[HN Gopher] Google AI scientist Bengio resigns after colleagues'...
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Google AI scientist Bengio resigns after colleagues' firings -
email
Author : Anon84
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-04-06 21:48 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The word 'after' in the title suggests the two events are linked.
|
| But the email excerpts quoted in article do not support that
| conclusion.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| We must have read a different article.
|
| > Gebru has said the company wanted to suppress her criticism
| of its products and its efforts to increase workforce
| diversity.
|
| > Bengio had defended the pair, who co-led a team of about a
| dozen researching ethical issues related to AI software.
|
| From his email:
|
| > "how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team
| of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research,
| exploration, rigor, diversity and inclusion"
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "We must have read a different article."
|
| No need for sarcasm.
|
| This article says that "He did not mention their firings in
| his farewell note.".
| jjulius wrote:
| Sure, but perhaps he chose to keep his professional career
| as free of drama as he could while still quitting because
| of this. Prospective employers are now more likely to hire
| him because of this.
|
| Keep in mind that there's more to the sentence you're
| quoting...
|
| >"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell
| note, they influenced his decision to resign, people
| familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of
| anonymity."
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, sure, but the farewell note isn't the only thing he's
| writtern or said.
| newnamenewface wrote:
| This title should be amended to eliminate the (imo) implication
| that he did so as a result of the firings.
|
| "He did not mention their firings in his farewell note."
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is a great example of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc"
| fallacy, caught in the wild!
|
| It may very well be the case, that his leaving is related to
| his colleagues being fired, but there's no evidence of it in
| the article. So Reuters should not be strongly implying -- to
| the extent that no reader would likely draw any other
| conclusion -- that it is. I mean, it probably is, let's be
| honest, but I kind of expect better from Reuters.
| coding123 wrote:
| Well he did do it after.
|
| The article mentions multiple links and things he said.
| ska wrote:
| > but there's no evidence of it in the article.
|
| That's not quite correct, but true that the evidence
| presented is weak (e.g. anonymous "sources familiar")
| whymauri wrote:
| IMO, would also be helpful to have the first name since there's
| Yoshua Bengio.
| partingshots wrote:
| It was most likely done on purpose unfortunately.
| ska wrote:
| I agree it's a bit of a problem, but your selective quoting
| overstates the case. The full quote is:
|
| "Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note,
| they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with
| the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
| jjulius wrote:
| In the interest of eliminating implications, you included a
| period at the end of that quote, which suggests there's nothing
| else to that statement. In point of fact, the full sentence is:
|
| >"Though he did not mention the firings in his farewell note,
| they influenced his decision to resign, people familiar with
| the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
|
| A farewell note is a formality for many people. I'd wager,
| given that this article discusses his previous statements on
| the matter, the firings did influence his decision. Having said
| that, it seems that he's departing as professionally as he
| possibly can, without blowing things up on the way out.
| Prospective employers don't have to be afraid of him making a
| scene even if he disagrees with them.
| refenestrator wrote:
| I would really like to hope that "people familiar with the
| matter" means Bengio off the record, and not some non-Bengio
| person with an axe to grind.
| gennarro wrote:
| I always find this sort of news confusing and completely lacking
| in context. I gather this person was a high level manager, but
| presumably he was part of a very large team. So will this have a
| material impact on Google? On AI research in general? Or is this
| just news because it's Google and that team has been in the news
| a lot lately. I honestly can't tell and I feel like I'm the only
| one who is confused but reflecting on it, this seems unlikely.
| ejb999 wrote:
| nobody, and I mean nobody, is irreplaceable. anyone that thinks
| they are should see what actually happens in the hours and days
| after 'irreplaceable' people leave...somehow organizations
| manage to move forward. and within a week or two they are
| forgotten (with the possible exception of tiny teams).
| lukevp wrote:
| I don't think this is true, but I also don't think most of us
| are irreplaceable. For example, Jim Keller seems to make or
| break chip design projects.
| whatshisface wrote:
| You're thinking of people who think they are irreplaceable
| due to general intelligence. People who are unique due to
| knowledge of specific systems are much less easy to swap out.
| Money can buy general intelligence but specific
| domain/application knowledge is sometimes unavailable at any
| price.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| he's the cofounder of Google Brain and one of the original
| torch library authors, also brother of Yoshua Bengio.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jeff Dean is going to
| leave as well. Tick tock.
| andyxor wrote:
| nah, there is absolutely no reason for him to resign because of
| a couple of butthurt snowflakes.
|
| He was completely in the right firing the first one for
| throwing an ultimatum requesting to doxx colleagues (and
| blasting group emails calling for sabotage) [1], and the second
| one was fired for exfiltrating thousands of proprietary files
| [2].
|
| The entire organization knows it and supports him.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...
|
| [2] https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/20/google-targets-ai-
| ethics-...
| dontreact wrote:
| What makes you say this? I'd be willing to take the opposite
| side of that bet.
| mam2 wrote:
| "After the firing of google ethics researchers, i am going to
| pee"
|
| This headlines are hairpulling the issue in every news.
| nojs wrote:
| In case anyone else is confused, this isn't related to Yoshua
| Bengio.
| mwambua wrote:
| It's about Samy Bengio (who is Yoshua's brother and technically
| related). It is confusing though, and the title should be
| updated to avoid confusion.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _Reporting by Paresh Dave and Jeffrey Dastin, additional
| reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and
| Anil D'Silva_
|
| It's kind of incredible that 5 people at Reuters worked on
| this story, yet nobody stopped to think that this would be a
| confusing headline.
|
| Or, if you want to be cynical, maybe they knew it would be
| confusing, but also that it would get more clicks...
| codetrotter wrote:
| I dunno how Reuters works, but afaik in newspapers it's
| often different people that write the article and who
| decide what the title will be. So if Reuters is anything
| like that then 5 people may not have had much to do with
| the title.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| himaraya wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715360
| [deleted]
| modularform123 wrote:
| Lol I hope the door didn't hit him on the way out!
| kragen wrote:
| Can we fix this headline? The implication that _Yoshua_ Bengio
| has resigned from Google is extremely misleading. (If you don 't
| follow the field, the equivalent in politics would be something
| like "Biden calls for probe into Google" and it turns out it's
| not Joe Biden, the US president, but Ashley Biden, his daughter.)
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