I don't know Jeff Dean. I have read some of his work, watched some of his presentations. He seems a credible bloke.
This, though, looks and feels like thinly-veiled retroactive and pretty unconvincing PR. It's short on detail and appears somewhat at odds with several points from Timnit Gebru's resignation note [0]:
- Dean says the paper was reviewed by a "cross-functional team". Gebru says she received the feedback through a "privileged and confidential document to HR"
- Dean says the paper was submitted for review on the day it was due to be published; Gebru says they had notified "PR & Policy 2 months before".
- Dean suggests the feedback was due to the paper not highlighting mitigating work for some of the limitations the paper was exposing. That seems like a very normal part of the research process. Why, then, does Gebru claim that she was told that a "manager can read you a privileged and confidential document" and that no other recourse or exploration of the feedback was permissible?
The only thing we know from the outside is that reality will be far more nuanced and complicated than the tidbits that leak out. Even allowing for that though - and reading some of the related comments here - Google isn't coming out of this well at the moment.
[0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...
EDIT: Fixed spelling of Timnit Gebru's name.
This, though, looks and feels like thinly-veiled retroactive and pretty unconvincing PR. It's short on detail and appears somewhat at odds with several points from Timnit Gebru's resignation note [0]:
- Dean says the paper was reviewed by a "cross-functional team". Gebru says she received the feedback through a "privileged and confidential document to HR"
- Dean says the paper was submitted for review on the day it was due to be published; Gebru says they had notified "PR & Policy 2 months before".
- Dean suggests the feedback was due to the paper not highlighting mitigating work for some of the limitations the paper was exposing. That seems like a very normal part of the research process. Why, then, does Gebru claim that she was told that a "manager can read you a privileged and confidential document" and that no other recourse or exploration of the feedback was permissible?
The only thing we know from the outside is that reality will be far more nuanced and complicated than the tidbits that leak out. Even allowing for that though - and reading some of the related comments here - Google isn't coming out of this well at the moment.
[0]: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...
EDIT: Fixed spelling of Timnit Gebru's name.