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by telltruth
2019 days ago
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Initially I took Google's side given Gebru has history of bullying so aggressively and has no qualms to play race/gender cards at every opportunity she gets. But now that more details (including the paper in question) has been revealed, it's hard to stay on Google's side. It is clear that the peer review process that Jeff Dean had described has been optional for all intent and purpose. It says along similar lines that right there on their internal website. Too many Googlers have attested that they have bypassed the process with no consequences. Gebru's paper itself has no real technical novelty. There was no reason to fire her. It doesn't seem out of line that Gebru was befuddled, frustrated and made a threat on the basis that she had right for the information. Jeff Dean could have easily offered her feedback and transparency in decision process. He could have agreed to let her make corrections later in the submission process. He did none of that and doesn't want to come out clean. Having said that I still feel Gebru is extra-ordinarily self-entitled person. Few months ago she insisted that Jeff Dean take her side in Twitter feud she initiated. She has the mindset of either you are with me all the time or you are racist+misogynist. She complains about "micro agressions" towards her from everyone but she herself is super aggressive. When disagreement arise, she marks you down as enemy and launches attacks to destroy you completely with sole purpose of making you homeless, jobless and making sure your kids die of hunger. I wouldn't wish upon her as colleague to anyone. You might have right to disagree with me but this is what I have felt. I still take her side in this current episode nonetheless because I think she is on the right side. Ultimately we are all playing opinion game here and only few people knows what really happened. |
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Sample comment:
Another ex-colleague here. I was not going to participate in the discussions but your post made me realize objective truth should come out. I do believe she actually thinks she is making the world a better place but in reality any interaction with her has been incredibly stressful having to carefully weigh every move made in her presence. When this blows over her departure will be a net positive for the morale of the company.
To give a concrete example of what it is like to work with her I will describe something that has not come to light until now. When GPT-3 came out a discussion thread was started in the brain papers group. Timnit was one of the first to respond with some of her thoughts. Almost immediately a very high profile figure has also also responded with his thoughts. He is not Lecun or Dean but he is close. What followed for the rest of the thread was Timnit blasting privileged white men for ignoring the voice of a black woman. Nevermind that it was painfully clear they were writing their responses at the same time. Message after message she would blast both the high profile figure and anyone who so much as implied it could have been a misunderstanding. In the end everyone just bent over backwards apologizing to her and the thread was abandoned along with the whole brain papers group which was relatively active up to that point. She has effectively robbed thousands of colleagues of insights into their seniors thought process just because she didn't immediately get attention.
The thread is still up there so any googler can see it for themselves and verify I am telling the truth.