This mirrors how I feel about this. I've just learned about this today from this HN post, and the first thing I did was check out her feed and websites for something like that. It's weird isn't it? She has this whole persona/business built around this Apple thing.
I've worked with people like this, they cause a silent rot within teams.
I mean look at this https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 - totally benign feedback so that you don't sound like you're always asking a question (I've personally had this feedback given to me!) and immediately she skewers her boss as "sexist". Bad juju.
as they say in eastern europe "Don't spit in the well you drink from"
this reminds of that Google ethics researcher who was fired for sabotage and then built a big following on Twitter as a professional "victim of racism"
you left out "publicly calling out your SVP on twitter for not being racially sensitive enough" which she did before the paper blowup. Pretty sure that was the prime impetus for her being fired.
BTW, I worked with TPUs on the hardware side, and the entire section about hardware power usage is just completely and totally wrong (I would have asked for the paper to be retracted if it was published, the errors are so large). As for the obvious flaws part, yeah, some of the flaws are obvious (and known to all practitioners of the art already), some are irrelevant but made to sound like they are existential crises, and some of the "flaws" are just per personal opionion about what she doesn't like.
Hopefully she can find some academic position from which to propound her opinions. However, I do think in her behavior, she excluced herself from future employment.
Multiple other, even white, employees called out this same SVP. Your usage of the phrase "Not being racially sensitive enough" strikes me as a bizarre euphemism for "racism", which it would appear you don't see as an issue.
"are just per personal opinion about what she doesn't like."
The field of AI Ethics is an amalgam of computer science and moral philosophy. What do you think value judgements are?
What are those "personal opinions" and things she "doesn't like" and why?
It seems you're using a lot of euphemisms to hide some very unpleasant truths about your world view.
I don't know of any situation where anybody other than Timnit called out Jeff Dean publicly on twitter, at least not until Timnit had, or with nearly as much vehemence.
I'm familiar with ethics in science; worked in biology for many years before concluding humanity isn't ready for gene modification.
It's pretty clear that her opinion space in ethics is just one view, and not a particularly representative one. I know other ethicists who are far more careful (Sara Hooker for one) and say things that have much more impact, through careful writing to make it clear they are showing a societally relevant position on ethics.
there was much more to that, she demanded a list of reviewers who rejected her paper in a sort of ultimatum, and blasted group emails calling for sabotage
> She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models.
This is a clear mischaracterization of the reported events. Gebru, in her own statements on the subject, stated that she was fired for demanding to know the identities of peers who submitted critical feedback on her work through confidential HR channels. Leaving aside the question of whether those criticisms had merit, her being fired was a foregone conclusion of making such an ultimatum. No confidential peer feedback system can function if there is a possibility of reviewers being de-anonymized at the demand of sufficiently influential coworkers.
On a more opinionated note - making a demand like that displays critical lack of judgement in the important responsibility that all employees in supervisory roles have in ensuring a non-hostile working environment. Even if her intention was not to retaliate against her peers after determining their identities, it’s essential that people in positions of power do not take actions that even suggest that they are seeking to retaliate against less powerful peers. The importance of this principle is extreme to a healthy collaborative work environment. The fact that someone as intelligent as Gebru was surprised to be fired for making an ultimatum like this is itself surprising.
And she's talking about unions and such on company Slack, come on now. Reckless lol. https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
I've worked with people like this, they cause a silent rot within teams.
I mean look at this https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 - totally benign feedback so that you don't sound like you're always asking a question (I've personally had this feedback given to me!) and immediately she skewers her boss as "sexist". Bad juju.