AI Ethics Research Conference Suspends Google Sponsorship (venturebeat.com) 48
The ACM Conference for Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) has decided to suspend its sponsorship relationship with Google, conference sponsorship co-chair and Boise State University assistant professor Michael Ekstrand confirmed today. From a report: The organizers of the AI ethics research conference came to this decision a little over a week after Google fired Ethical AI lead Margaret Mitchell and three months after the firing of Ethical AI co-lead Timnit Gebru. Google has subsequently reorganized about 100 engineers across 10 teams, including placing Ethical AI under the leadership of Google VP Marian Croak. "The Executive Committee made the decision that having Google as a sponsor for the 2021 conference would not be in the best interests of the community and impede the Strategic Plan. We will be revising the sponsorship policy for next year's conference," said Ekstrand. The decision followed days of questions about whether FAccT would continue its relationship with Google following the company's treatment of Ethical AI team leaders. The news first emerged Friday, when FAccT program committee member Suresh Venkatasubramanian tweeted that the organization would pause its relationship with Google.
Don't be evil (Score:2, Insightful)
oops, too late.
Can someone enlighten me? (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't been following this story very closely, I clicked around "a bit" and all I found was claims made by the people fired that they were treated unfairly. Is there any evidence from any disinterested parties that their firing was an act of revenge? Or any evidence at all that doesn't come from a source that has an obvious angle (personal or political)?
I don't like Google, for many reasons. I use https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com]. But I also don't like it when one person's slanted interpretation of facts becomes the accepted truth which in turn motivates economic punishment where there was no actual wrongdoing.
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From what I could see they fired Timnit for doing her job as described. She was there to be an AI ethics scholar and to do things like write papers to help fool people into thinking Google gave a single shit about ethics. Except that she hinted there might be problems with certain approach
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Google, Facebook and company have been raiding universities for several years. They make nice deals with their acquisitions, paying ridiculous salaries. The thing is, when you work for a company you are no longer in academia. The academic norms don't apply. It sounds like Timnit found that out.
Now she's got her academic freedom back, and once the sting of losing the big salary goes away she'd probably be happy about it, except she's finding out that some of those things they make you sign keep you quiet eve
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Kind of makes you wonder what Google's up to that they had to liquidate their ethics department hey?
I think they just hired the wrong people. An ethics department is not an ethics oversight committee.
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From what I could see they fired Timnit for doing her job as described.
From what I read, she notified Google she was publishing a paper, with her name and Google's, with something like 1 day's notice, which was against their internal research publishing policy (some committee somewhere is going to need more than 1 day to review shit with their name on it!).
They said she could publish it without proper notice, if she took Google's name off of it, which she refused to do. *SHE* then told *THEM* they either give her the names and *word-for-word* feedback from the people that d
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I have a hard time not thinking that Timnit's version is closer to the truth when 1500 of her colleagues were willing to sign this https://googlewalkout.medium.c... [medium.com]
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Is there any evidence from any disinterested parties that their firing was an act of revenge?
There's plenty of "evidence," but everything is unfolding so quickly and right now, so the lawyers haven't even fully digested the information to sufficient levels for all of the relevant court cases to even get filed. In other words, even the "interested" parties are digging through the dirt and trying to make sense of what's going on (legally, ethically, and even just chronologically).
It doesn't help Google's image that their workforce and leadership have cemented themselves at opposite ends of a clas
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It doesn't help Google's image that their workforce and leadership have cemented themselves at opposite ends of a classic Proletariat-Bourgeoisie structure (comparable to Marxism class struggles).
My heart fucking bleeds for the oppressed masses who have a median salary of a quarter million dollars a year [wired.com].
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It doesn't help Google's image that their workforce and leadership have cemented themselves at opposite ends of a classic Proletariat-Bourgeoisie structure (comparable to Marxism class struggles).
My heart fucking bleeds for the oppressed masses who have a median salary of a quarter million dollars a year [wired.com].
What's you're really saying is that anybody who earns above federally-mandated minimum wage (or perhaps a minimally-viable "Living Wage") should shut the heck up about any and all questionable and offensive corporate behaviors?! Because the nominal dollar amount is NOT THE POINT about any of this! Under your logic, you should probably keep quiet even if you're really struggling just because you might be earning more than minimum wage. (Let's all ignore that cost-of-living expenses and past debts and imme
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What's you're really saying is that anybody who earns above federally-mandated minimum wage (or perhaps a minimally-viable "Living Wage") should shut the heck up about any and all questionable and offensive corporate behaviors?!
I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that classifying people who are in the top 10% (and higher) of income earners as "the proletariat" is pure, 100%, unadulterated bullshit I'm also not "disgruntled." While I'm not as well compensated as an engineer living in the bay area, I'm well compensated for where I live. If you called me one of the poor, oppressed masses with no stake in the system, I'd laugh in your face--because I HAVE been in my life, and I know what that looks like.
Go do something
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If you fire two people that had a nominally independant auditor role within three months that's usually a pretty big warning sign. That needs to be followed up with an clear commitment to the original goal, or everybody knows that there's something fishy going on.
And it's not like you can actually get clear evidence here from anybody. Even the two people were fired becaue Google was literally planning to run an AI controlled baby grinding machine they wouldn't be able to make that public due to NDAs.
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If you fire two people that had a nominally independent auditor role within three months that's usually a pretty big warning sign.
They did not have that role. For that, the entity being audited very much cannot fire individual auditors. They were at best sort-of a reduced "internal audit" which has the role of finding issues that a real audit (internal with duty to report to the regulator or external) would find. Also, auditors do not report to the public and keep their findings strictly confidential.
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As far as I can determine, it was an act of legal "revenge" for stealing documents and bad-mouthing their employer in publications. You know, perfectly fine reasons to fire someone. Of course, if the ones fired believe they were entitled to that behavior, it turns them into instant "victims".
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But I also don't like it when one person's slanted interpretation of facts becomes the accepted truth which in turn motivates economic punishment where there was no actual wrongdoing.
But is this intended objectivity also applicable the other way around, i.e., I also don't like it when one person's (Google's) slanted interpretation of facts becomes the accepted truth which in turn motivates economic punishment where there was no actual wrongdoing? Unless we have additional information, we can only assume that Google is telling the truth, just like we can only assume that the former employees are telling the truth.
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Great move (Score:4, Insightful)
Now some people have heard about them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The left eats their own.
Have you seen the Republican party lately? I think a more apt phrasing would be "Extremists eat those closest to them."
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Calling ANY big business "left" is so stupid it's hard to believe. Google is self-interested. It does what it thinks will benefit it, or those controlling it. It's neither left nor right, but if I had to choose I'd say it was closer to right. I.e. it believes in the rights of the powerful, which is closer to the dogma of the right, if not always of their respective actions. Google is probably to the left of IBM, but neither of them are really interested in the left vs. right game.,,,and no sensible per
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You are just throwing vague allegations. What actual "bad wokey" things were done?
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Capitalism is a left-ism now? That's a new one.
pot tells kettle (Score:2)
The left eats their own. Google, for all of their social justice posturing and MASSIVE political sway in the election, just can't be woke enough. You can never be woke enough because someone is always a bigger victim. For their attempts to prostrate at the altar of diversity, the get rewarded with outrage because you evidently can't fire an employee who moved sensitive files to unsecured places against policy if they're a 'person of color' or other coddled identity.
Enjoy the victim culture you've helped create, Google. When society reverses, it will be swift and blinding and you'll have been weakened by years of pandering.
Calling Corporate America "leftist" is such an idiotic thing to do. Also, and I speak as a former Republican voter, have you seen the GOP lately?
Mike fucking Pence (among other Republican figures) almost got lynched, and Nikki Halley was quick to throw Trump under the bus (albeit only temporarily), and the Lincoln Project went all balls out against Trump (and then suffered a meltdown due to sexual harassment accusations.)
Remember Bobby Jindall saying a few years ago that the GOP needed to stop being the
Don't believe the BS (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Don't believe the BS (Score:2)
It would be more ethical I think to consider the underlying facts rather than just following a crowd acting on instinct.
Don't need ethicists if we're just going to let the mob decide what is ethical.
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Regardless of why those people were fired, the recent optics of Google's AI Ethics department makes it look generally incapable of executing it's intended purpose. Wouldn't you also distance yourself from someone that represents your goals so negatively?
It seems to be pretty clear what the problem here is: Screwed up Google hiring decisions. Again. They never learned to actually look at people when hiring them.
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Fuck it, I'm changing my signature.
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Fuck it, I'm changing my signature.
Hahaha, cannot wait what you will come up with!
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Prepare for disappointment.
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Pretty much, yes. And Michell apparently stole and "leaked" confidential documents. Just only firing such a person is almost a friendly act.
These are basically fanatics that think they have ultimate truth. Plenty of that scum left and right these days. Too many people seem to have forgotten that any kind of community (small or large) is built on tolerance and accepting that others may see things differently.
AI Ethics Research Conference? (Score:2)
Am I a cynic for wondering if this 'conference' was created just to have something Google could be banned from? I mean, I don't know if this is a new thing or if 'AI ethicists' have had regular gatherings since the 70's, but this is the very first thought that popped into my post-trust clown-world mind.
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Yes, AI ethics is old and you're being cynical without websearching the topic.
Granted, when I was in College it was mostly Philosophy Department stuff but even Star Trek TOS pondered the issue in the 60's, well after Asimov's Three Rules.
Even /Metropolis/ raised a few of the issues.
It's just that today the computers are fast enough that the company you're sending all your email to is actively building the brains for flying killbots and helping dictators exterminate dissident populations.
Did the fired Google
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And that last sentence is the point.
This doesn't prove that there weren't good reasons to fire them, but it does prove that they could be fired for going against corporate policy with no publicly verifiable justification. So they were intended to be figureheads that would rubber stamp corporate actions.
There may have been just grounds for firing these particular people, but they aren't verifiable. It's similar to when Amazon recalled purchases of Orwell's 1984. They could prove that they had a good reaso
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There are conferences for everything. There's a PowerShell conference. I don't know who goes to that, but it's a thing.
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ACM Conference... (Score:2)
ACM Conference for Woke Ideology. ftfy
Why Deny a Sponsorship? (Score:3)
Assuming there isn't some sort of contract to receive funds ("By accepting these funds, you can't talk shit on Google."), you're only hurting your own organization. I know people think that by accepting funds from an unpopular source makes it look like you can be unduly influenced by that source, but it's actually the other way around. If you deny/return funds from someone you don't like, you're actively stating:
1. We don't like them
2. We can't help but be influenced by money and we don't want to be influenced by them
It's so ridiculous.
Were I an organization in the position to receive donations (or a politician), I'd take money from EVERYONE and then simply not be influenced by that money.
"But we won't donate to you in the future."
"So...?"
"But you need money. You need to do what we say!"
"Nah. Thanks for your donation, though."
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2. We can't help but be influenced by money and we don't want to be influenced by them
That's more-or-less true of every organization.
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Were I an organization in the position to receive donations...
There's the flaw in your argument right there - it's premised on the conflation of a person with an organization. Repeat after me: "Regardless of what the law says, a corporation is NOT a person".
Expecting that an organization even could, much less would behave the way you would, is fundamentally unrealistic. That applies especially to any corporation; not only is it a beast with many heads, its loyalties are explicitly to shareholders and not to society at large.
nothing to do with AI ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Ms. Mitchell claims to have moved files off corporate servers because of the termination of Timnit Gebru in December. Timnit Gebru was frustrated the company (google) was not making ~ in her opinion ~ enough headway into “diversity and inclusion” and instructed her staff to no longer fill out diversity paperwork, contrary to company policy and was consiquently terminated.
https://venturebeat.com/2020/1... [venturebeat.com]
Both terminations were a clear result of employees blatantly refusing to follow company policy, or to use a more accurate word, insubordination. Sorry kiddies, when you agree to work for a company, you agree to follow the company rules or you get fired. That’s life.
Bigger picture, None of this has anything to do with AI ethics. It seems rather foolish, misdirected and short sighted a conference where the goal is ethical AI hosted by AC (Accountability, Transparency) https://facctconference.org/in... [facctconference.org] would purposely exclude the global leader of AI for following correct corporate protocol that is an HR not an AI decision.
but I guess it does get headlines since it's full of buzzwords
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Indeed. You can work for a company or you can work against it. You cannot do both at the same time.
That the perpetrators now claim to be "victims" and that you actually have to dig to find out why they were fired is just a sat reflection of these times.
Situational irony (Score:2)