Why a Young Professor Turned Down a $60,000 Research Grant From Google (cnn.com) 57
"When Luke Stark sought money from Google in November he had no idea he'd be turning down $60,000 from the tech giant in March," reports CNN:
Stark, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, studies the social and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence. In late November, he applied for a Google Research Scholar award, a no-strings-attached research grant of up to $60,000 to support professors who are early in their careers. He put in for the award, he said, "because of my sense at the time that Google was building a really strong, potentially industry-leading ethical AI team...."
Gebru's ouster kicked off a months-long crisis for the company, including employee departures, a leadership shuffle, and an apology from Google's CEO for how the circumstances of Gebru's departure caused some employees to question their place there. Google conducted an internal investigation into the matter, results of which were announced on the same day the company fired Gebru's co-team leader, Margaret Mitchell, who had been consistently critical of the company on Twitter following Gebru's exit. (Google cited "multiple violations" of its code of conduct.) Meanwhile, researchers outside Google, particularly in AI, have become increasingly distrustful of the company's historically well-regarded scholarship and angry over its treatment of Gebru and Mitchell.
All of this came into sharp focus for Stark on Wednesday, March 10, when Google sent him a congratulatory note, offering him $60,000 for his proposal for a research project that would look at how companies are rolling out AI that is used to detect emotions. Stark said he immediately felt he needed to reject the award to show his support for Gebru and Mitchell, as well as those who yet remain on the ethical AI team at Google...
Gebru said she appreciated Stark's action.
Stark is the first person to turn down one of the 6,500 academic and research grants Google has given out over the last 15 years, the company tells CNN. But CNN also notes some AI conference organizers are now rethinking having Google as a sponsor.
"The widening fallout from Google's tensions with its ethical AI team now pose a risk to the company's reputation and stature in the AI community. This is crucial as Google battles for talent — both as employees at the company and names connected to it in the academic community."
Gebru's ouster kicked off a months-long crisis for the company, including employee departures, a leadership shuffle, and an apology from Google's CEO for how the circumstances of Gebru's departure caused some employees to question their place there. Google conducted an internal investigation into the matter, results of which were announced on the same day the company fired Gebru's co-team leader, Margaret Mitchell, who had been consistently critical of the company on Twitter following Gebru's exit. (Google cited "multiple violations" of its code of conduct.) Meanwhile, researchers outside Google, particularly in AI, have become increasingly distrustful of the company's historically well-regarded scholarship and angry over its treatment of Gebru and Mitchell.
All of this came into sharp focus for Stark on Wednesday, March 10, when Google sent him a congratulatory note, offering him $60,000 for his proposal for a research project that would look at how companies are rolling out AI that is used to detect emotions. Stark said he immediately felt he needed to reject the award to show his support for Gebru and Mitchell, as well as those who yet remain on the ethical AI team at Google...
Gebru said she appreciated Stark's action.
Stark is the first person to turn down one of the 6,500 academic and research grants Google has given out over the last 15 years, the company tells CNN. But CNN also notes some AI conference organizers are now rethinking having Google as a sponsor.
"The widening fallout from Google's tensions with its ethical AI team now pose a risk to the company's reputation and stature in the AI community. This is crucial as Google battles for talent — both as employees at the company and names connected to it in the academic community."
Iron...will. (Score:1)
Any relation to Tony?
Re: Iron...will. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Iron...will. (Score:5, Insightful)
The grant was just a grant. Google would not have been able to push his work to present a certain agenda. At worst Google could refuse him future grants.
I'm not saying Google are innocent, because they are certainly not. However the AI ethics researchers that were fired were both using their positions at Google to forward their personal agendas. They were not doing the work they were being paid employee wages to do.
Re: Iron...will. (Score:5, Insightful)
At worst Google could refuse him future grants.
He applied for the grant. When Google generously agreed to his request, he used it as an opportunity to publicly insult them.
At worst, nobody will offer him future grants.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I've done a lot of work on research ethics boards, and have quite a few friends in Ethics from thah time, and it suspect won't enhance his ethical credentials one iota.
It puts him dangerously close to being a more political animal than a purely ethical one (as ethics weren't violated in the firings, as the people fired were using their positions for political rather than ethical advancement in their subject, and some of the stances epoused by the fired were ethically very dubious).
Now, on the actu
Re: Iron...will. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I'm sure he has enhanced his ethical credentials by declining the grant and his future is assured. Certainly, though, no corrupt or corrupting entities will come near him again.
And the people here who are showing anger at his 'galling' actions. Nicely sussed out.
Who's angry? It is pretty obvious that he was seeking publicity, otherwise he would have just told them "No thanks" and left it at that.
I would pay attention to the name of a person who supported the actions of Margaret Mitchell, and Timnit Gebru by pulling a stunt to It's pretty obvious that especially Mitchell had done some unethical actions.
So if I came across his name as looking for employment, I would have to assume that he approves of Mitchell's actions. I would assume that he would be publicly critical of any decision that did not go his way. I would assue that he would then implement. I would assume that tweets expressing that would happen regularly. I would assume that he would use his position to do as Mitchell did, write programs to find who was a proper employee, and who disagreed with her.
Decisions must be made every day. Some go your way, some don't. Going to social media to whine about your employer any time things don't go your way is just plain wrong. And writing. It's just a really dumb thing. And it proves you can't be trusted.
It is kinda what Google is reaping for their hiring practices though. They've been assembling quite a group of loose cannons recently.
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Going to social media to whine about your employer any time things don't go your way
I'm not sure that is what happened here.
But the idea of trust. That is important. One must invest only in minions one can trust.
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Going to social media to whine about your employer any time things don't go your way
I'm not sure that is what happened here.
But the idea of trust. That is important. One must invest only in minions one can trust.
As opposed to untrustable ones? 8^)
Re: (Score:2)
At worst Google could refuse him future grants.
He applied for the grant. When Google generously agreed to his request, he used it as an opportunity to publicly insult them.
At worst, nobody will offer him future grants.
That would be a valid opinion if he applied for the grant after Gebru was fired, but he applied for the grant before.
Whether or not you agree with the Gebru firing (I'm frankly unsure) Stark did nothing wrong.
When you apply for a grant from an organization that is in effect a sort of endorsement of that organization. If that organization then does something so you no longer want to endorse them then turning down the grant is the most ethical course of action.
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Google hired ethics researchers, then got pissed that they had a personal sense of ethics and wouldn't do whatever Google said just because Google was paying them.
Not really feeling sympathy for Google's position here.
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they had a personal sense of ethics
I'm not really sure that's true. I can't figure out what ethical position Gebru was standing for. It looked more like a power struggle with bog-standard corporate politics to me.
Re: Iron...will. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, it was someone who was hired into an ethics group who then acted unethically, resigned, Google accepted the resignation. Then she realised that she'd made a career gaffe and tried to backtrack, to which Google said "No thanks. That was unethical.".
Then she publicly went into political attacks on Google as viciously as she could (using every 'card' she could).
Google accepted with grace that their policies could have been better (i.e. they didn't perform this perfectly and there was room for improvement in the way the situation was handled), but they still stand by their decision.
I don't really feel sympathy for Google as they're a commercial entity. I also don't feel sympathy for either of those fired, as they definitely brought it on themselves by ethically very murky (and downright unethical) behaviour.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to present a certain agenda, no. To teach machines how to detect emotions, yes.
No agenda is needed when you have mind reading AI. You can do pretty much anything you want.
Cut and paste summaries got to go (Score:1)
"..." doesn't cut, er paste it. A decent summary would take less space and make more sense. Is it really that fucking hard to write?
And this is news how? (Score:3)
Not a problem. There are plenty of people who are motivated by ethics, rather than politics who will be next in the line to take the funding for research into ethics, not politics.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
On the man-bites-dog principle. You're waving away the fact that somebody without much money, turned down money.
That compares strikingly to those who have incomprehensible sums of money already, but are willing to degrade human rights and harm people to make (or just take) a little more.
It's rare to turn down money, and therefore newsworthy. You're using an obviously-wrong claim of non-newsworthiness to add to the insults implied in the rest of the sentence.
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People take principled stands all the time, over a horde of different things.
It's called a principled stand for a reason. Not a correct, or even advantageous stance. Religion has been doing it for millennia for believe (vows of poverty, celibacy etc., which are extremely high cost, and not for a verifiable gain, or necessarily even a correct one).
I've turned down very sizable sums in the past too, because my principles disagreed with the proposal. That's just business, and it's nowhere near as uncommon a
Re: (Score:2)
On the man-bites-dog principle. You're waving away the fact that somebody without much money, turned down money.
It's more that yet another loose cannon goes to social media to fight for some sort of "Justice".
This is a win for Google. If he did the research for them, it would be very biased, and he'd be blabbing on social media about it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost like you don't comprehend the difference between ethics and morals.
Ethics are community standards.
You're about as educated as a Dilly bar, old man.
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Ahh.. The old ad-hominem.. I was waiting for that to turn up.
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It's almost like you don't comprehend the difference between ethics and morals.
Ethics are community standards.
Really? An individual can't have their own ethical code?
I think you're mistaken.
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It's almost like you don't comprehend the difference between ethics and morals.
Ethics are community standards.
Really? An individual can't have their own ethical code?
I think you're mistaken.
Yes, you can have your own ethical code.
But this really is about politics.
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Morals tend to be more generic behaviour patterns (i.e. tending towards trying to be 'good') with far less rigorously defined parameters. It's a branch of philosophy.
Ethics is focused on particular actions such that they're either allowable or correct. Some ethical decisions can be made in individual cases that would breach a prevailing moral code, but be overall beneficial in context.
Some moral behaviour can lead to entirely unethical actions.
Google for ethics? (Score:2)
His mistake was approaching Google for ethics in the first place. I don't know what he was missing in November that led him to consider it a place for ethics.
Going to Google for ethics seems like going to Facebook or Amazon for ethics.
$60 000 is not even a lot of money (Score:3)
$60 000 is not even a lot of money these days, especially for Google.
Re: $60 000 is not even a lot of money (Score:2)
It's good money. This would have been one professor working half a day a week and a postdoc or PhD student working full time for peanuts.
Generally professors don't do research, postdocs or PhD students do research and professors put their name on the work and take the credit. And the pay.
Grievance studies researcher, not AI researcher (Score:4, Informative)
We've seen headlines about Google's problems with a team of AI researchers, but this has nothing to do with research into ethical AI.
Stark isn't someone with expertise in AI - a computer scientist, mathematician, or statistician. Nor is he an expert in ethics - no background in rigorous philosophy. Instead, his PhD and his faculty position are in "Media Studies," one more poison-breathing head of the Critical Studies Fashionable Nonsense [wikipedia.org] hydra.
Google wasn't handing out grants to these kinds of people because it actually thought any of them would come up with meaningful research, it was handing out grants because appeasing the Critical Studies beast is how one holds on to a certain cachet among the privileged and politically powerful on the Left today.
Re: (Score:2)
Whoever modded this flamebait needs a reality check. See his faculty page in Media Studies [fims.uwo.ca] and his CV [starkcontrast.co]. The guy launched his career with a Postmodernism Generator [wikipedia.org]-worthy paper about how emoji were captured and turned into a tool of the conservative capitalist oppressor.
60k is pocket change. (Score:2)
With all the bad PR surrounding Googles AI ambitions right now they better offer 600k/ year and free reign to bring AI stuff at Google out of the negative limelight. I'd have done the same. I get Google firing those people but I also totally get this guy not stepping on to the free ejection seat. If this guys worth it as some ai researcher, he's not gonna be Googles PR token for a single 5 digit payment.
My 2 eurocents.
Re: (Score:2)
With all the bad PR surrounding Googles AI ambitions right now they better offer 600k/ year and free reign to bring AI stuff at Google out of the negative limelight. I'd have done the same. I get Google firing those people but I also totally get this guy not stepping on to the free ejection seat. If this guys worth it as some ai researcher, he's not gonna be Googles PR token for a single 5 digit payment.
My 2 eurocents.
Do you support an ethics leader scouring company emails to find people that disagree with her? Is that ethical? She and Gubru were imposing their ideas of Social Justice, which means that anything that does not fit their model is wrong and must be dealt with.
In the EU - do they support managers scouring company emails that express opinions they disagree with? Interesting ethics.
Re: (Score:2)
This is google's attempts to virtue signal are back-firing. Hiring wokists is a mistake if you want to be profitable, or successful. The wokists will never be happy until you have destroyed anything that makes you profitable. Their thirst for cancelling is endless.
With that subject I assumed you were talking about this researcher and his virtual signalling.
Plenty of others will take Google's Blood Money (Score:3)
Like Icarus flying too close to the Sun (Score:1)
Google has managed to piss off left, right, and center.
The right will cancel you for working with google because google has been playing footsie with the left.
The left will cancel you for working with google for being insufficiently committed to playing footsie with the left and failing to bring it to orgasm.
The center doesn't really care for the monopolistic behavior but had been held in check by the libertarian right and the corporate left.
This is why companies used to stay the fuck out of politics like t
Re: Like Icarus flying too close to the Sun (Score:1)
Resigned with Demands != Fired (Score:5, Insightful)
So much of this started with Timnit Gebru (the female black co-lead of the "ethical AI team") quitting and making a bunch of demands before she would come back.
Read that again. She wasn't immediately fired; she quit (after violating a handful of company policies), told them what they'd have to do for her to return, and they merely accepted her resignation instead.
"Ethical"? I'm not claiming Google is ethical, but is lying so that you can play the victim ethical?
This can't really be considered racism or sexism, despite Timnit's self-serving claims about lack of diversity; she was replaced by Marian Croak, another black woman.
So... Stark turned it down. Which means what? Not much, it turns out. He was already funded. The money wouldn't have made him rich; it just would have added more to an already-okay budget.
It's melodramatic, but Stark isn't giving anything up and, despite not being on Google's side generally, I don't see that it did anything wrong really.
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So much of this started with Timnit Gebru (the female black co-lead of the "ethical AI team") quitting and making a bunch of demands before she would come back.
Read that again. She wasn't immediately fired; she quit (after violating a handful of company policies), told them what they'd have to do for her to return, and they merely accepted her resignation instead.
It's more accurate to say she threatened to resign if they didn't do X and they "accepted" her kinda offered resignation.
I personally would consider that to be a firing since threatening to resign is not the same as actually resigning and Google is the one who actually terminated the relationship.
Whether or not the firing was deserved is another discussion.
"Ethical"? I'm not claiming Google is ethical, but is lying so that you can play the victim ethical?
This can't really be considered racism or sexism, despite Timnit's self-serving claims about lack of diversity; she was replaced by Marian Croak, another black woman.
That's an almost meaningless statement. Replacing a fired black woman with another black woman says nothing for or against Google being racist and/or sex
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So much of this started with Timnit Gebru (the female black co-lead of the "ethical AI team") quitting and making a bunch of demands before she would come back.
Read that again. She wasn't immediately fired; she quit (after violating a handful of company policies), told them what they'd have to do for her to return, and they merely accepted her resignation instead.
It's more accurate to say she threatened to resign if they didn't do X and they "accepted" her kinda offered resignation.
I personally would consider that to be a firing since threatening to resign is not the same as actually resigning and Google is the one who actually terminated the relationship.
Whether or not the firing was deserved is another discussion.
I don't think that's more accurate at all. First, it isn't what has been widely reported, but even if the case (and I haven't seen that it is), you don't threaten your employer. And certainly not with resignation.
In your mind, how did that go? "If you don't do xxx, yyy, and zzz, I {am outta here | will consider the possibility of thinking about contemplating whether I should consider leaving}? " Do you see how idiotic your perspective, that it was the latter, sounds? It just doesn't happen.
Re: (Score:2)
So much of this started with Timnit Gebru (the female black co-lead of the "ethical AI team") quitting and making a bunch of demands before she would come back.
Read that again. She wasn't immediately fired; she quit (after violating a handful of company policies), told them what they'd have to do for her to return, and they merely accepted her resignation instead.
It's more accurate to say she threatened to resign if they didn't do X and they "accepted" her kinda offered resignation.
I personally would consider that to be a firing since threatening to resign is not the same as actually resigning and Google is the one who actually terminated the relationship.
Whether or not the firing was deserved is another discussion.
I don't think that's more accurate at all.
There's not a definitive record, but I've seen a few reports and that seems the narrative that fits most of the facts.
That's not to say she wasn't deserving of being fired for her actions, but I'd consider it to be a firing more than a resignation.
First, it isn't what has been widely reported, but even if the case (and I haven't seen that it is), you don't threaten your employer. And certainly not with resignation.
In your mind, how did that go? "If you don't do xxx, yyy, and zzz, I {am outta here | will consider the possibility of thinking about contemplating whether I should consider leaving}? " Do you see how idiotic your perspective, that it was the latter, sounds? It just doesn't happen.
It depends on the kind of position. Part of her job description was to push a particular agenda within Google, but also to leverage her reputation in order to show the public that Google was accepting that agenda.
If Google wasn't doing its part then threatening re
Something's missing in that summary... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if it was the submitter, or if the submission got edited (ha ha! yeah, on Slashdot!) - but that discontinuity between paragraph one and paragraph two is ridiculously jarring. There should at least be one mention of who Gebru is and/or what she has to do with the story. Not everyone has been constantly stewing over her ouster at Google. Even people who know the original story may not immediately recall who exactly "Gebru" is.
ELI5 AI ethics researchers? (Score:1)
I know that I have only the YT short video understanding of AI and this may be an obvious question, but, how does someone become qualified to judge ethical behaviour on something that doesn't actually exist yet?
What were they trained on? What outputs were deemed good vs. bad behaviour and how was that determined?
What am I missing here?...tia.
Re: ELI5 AI ethics researchers? (Score:1)
Don't Be Evil, Google? (Score:2)
Chinese ethics (Score:1)
Excellent (Score:2)
Most excellent, your excellency. The less support for sjw "research" the better. "Research" that can only possibly reach a single conclusion is not research. It is propaganda.
Mutually exclusive (Score:1)
someone studying ethics (Score:1)
someone studying ethics who has ethics.
For Hire (Score:2)
If it helps, I am quite happy for forgo any personal ethics or principles in return for a very large cheque from Google.