Sounds like challenging the hype is a terminable offense.
“One story is good until another is told”. The chip design work has apparently been replicated, and Metz’s* writeup there has several red flags: in describing Gebru’s departure, he omits any mention of her ultimatum and list of demands, so he’s not above leaving out extremely important context in these departures in trying to build up a narrative of ‘Google fires researchers for criticizing research’; he explicitly notes that Chatterjee was fired ‘for cause’ which is rather eyebrow-raising when usually senior people ‘resign to spend time with their families’ (said nonfirings typically involving things like keeping their stock options while senior people are only ‘fired for cause’ when they’ve really screwed up—like, say, harassment of an attractive young woman) but he doesn’t give what that ‘cause’ was (does he really not know after presumably talking to people?) or wonder why both Chatterjee and Google are withholding it; and he uninterestedly throws in a very brief and selective quote from a presumably much longer statement by a woman involved which should be raising your other eyebrow:
Ms. Goldie said that Dr. Chatterjee had asked to manage their project in 2019 and that they had declined. When he later criticized it, she said, he could not substantiate his complaints and ignored the evidence they presented in response.
“Sat Chatterjee has waged a campaign of misinformation against me and Azalia for over two years now,” Ms. Anna Goldie said in a written statement.
She said the work had been peer-reviewed by Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific publications. And she added that Google had used their methods to build new chips and that these chips were currently used in Google’s computer data centers.
(I note that this is put at the end, which in the NYT house style, is where they bury the inconvenient facts that they can’t in good journalist conscience leave out entirely, and that makes me suspect there is more to this part than is given.)
So, we’ll see. EDIT: Timnit Gebru, perhaps surprisingly, denies any parallel and seems to say Chatterjee deserved to be fired, saying:
...But I had heard about the person from many ppl. To the extent the story is connected to mine, it’s ONLY the pattern of action on toxic men taken too late while ppl like me are retaliated against. This is NOT a story about censorship. Its a story about a toxic person who was able to stay for a long time even though many ppl knew of said toxicity. And now, they’re somehow connecting it to my story of discrimination, speaking up day in & day out & being retaliated against?
Wired has a followup article with more detailed timeline and discussion. It edges much closer to the misogyny narrative than the evil-corporate-censorship narrative.
“One story is good until another is told”. The chip design work has apparently been replicated, and Metz’s* writeup there has several red flags: in describing Gebru’s departure, he omits any mention of her ultimatum and list of demands, so he’s not above leaving out extremely important context in these departures in trying to build up a narrative of ‘Google fires researchers for criticizing research’; he explicitly notes that Chatterjee was fired ‘for cause’ which is rather eyebrow-raising when usually senior people ‘resign to spend time with their families’ (said nonfirings typically involving things like keeping their stock options while senior people are only ‘fired for cause’ when they’ve really screwed up—like, say, harassment of an attractive young woman) but he doesn’t give what that ‘cause’ was (does he really not know after presumably talking to people?) or wonder why both Chatterjee and Google are withholding it; and he uninterestedly throws in a very brief and selective quote from a presumably much longer statement by a woman involved which should be raising your other eyebrow:
(I note that this is put at the end, which in the NYT house style, is where they bury the inconvenient facts that they can’t in good journalist conscience leave out entirely, and that makes me suspect there is more to this part than is given.)
So, we’ll see. EDIT: Timnit Gebru, perhaps surprisingly, denies any parallel and seems to say Chatterjee deserved to be fired, saying:
Wired has a followup article with more detailed timeline and discussion. It edges much closer to the misogyny narrative than the evil-corporate-censorship narrative.
* yes, the SSC Metz.
Fair enough! Great context, thanks.
In my experience, not enough people on here publically realise their errors and thank the corrector. Nice to see it happen here.