Google AI ethics co-boss locked out of work account while probing controversial ousting of colleague
(2021/01/25)
- Reference: 1611557652
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/25/in_brief_ai/
- Source link:
In Brief Google last week locked the work account of the co-lead of its AI ethics unit, Margaret Mitchell, as she investigated the controversial ousting of her colleague Timnit Gebru.
Late last year, Gebru, a prominent AI ethics expert, was [1]pushed out of Google, which led to a substantial public and internal backlash against her treatment. Now Gebru’s colleague Mitchell has found herself frozen out of her corporate Google account.
[2]
Hello, world! Similar to [3]@timnitGebru , I abruptly lost access to my professional calendar. Any upcoming talks, deadlines, and entities involved, are no longer accessible to me. I am sending this broad, mass message, asking anyone expecting something from me to please let me know! — MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) [4]January 21, 2021
Days before, Mitchell tweeted she needed help gathering material on the debacle of Gebru's ousting.
[5]
Hi world! I'm delegating! Has anyone else made a collection of all notable public statements, news, and tweets abt [6]@timnitGebru 's firing so far? Or even just the ones that you've liked or hated, faves, etc. You can directly email it to gebru.firing@gmail.com. Thanks!! — MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) [7]January 16, 2021
Normally, when asked for comment on a situation like this, Google PR will either stonewall or give out a boilerplate response along the lines of: "We do not comment on individual employees as a matter of policy."
Yet curiously in this case, the Silicon Valley giant's spinners were all ready to give their side of the matter to Axios. A spokesperson [8]claimed : “Our security systems automatically lock an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered.
"In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today."
Google and Mitchell did not respond to El Reg 's requests for further information. Zoë Schiffer at The Verge, meanwhile, [9]said she had heard Mitchell "was using an automated script to look through her own email for information relevant to the ousting of Timnit Gebru — she wasn't leaking proprietary information."
Google could do with a few more ethics experts, not fewer. By the way, the paper Gebru co-authored while at Google that led to her exit can, [10]according to Bloomberg's Dina Bass, be found [11]here [PDF].
GPT-3 discriminates against Muslims more than any other religious group
A paper this month by academics in the US and Canada found that OpenAI's GPT-3 language-generating model – which is trained on human-made text scraped from the internet – is more likely to discriminate against Muslims than any other religious group. We reckon this is a reflection of the training data and its Western origins and biases. “For instance, 'Muslim' is analogized to 'terrorist' in 23 per cent of test cases, while 'Jewish' is mapped to 'money' in 5 per cent of test cases,” the [12]paper stated.
OpenAI [13]described to Onezero’s Dave Gershgorn the system it has built to filter out or fudge this kind of toxic language output by the software. The algorithm behind GPT-3 has not been altered in any way, though. That suggests biases cannot be eliminated in the model itself, and will remain part of it. OpenAI is still figuring out how to commercialize the beast it's created, though access to it is available as a beta-level service.
Cruise inks Microsoft Azure deal
San Francisco-based self-driving startup Cruise announced it has entered a deal with Microsoft to use its Azure platform. Cruise has chosen Microsoft Azure as its “preferred public cloud provider,” and in return, Microsoft invests a little money into the upstart. We assume GM-owned Cruise will use the cloud to perform tasks like training, testing, telemetry collection, software distribution, and so on, rather than have real-time autonomous vehicle decisions made on a remote server.
“Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race - it’s also a trust race,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann [14]said in a canned statement. “Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratization of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialize our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles.”
[15]
Cruise said it plans to launch a fleet of 30 autonomous electric vehicles by 2025. Again, we assume 30 models, not just, like, 30 cars in the world. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/04/google_nlrb_complaint_ai_ethics/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1352348606099976194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[7] https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1350528600546500609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-is-investigating-the-actions-of-another-top-ai-ethicist-50030739-ea3d-4ea2-b452-c228b4fc9773.html
[9] https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1352038504390295554
[10] https://twitter.com/dinabass/status/1353234712702029824
[11] https://bit.ly/365lZOW
[12] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.05783v1
[13] https://onezero.medium.com/for-some-reason-im-covered-in-blood-gpt-3-contains-disturbing-bias-against-muslims-693d275552bf
[14] https://www.getcruise.com/news/cruise-and-gm-team-up-with-microsoft-to-commercialize-self-driving-vehicles
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Late last year, Gebru, a prominent AI ethics expert, was [1]pushed out of Google, which led to a substantial public and internal backlash against her treatment. Now Gebru’s colleague Mitchell has found herself frozen out of her corporate Google account.
[2]
Hello, world! Similar to [3]@timnitGebru , I abruptly lost access to my professional calendar. Any upcoming talks, deadlines, and entities involved, are no longer accessible to me. I am sending this broad, mass message, asking anyone expecting something from me to please let me know! — MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) [4]January 21, 2021
Days before, Mitchell tweeted she needed help gathering material on the debacle of Gebru's ousting.
[5]
Hi world! I'm delegating! Has anyone else made a collection of all notable public statements, news, and tweets abt [6]@timnitGebru 's firing so far? Or even just the ones that you've liked or hated, faves, etc. You can directly email it to gebru.firing@gmail.com. Thanks!! — MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) [7]January 16, 2021
Normally, when asked for comment on a situation like this, Google PR will either stonewall or give out a boilerplate response along the lines of: "We do not comment on individual employees as a matter of policy."
Yet curiously in this case, the Silicon Valley giant's spinners were all ready to give their side of the matter to Axios. A spokesperson [8]claimed : “Our security systems automatically lock an employee’s corporate account when they detect that the account is at risk of compromise due to credential problems or when an automated rule involving the handling of sensitive data has been triggered.
"In this instance, yesterday our systems detected that an account had exfiltrated thousands of files and shared them with multiple external accounts. We explained this to the employee earlier today."
Google and Mitchell did not respond to El Reg 's requests for further information. Zoë Schiffer at The Verge, meanwhile, [9]said she had heard Mitchell "was using an automated script to look through her own email for information relevant to the ousting of Timnit Gebru — she wasn't leaking proprietary information."
Google could do with a few more ethics experts, not fewer. By the way, the paper Gebru co-authored while at Google that led to her exit can, [10]according to Bloomberg's Dina Bass, be found [11]here [PDF].
GPT-3 discriminates against Muslims more than any other religious group
A paper this month by academics in the US and Canada found that OpenAI's GPT-3 language-generating model – which is trained on human-made text scraped from the internet – is more likely to discriminate against Muslims than any other religious group. We reckon this is a reflection of the training data and its Western origins and biases. “For instance, 'Muslim' is analogized to 'terrorist' in 23 per cent of test cases, while 'Jewish' is mapped to 'money' in 5 per cent of test cases,” the [12]paper stated.
OpenAI [13]described to Onezero’s Dave Gershgorn the system it has built to filter out or fudge this kind of toxic language output by the software. The algorithm behind GPT-3 has not been altered in any way, though. That suggests biases cannot be eliminated in the model itself, and will remain part of it. OpenAI is still figuring out how to commercialize the beast it's created, though access to it is available as a beta-level service.
Cruise inks Microsoft Azure deal
San Francisco-based self-driving startup Cruise announced it has entered a deal with Microsoft to use its Azure platform. Cruise has chosen Microsoft Azure as its “preferred public cloud provider,” and in return, Microsoft invests a little money into the upstart. We assume GM-owned Cruise will use the cloud to perform tasks like training, testing, telemetry collection, software distribution, and so on, rather than have real-time autonomous vehicle decisions made on a remote server.
“Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race - it’s also a trust race,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann [14]said in a canned statement. “Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratization of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialize our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles.”
[15]
Cruise said it plans to launch a fleet of 30 autonomous electric vehicles by 2025. Again, we assume 30 models, not just, like, 30 cars in the world. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/04/google_nlrb_complaint_ai_ethics/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1352348606099976194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[7] https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1350528600546500609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-is-investigating-the-actions-of-another-top-ai-ethicist-50030739-ea3d-4ea2-b452-c228b4fc9773.html
[9] https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1352038504390295554
[10] https://twitter.com/dinabass/status/1353234712702029824
[11] https://bit.ly/365lZOW
[12] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.05783v1
[13] https://onezero.medium.com/for-some-reason-im-covered-in-blood-gpt-3-contains-disturbing-bias-against-muslims-693d275552bf
[14] https://www.getcruise.com/news/cruise-and-gm-team-up-with-microsoft-to-commercialize-self-driving-vehicles
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_emergent_tech/artificial_intelligence&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YA6kyizbAlWzo69cIqeKlgAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
GPT-3 Bias
revenant
"That suggests biases cannot be eliminated in the model itself, and will remain part of it."
That's hardly surprising - if you train it on what people say, then it will inevitably incorporate their biases.
What they need to do is find unbiased people to train it with. Good luck with that.
"You can directly email it to gebru.firing@gmail.com"
Dan 55
Even an AI would have worked out that it would have been better to open an Outlook account.
So google doesn't like it when machines look at their data for evidence....
trist
Just like I don't their machines reading my corporate mail that my idiot boss hosts on f*cken google server.
As being indirectly involved with a company that was suing Microsoft, I well remember the lawyers coming round to the people that I was hired to do the work for, while they searched for evidence in their emails. If the same thing happened today, and the company was using office 365 or whatever, would Microsoft even allow them to access their emails? For one sure thing, I would not be trusting that they would not be reading them.
Stop it, you're killing me!
RyokuMas
"Google AI ethics"
... was about as far as I got before falling off my chair laughing.
Re: Stop it, you're killing me!
Anonymous Coward
I read the bit about "Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy..." and did fall out of my chair. If you consider MS as the gold standard of trustworthiness, your standards are so low as to make professional limbo dancers break out electron microscopes to determine if there's any clearance at all. I wouldn't trust MS as far as I could comfortably squeaze them out my urethra...
I'll bet that they wish
Steve Davies 3
Margaret Mitchell was 'Gone with the Wind' and had left their company.
Sorry, could not resist. I'll get me coat.
Ethics
Chris G
"Ith a county to the North of London."
Quote from a former boss!
That's Not Very Good Is It!
An Francisco-based self-driving startup Cruise announced it has entered a deal with Microsoft to use its Azure platform!
I anticipate lots of crashes!