We know large language models are super important to google, and there are lots of competitors.
If they approved the paper the message would be "google thinks language models are a waste of resources and racist". There would be no academic debate on this topic as its been framed as woke and published by a militant activist, so any disagreement would be racist (see prior interactions between this researcher and other researchers [1]).
Thats why the standard process of publishing, peer reviewing, academic critique etc would not work.
Why would their researchers working on language models stay? when they can go to Facebook, OpenAI etc. Why would new researchers join?
If they approved the paper the message would be "google thinks language models are a waste of resources and racist". There would be no academic debate on this topic as its been framed as woke and published by a militant activist, so any disagreement would be racist (see prior interactions between this researcher and other researchers [1]).
Thats why the standard process of publishing, peer reviewing, academic critique etc would not work.
Why would their researchers working on language models stay? when they can go to Facebook, OpenAI etc. Why would new researchers join?
[1] https://syncedreview.com/2020/06/30/yann-lecun-quits-twitter...