It sucks when facts get in the way of a fashionable narrative, but the Google AI researcher was fired for demanding the names of an internal review panel who rejected her paper. She had a reputation for accusing her colleagues of bigotry and other toxic behavior.
> the Google AI researcher was fired for demanding the names of an internal review panel who rejected her paper.
That was a last-ditch bid to amicably resolve a situation in which the unique adverse treatment by Google had already reached the point of constructive termination. (And, in fact, that is neither of Google’s simultaneously-presented and incompatible explanations for the reasons for the separation – which were “she resigned and wasn’t fired” and “she was fired for comments on an internal mailing list” – though it does share with Google’s explanations that it fails to explain the situation that already constituted constructive termination and references only events after and responding to that condition.)
When someone accuses colleagues of bigotry and other toxic behaviour, it's typically because those people are perpetrating bigotry and other toxic behaviour.
This needn't be relitigated, but you're at least misleading, if not factually wrong.
The "internal review panel" wasn't at least at the time, known to be a real process. In other words, the sequence of events was that the paper was written and approved via normal channels. After this, the authors were informed that they needed to withdraw it. Confused, they asked for more information (by what process was this decided, and by who, was it peers, legal, an executive who wanted to bury the paper, etc.) and were stonewalled. To my knowledge these questions still haven't really been answered.
I think its very reasonable request to want to know who or what caused your paper to get blocked. In normal peer review, even when it is blind, you can work with the reviewers to update the paper and see their feedback. These opportunities weren't readily provided.
She did a lot more than that. Here is the email that got her fired:
Hi friends,
I had stopped writing here as you may know, after all the micro and macro aggressions and harassments I received after posting my stories here (and then of course it started being moderated).
Recently however, I was contributing to a document that Katherine and Daphne were writing where they were dismayed by the fact that after all this talk, this org seems to have hired 14% or so women this year. Samy has hired 39% from what I understand but he has zero incentive to do this.
What I want to say is stop writing your documents because it doesn’t make a difference. The DEI OKRs that we don’t know where they come from (and are never met anyways), the random discussions, the “we need more mentorship” rather than “we need to stop the toxic environments that hinder us from progressing” the constant fighting and education at your cost, they don’t matter. Because there is zero accountability. There is no incentive to hire 39% women: your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people, you start making the other leaders upset when they don’t want to give you good ratings during calibration. There is no way more documents or more conversations will achieve anything. We just had a Black research all hands with such an emotional show of exasperation. Do you know what happened since? Silencing in the most fundamental way possible.
Have you ever heard of someone getting “feedback” on a paper through a privileged and confidential document to HR? Does that sound like a standard procedure to you or does it just happen to people like me who are constantly dehumanized?
Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months). A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it has been decided” that you need to retract this paper by next week, Nov. 27, the week when almost everyone would be out (and a date which has nothing to do with the conference process). You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognized by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organizations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company.
Then, you ask for more information. What specific feedback exists? Who is it coming from? Why now? Why not before? Can you go back and forth with anyone? Can you understand what exactly is problematic and what can be changed?
And you are told after a while, that your manager can read you a privileged and confidential document and you’re not supposed to even know who contributed to this document, who wrote this feedback, what process was followed or anything. You write a detailed document discussing whatever pieces of feedback you can find, asking for questions and clarifications, and it is completely ignored. And you’re met with, once again, an order to retract the paper with no engagement whatsoever.
Then you try to engage in a conversation about how this is not acceptable and people start doing the opposite of any sort of self reflection—trying to find scapegoats to blame.
Silencing marginalized voices like this is the opposite of the NAUWU principles which we discussed. And doing this in the context of “responsible AI” adds so much salt to the wounds. I understand that the only things that mean anything at Google are levels, I’ve seen how my expertise has been completely dismissed. But now there’s an additional layer saying any privileged person can decide that they don’t want your paper out with zero conversation. So you’re blocked from adding your voice to the research community—your work which you do on top of the other marginalization you face here.
I’m always amazed at how people can continue to do thing after thing like this and then turn around and ask me for some sort of extra DEI work or input. This happened to me last year. I was in the middle of a potential lawsuit for which Kat Herller and I hired feminist lawyers who threatened to sue Google (which is when they backed off--before that Google lawyers were prepared to throw us under the bus and our leaders were following as instructed) and the next day I get some random “impact award.” Pure gaslighting.
So if you would like to change things, I suggest focusing on leadership accountability and thinking through what types of pressures can also be applied from the outside. For instance, I believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is the entity that started forcing tech companies to report their diversity numbers. Writing more documents and saying things over and over again will tire you out but no one will listen.
You have now changed the reason you're claiming she was fired, first it was asking about people's identities now it's that she wanted people to stop working. This leads me to believe that perhaps you reached your conclusion first, and are trying to find evidence to support your preferred result rather than the other way.
But even now your claims are at best only half true, reading the email she says people should stop working on DEI things specifically, as they can't be successful without executive sponsorship and execs only pay lip service. Is that criticism wrong?
But don't let truth get in the way of a good story, right?
She's not accusing an colleagues of bigotry, she's stating leadership doesn't support diversity initiatives enough and this leads to rank and file employees wasting their time. How is that toxic behavior?
And again, what does any of that have to do with a review panel? That's what you claimed she was fired for, the review panel.
It really isn't. If you're assuming that the only reason one might do a bad thing is because they are a bad person, then sort of maybe, but even then, bigotry is pretty specific and one can silence marginalized people for all kinds of reasons that aren't bigotry (naivete, for example)
I have no problem with this person who probably had legitimate issues with Google but "You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognised by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organisations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company" is a pretty clear and cut accusation of bigotry to me.
How exactly would you fail to acknowledge somebody's humanity thanks to "naivete"? I'm making the presumably safe assumption that she is not a sentient piece of lint.
The r/machinelearning thread provides a more balanced perspective: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...