checkboxes. It's
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Why does this woman think that this does not apply to her?
Her generation seems to have particular difficulty grasping the concept of 'cause and effect.'
Because she's woke. (Score:2)
'AI Ethicist' (Score:1, Interesting)
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Hired as a woke trophy.. Probably lacks the ability to code a hello world program
I have no idea if she can code. Why do you think an ethicist's job IS to code?
They fired her essentially for doing her job too much.
I think we actually agree. She did do her job with enthusiasm and that wasn't what they really wanted it seems.
Diversity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, what? If there's an AI Ethicist at Alphabet/Google, I want them 105% focused on preventing the rise of Skynet and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE.
If this person left because they felt their concerns about AI safety were not being addressed within the largest tech and most powerful tech company of our time, then that is a five-alarm fire.
If they left because someone somewhere got their SJW anxiety in a flutter, then I literally don't care.
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> I want them 105% focused on preventing the rise of Skynet and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE.
The paper she was working on was pointing out that the rise of Skynet would be really really profitable, right up until, and possibly even after, it started killing people. That's why it was so contentious.
And one of the reasons why people are pretty upset about her firing is that not only does it stop the discussion about that now, it also sends a pretty clear message to every other person at google, "if you talk abou
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A pledge, a promise, and nothing... (Score:2)
It's ironical tech companies promise/pledge/plan to etc. something that is a very glowing reflection and sign of what the tech company is...but if you look at Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, its more public relations piffle. The end result is always three things, zip, zero, and zilch. No legal requirement nor obligation, let alone consequences.
Instead of an apology, re-hire the top AI Ethicist under a long-term contract, so if they do fire again, they'll pay the cost where it hurts--money. But the firing will
"He would investigate the events...." (Score:2)
"and work to restore trust."
Not rehire the person or address their concerns mind you. Just "work to restore trust."
Sack them (Score:2)
Ethicist? (Score:1)
Sorry, she was not an "ethicist." She was a "diversity" specialist, sometimes abbreviated "sjw."