Jeff's statement is a lie. I work at Google, and the publication approval process doesn't normally take to weeks. Any Google employee can verify this, and others have, both in this thread and on twitter. There's some documentation that asks for 2 weeks, but it's not followed, and inconsistent application of policy is absolutely a concern in a case like this.
A summary of the events, as best as I can tell, is the normal presubmission review was done. After the paper was approved and submitted, someone, whether this was upper management or some other entity, did some additional review and required that the authors withdraw (?, but retract is the wrong term) the paper.
From what I know, both firsthand and from other sources[0], while not spotless, the issues with the paper were mostly nitpicks and fairly straightforward to resolve. That they weren't even provided until some escalation from Dr. Gebru is strange. That even after they were, sort of, provided, she and her team were not given the option to address them in the paper, is extraordinarily strange.
I work at Google too, and it's embarrassing to see you attack your colleagues like this in public - how is Jeff's statement "a lie"? Whether or not you believe the 2 week deadline is a hard and fast rule followed 100% of the time, Jeff never made that claim. 1 day is certainly unreasonable.
What makes you think they weren't given the opportunity? We were told specifically they _were_ given an opportunity to revise, and instead, demanded HR(!?) provide attributed versions of any and all statements made by any colleagues regarding the paper (!??!!?), or they'd 'work on setting an end date'
I'm not exactly proud, excited, or anything but pensive about this series of developments, and it's _highly_ likely Jeff feels the same way. Everything got too hostile and out of control here for people to be able to work together healthily moving forward, and I'm skeptical of anything beyond that being anything more than people attaching a narrative to an unfortunate breakdown in a relationship.
> Whether or not you believe the 2 week deadline is a hard and fast rule followed 100% of the time, Jeff never made that claim
His words were, and I quote "we require two weeks for this sort of review". That is an absolutely false statement, and Jeff knows it. I see no other characterization than a lie. I take no solace in that fact, priors were that Jeff Dean was an above average executive and ran a more ethical then average org. I'm disappointed to see my trust was misplaced and that Jeff was willing to endorse that document, but I'm not going to not hold someone accountable when I see them do something obviously wrong, even if we work for the same employer. Ethics extend beyond that.
> 1 day is certainly unreasonable.
It is not though. It's the norm.
> We were told specifically they _were_ given an opportunity to revise
This is not true (if you believe this to be true, can you cite said statement?). I'd be more than happy to discuss this with you privately, my username should be obvious ;)
I don't think talking with you 1:1, privately, would be productive: you have a quite different viewpoint on this that reads as lawyerly and standoffish to me - I'm also required to submit expense reports within 30 days, yet here I am, 60 days later. It's unbecoming of you to be writing epitaths for the moral character of colleagues based on a legalistic interpretation of "we require two weeks"
> It is not though. It's the norm.
Not sure what I'm supposed to do with this. A literal intrepretation has you claiming that all Google researchers only allow 24 hours of review of their papers before submitting them for publication. That sounds wrong!
And if you were fired or retaliated against for having failed to file an expense report on time, when that isn't normally a requirement, I'd be criticising leadership for that too.
Fwiw, I'm not sure what you mean by legalistic. I see Jeff's interpretation as more legalistic: this is the policy, while mine is based on practice: the policy isn't enforced, and here's what people actually do. And like I said, it brings me no joy to see that Jeff is lying to justify this. I have a deep respect for his technical achievements, and prior to this my understanding was that he was an above average executive. Perhaps he still is. But that's not an excuse for me to not levy criticism at him when I see him do something wrong.
In practice, Google doesn't require two weeks for pub approvals. I'd be more than happy to provide the underlying date I'm basing that statement on, but obviously not here. Granted, if you want you can find the data for yourself and if encourage you to do so!
> . A literal intrepretation has you claiming that all Google researchers only allow 24 hours of review of their papers before submitting them for publication.
Given your experiences with Google reimbursement policy, why would you expect adherence to the written publication approval process to be different?
That's why I'd much prefer to have this conversation on corp. I can show you raw data and you can draw your own conclusions no need to listen to me or my interpretation whatsoever.
But this supposes that there is some deep and nefarious need for Google to kill a paper written by some AI Ethics people. From looking at their recent pubs I can't think of anything remotely significant about any one paper they could write. Hopefully we'll get a full leak at some point.
Nothing deep and nefarious needed. The rules were ambiguous (not enforced) and they didn't want this paper published, so they just had to say "no". No extreme motivation is necessary. It's hard to imagine that they expected an ultimatum from Timnit, and the resulting PR disaster. Now that it's in the news, I imagine they actually do have a "deep" need to protect their image by controlling the narrative.
I was re-reading The Gervais Principle this past week. It really does cover this situation & what you describe as the ambiguity in the rules in Part V, “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose.”
> This is a simple and child-like example of the operation of a basic human instinct: the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose or HIWTYL (let’s pronounce that “hightail”) instinct. It is the tendency to grab more than your fair share of the rewards of success, and less than your fair share of the blame for failure.
Now whether one buys into that as literally true or not is one thing, but I think it is definitely a useful way of thinking about situations like these.
In fact, the “Golden Ticket Reconsidered” section at the link sounds somewhat like I imagined incentives within AI ethics research at Google are structured:
1. Cut a deal for performance-linked bonus for successful initiative
2. Set up a committee and charter it to collect, vet & recommend ideas
3. Drop hints & suggestions to create things that leadership favors
4. Create appropriate urgency in the work of the committee to achieve the risk-levels you want in the ideas produced.
The outcome of such a system:
> If it works, you praise everybody generously, hand out a few gift certificates, keep your bonus to yourself, and move on. If it fails, you blame the people in charge of the work for failing to consider an “obvious” (with 20/20 hindsight) issue. The chair of such a committee would likely be Clueless [a term of art in the blog series], his appointment being a false honor — a case of being set up take a fall
Further on, the author brings up the “Hanlon Dodge.” Dean’s characterization of Gebru’s termination (“resignation”) seems quite like that to me.
A summary of the events, as best as I can tell, is the normal presubmission review was done. After the paper was approved and submitted, someone, whether this was upper management or some other entity, did some additional review and required that the authors withdraw (?, but retract is the wrong term) the paper.
From what I know, both firsthand and from other sources[0], while not spotless, the issues with the paper were mostly nitpicks and fairly straightforward to resolve. That they weren't even provided until some escalation from Dr. Gebru is strange. That even after they were, sort of, provided, she and her team were not given the option to address them in the paper, is extraordinarily strange.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...