Google AI Research Manager Quits After Two Ousted From Group (bloomberg.com) 82
Google research manager Samy Bengio, who oversaw the company's AI ethics group until a controversy led to the ouster of two female leaders, resigned on Tuesday to pursue other opportunities. Bloomberg reports: Bengio, who managed hundreds of researchers in the Google Brain team, announced his departure in an email to staff that was obtained by Bloomberg. His last day will be April 28. An expert in a type of AI known as machine learning, Bengio joined Google in 2007. Ousted Ethical AI co-leads Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell had reported to Bengio and considered him an ally. In February, Google reorganized the research unit, placing the remaining Ethical AI group members under Marian Croak, cutting Bengio's responsibilities.
"While I am looking forward to my next challenge, there's no doubt that leaving this wonderful team is really difficult," Bengio wrote in the email. "I learned so much with all of you, in terms of machine learning research of course, but also on 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," Bengio wrote in his email. He did not refer to Gebru, Mitchell or the disagreements that led to their departures. [...]
"While I am looking forward to my next challenge, there's no doubt that leaving this wonderful team is really difficult," Bengio wrote in the email. "I learned so much with all of you, in terms of machine learning research of course, but also on 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," Bengio wrote in his email. He did not refer to Gebru, Mitchell or the disagreements that led to their departures. [...]
This is Not News (Score:5, Insightful)
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> until the heat death of the universe
No way. These are ethicists. It's Google. You needn't worry.
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The way they were bickering, I thought they were estheticians.
Re: This is Not News (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's good that it's news.
Diversity officers have atrocious turnover just about anywhere. WSJ reported sometime last summer that they last about a year. Something about it being your job to explain to your underlings, colleagues, and bosses exactly how they're morally bankrupt that builds friction and wears on people.
Outside some whispers and a few out-of-the-way column inches, this doesn't get talked about. For the companies it would be admitting failure and for the cdos it would be admitting a different kind of failure.
Maybe publicizing this kerfuffle will put the situation front and center in everyone's heads: job titles that mandate conflict within the organization rarely result in honest success stories.
Re:This is Not News (Score:5, Informative)
Are we going to get pointless updates on every staff movement at Google AI Research
Samy Bengio [wikipedia.org] is not just a random guy. He is a co-founder of Google Brain and did pioneering work in deep learning and adversarial networks.
He is the brother of Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio [wikipedia.org].
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"..work in deep learning and adversarial networks", proper research. Not "telling everyone they are racists and sexists", like the pair that were fired.
I'm thinking you either didn't read the comment you replied to or interpreted "adversarial networks" to mean something other than a machine learning/AI approach.
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Exactly.
When what we want to know is who Apple is not making a car with this week.
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I too have a penis.
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That fact is relevant only to feminaz1s.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
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that's an all American name if I ever heard one
Like Vespucci.
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USV! USV! USV!
God Bless Vespucciland!
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this is woketards eating their own. One woketard was was bitching about another woketard not being woke enough, and that was embarrassing so the established woketard purged the less established woketard.
Google is a good example of what happens when a company has too many employees and too much money. You create pointless, stupid departments, doing pointless stupid "research".
On the positive side, Woketards always eventually eat their own and self-destruct.
Sounds like someone toxic isn't being fired. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like someone toxic isn't being fired. (Score:5, Interesting)
We already know everything about this we need to. It's been in the news before. This is about Google's military contracts. They keep putting the smartest AI researcher they can find in charge and then try to force them to create weapons. The researcher refuses, gets fired for undisclosed reasons (because officially the contract is "top secret") and then the cycle repeats.
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I thought this is because google's AI is not an SJW the way the researchers want it to be, and the researchers insist that they be allowed to publish papers that say google is evil because of that?
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Well, within the boundaries of your definition of these terms you're effectively probably basically correct about this, but it is even against your own best interest to trivialize it in this fashion.
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Yea, well... and these are all people who agreed to take the job, too. So that tells you there's something a little more insane being requested of them than to just create an ED-209 that doesn't kill unarmed city employees.
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Yes, when obviously they should do it the far right way and bring all their guns to work and kill everyone.
You know what: You're both wrong.
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It seems like many people there feel that Google is going in the wrong direction with AI. Basically Google wants usable products so pushes ahead with machine leaning that consumes vast amounts of energy and is impossible to remove serious biases from, and which is also a dead-end that will never lead to truly intelligent machines.
The original ousting was due to writing a paper laying all that out. Obviously didn't sit well with some of the managers, being told that their entire approach was wrong and going
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ML and GAI are two different fields of study.
Keep saying no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep saying no to your employer -- even if you're right, maybe especially if you're right -- and you'll be ground down like an unwelcome speed bump. My guess here is that the employer wants the ethicists to come up with reasons it's A-OK to work on autonomous weapon systems, and they keep saying "fuck no".
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
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They misunderstood the job requirements. An understandable error for those with some personal sense of right and wrong. It's a common enough character flaw, but fortunately, there exist plenty of people who lack such inhibitory convictions.
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Autonomous weapon systems? What? Google's hardware has never been good enough for a military to trust them with even a manned weapon system. Why would they have any interest in working on autonomous weapon systems? So they could sell Android for Sentry (powered by Titan Security chips! from Google Warzone! now with Secure Access Service Executions!) to the big defense contractors?
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I was thinking probably something along the lines of a satellite that drops nukes based on some algorithm so that no humans have to take the blame for choosing who lives and who dies.
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Probably drone strikes in foreign countries, but basically.
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Autonomous weapon systems?
I don't think there was ever any weapon system work at Google. That's not what Google does.
There was a military contract to use Google's AI to identify targets in satellite photos. Stuff like trucks, ISIS training camps, etc. There was a big conniption about it, and Google ended up backing out of the contract.
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I ban believe they officially backed out. I can also believe they spun it off into a shell company. It's a familiar tactic for companies that don't want to admit publicly what projects they are sponsoring, or what clients they sell to.
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May I remind you that the pentagon is running systems on Azure now. Expect drones to start falling out of the sky onto countries the US swears they are not flying drones over.
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SIPRNet isn't some magical bastion of stability just because it has guys with guns guarding it. If anything Azure is probably more stable.
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Just need people on the ground to reboot them.
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Do you have any idea how unreliable weapons systems actually are?
Things like warheads are only relatively good now because they have had more than a century of development behind them. Even so they often fail to work, e.g. a lot of missiles fail to explode and the only damage is kinetic.
Accidentally killing the wrong people is pretty common too, in fact it's often factored in to military operations as the number of acceptable "collateral" casualties.
Google's AI is more than good enough. It can read satellit
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Works that way because it's more expensive to make a perfectly reliable weapons system than one that'll work most of the time and be field repairable/maintainable.
Their rate of success is more than sufficient.
And yep, we know about collateral. The less acceptable collateral, the more expensive and risky the operation. My personal preference is to not have war and conflict, but there's always someone stirring something up, and you either allow tyranny and random destruction of your civilisation, or occasio
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It's looking more like:
* First person caused a massive furore, breaching ethics while being prominent in an ethics position, resigned, said what goodle would need to do to get her back and they said "Bye."
* Second ethicist breached rules of ethics and security while digging up stuff that person 1 wanted to know, and was duly fired for that.
* Third person, who tacitly supported 1 and 2 above, and likely caused a lot of friction on their behalf has now been reorganised so that they couldn't try turning the bu
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It's a really bad sign... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a really bad sign... (Score:5, Interesting)
When your ethicists keep leaving.
Mitchell seems to have been fired for violating code of conduct [zdnet.com] and exfiltrating documents without permission. Now Google could be lying, of course. But it would be really stupid of them (and easy to disprove & sue) so I doubt it.
Google said in a statement that following a review, "we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees."
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Mitchell seems to have been fired for violating code of conduct and exfiltrating documents without permission.
A) The "exfiltrating documents without permission" sounds like they kept a paper they were writing on a USB drive key chain, probably to edit at home.
B) Code of conduct violations could literally be anything.
The fact that they didn't press charges for "exfiltrating documents" makes the whole thing reek of Google digging up dirt to justify getting rid of a what they viewed as a troublesome employee. Frankly, if you view your ethicists as troublesome then you have a serious institutional problem.
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A) The "exfiltrating documents without permission" sounds like they kept a paper they were writing on a USB drive key chain, probably to edit at home. B) Code of conduct violations could literally be anything.
The fact that they didn't press charges for "exfiltrating documents" makes the whole thing reek of Google digging up dirt to justify getting rid of a what they viewed as a troublesome employee. Frankly, if you view your ethicists as troublesome then you have a serious institutional problem.
Your (A) maybe true, but if your company says you can't do this, you should not place any files on any USB drives. Many companies track users this days, spying on your employees is a big business. If you don't want to get fired, just do what your employer says or find a different employer. I am not sure what is so hard to get about that concept
Your (B) is harder to prove but if Google said that she did it, I am pretty sure she did something they can prove. Lawsuits are expensive and if she was clean as a
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If my employer told me to do something that I disagree with...
Do you know the job of an ethicists? It's specifically to point out things your employer should not be doing. Instead of listening to the person doing their job they instead fired them and dug up any dirt to justify it.
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It's specifically to point out things your employer should not be doing.
It's to point them out. And then have management act upon your recommendations. Not go around the chain of command. If they won't act, then your next move would be to quit.
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If they are going to be assholes and force you to quit then why the fuck should you respect their chain of command? Fuck that and fuck you too because people like you are part of the problem.
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It's also a really bad sign when ethics is reduced to gender and identity issues.
"You know, those tomahawk missiles? I don't care what we use them for but shouldn't we change the name or so?" I'm so happy Lockheed will use our rainbow and BLM stickers on our nukes now!
Article title is a stretch (Score:3, Interesting)
First employee knowingly went around Google guidelines to try to force through a research paper and stamp Google's name on it without their sign off. Fired.
Second employee tried to take corporate data out of the corporate network without Google's permission/knowledge. Fired.
Totally uncontroversial.
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"Totally uncontroversial."
Except they had vaginas, and you can't sack people with vaginas without kicking off the feminaz1s on social media.
Bengio Duller Than Thought - wanted Out of Google (Score:5, Informative)
This was a poor "hilll to die on", if the metaphor applies. Timnit Gebru proved to be a PITA too radical for a corporate environment. Google should avoid future attempts to curry favor from the woke (otherwise known as "the living dead") - they revel in rejection. The chance to reject a corporate leader (Google) was simply irresistible.
Google's hiring/firing of Gebru is roughly the equivalent of walking across a 2-acre field and stepping in the one and only cowpie present in the entire field - eminently avoidable and only achievable by a corporate culture that has lost its way.
Bengio probably had other things to do, other offers to explore and this was simply a way to boost his trajectory out of Google and also ensure he was not be pursued under any NDA.
As for ethics in the corporation, Adam Smith said it best:
Re: Bengio Duller Than Thought - wanted Out of Goo (Score:4, Insightful)
Blue checkmark and personal pronouns in the bio should be an immediate warning sign.
Clickbait headline anyone? (Score:3)
The story headline implies a causal connection between Gebru and Mitchell's firing and the Bengio's departure.
TFS (didn't even have to go check TFA) notes that Bengio did not mention either Gebru and Mitchell in his farewell letter.
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Why would Bengio mention them in the farewell letter. If you are looking for another job and not necessarily trying to grandstand, then it seems like the good thing to do is to thank everyone and leave gracefully. It doesn't mean they aren't related but it's also unfair to make the assumption without some other materials on the matter.
Media head hunting (Score:2)
There's nothing controversial or news worthy about this departure. The media is once again trying hard to generate controversy for ad clicks.
Makes you wonder what they'll do if they have a story that conflicts with their ad partner's interests
Seems like a pretty clever guy . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . But, I have a few family members who are equally clever and they also have a problem with unreal expectations of equity, and delusions of inclusion.
The woke world is very enticing, like a dream state, until the day you discover that your micro ethnicity just layed down a micro aggression against a noisier micro ethnicity, and now you're just part of the problem.
Timnit Gebru was not fired. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google informed her that releasing her papers without Google approval was not acceptable. She, in turn, said that was not acceptable and quit.
Even better, she threatened to quit if she is going to be held back like this, and Google accepted her resignation.
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Keep fantasizing.
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"This "Woke" revolution is a disaster."
Not for all the vaginas in token roles who are benefiting from it VPOTUS
Yawn. âoeAllyâ (Score:1)
Gebru et al wrote papers playing the victim card. Let them publish updated training methodologies for ML. Then wake us up.
Good! (Score:2)
Good riddance. In fact, that whole group should be dissolved. It obviously was nothing more than a sop to sjw's in the first place, in the hopes it would avoid troublemaking, but it didn't quite work out that way, did it, google?