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by djeikyb 2018 days ago
Journalists got access to an early version of Gebru’s paper and reported on it: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a...
2 comments

>>"the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, for example, have tried to establish a new anti-sexist and anti-racist vocabulary. An AI model trained on vast swaths of the internet won’t be attuned to the nuances of this vocabulary and won’t produce or interpret language in line with these new cultural norms."

It's terrifying that these are the kind of views people in high places of major tech companies have. And that we are entrusting our tools of societal communication to those who see themselves as fighting in a culture war.

Yeah. That's the real story here and a very interesting one, but journalists would rather commit suicide than cover it.
I'm aware of that and, to my bafflement, the paper isn't even that bad! It looks like fairly bog-standard "huh, ok" work. I have no idea why it would be requested to be retracted completely with no ability to simply revise/resubmit or to allow the academic peer review procedure, a move that from what I understand from other googlers is completely out of line with the norm there.

This whole thing is a confusing mess.