[totorovirus]

Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues?

I don't know if Gebru actually qualifies aside the matters of ethical AI. In my experience those people who work in engineering who sidewalks into some non-engineering matters often lack skills to compete where most do, and decided to leverage their incompetency with some other topics. And Gebru is doing exactly that in Google.

[warriorstar]

You can't possibly be for real. You don't know her qualifications, so you assume she doesn't have any. Then you come up with a straw-man of "non-engineers lacking skills" and assign that to her! You're more willing to assign traits you made up to her than look up what she's actually capable of!

[academicthrow]

My other response was flagged for a part that was distracting to the main point, so I'm going to repost it without that part:

If you've been in academia for awhile you've seen this happen time and time again. Student does excellently in undergrad, masters, phd coursework but when it comes to making real technical contributions, they hit a wall. It was a clever move by her to use her pedigree to pivot into "AI ethics" where the standards for publishing are much lower (as we can see from this draft that was circulated).

[ergocoder]

She is likely fired for her toxicity.

Looking at this Twitter thread between her and Jeff Dean 6 months ago: https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360 ...

She was being toxic toward Jeff Dean, who is her manager's manager.

I looked at that tweet, and yikes. I'll never do that to my colleagues.

[dekhn]

I personally think it was this tweet that sealed her fate at Google. Calling out your leadership unecessarily with a tweet about white supremacy is just insane.

[anu7df]

If you don't know her qualifications outside of ethical AI, you can't possibly know if "Gebru is doing exactly that in Google" People's motivations and ambitions vary. She may be very skilled in all things AI and yet choose the role she had and choose that hill to die on.

[lmm]

It's like when you see an official's nephew get a plum job at a large corp. Sure, it's possible that they legitimately got there on their merits, but if you give them the benefit of the doubt then you'll get taken for a ride by the bad actors, and you don't have the time or ability to check the details.

[cmdshiftf4]

>Anyone getting tired of those toxic PC enthusiasts who stirs a fight in a team accusing its leadership for being incorrect on sensitive issues?

In general? Yes. When it comes to the snakes FAANG have created biting the hand that feeds on the industry stage? No. I absolutely love to watch their internal dramas spill out for all to see or, if you're smart, take warning from.

>I don't know if Gebru actually qualifies aside the matters of ethical AI. In my experience those people who work in engineering who sidewalks into some non-engineering matters often lack skills to compete where most do, and decided to leverage their incompetency with some other topics. And Gebru is doing exactly that in Google.

Not in a position to comment on this person's credentials or skills but I don't personally begrudge the type of grifter you're talking about. Most of us are merely trying to optimize for income and they're no different, and their success is a result of poor leadership in companies and/or society.

[britch]

I'm not seeing the connection between your comment and the Gerbu's firing.

As I understand it Gerbu was hired as an academic to do research into AI ethics (her field of study). She was fired, in part, due to a disagreement around the contents of a paper she was publishing.

Where is the sidewalking into engineering matters?

[metabagel]

I haven’t the foggiest idea what “sidewalking into engineering matters” (from the parent comment) means. Is that a British expression? I’ve only ever heard “sidewalk” used as a noun.

[dekhn]

She is eminently qualified to do ML research, and established an excellent position in ethical ML. I don't think this is a fair criticism of her abilities.

[thu2111]

What AI research has she done that isn't related to "ethics"? She doesn't seem to have any track record for creating new algorithms, for example.

[dekhn]

she worked on object detection with Fei Fei during her PhD. Folks who took classes where she TA'd said she was technically competent.

[metabagel]

I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.