What is the product the math department would be pressuring it's members to protect?
I’m not sure about math, but in physics it would be string theory which has been a dead end and has mostly served as a welfare program for boomer scientists
The Reuters article says exactly the opposite. If you have documentation that this policy has been in place but ignored, I think that would have a big impact on this unfolding story, it definitely strike me as newsworthy.
The Reuters article clearly refers to this as a new change in policy and procedure.
"Google’s new review procedure asks that researchers consult with legal, policy and public relations teams before pursuing topics such as face and sentiment analysis and categorizations of race, gender or political affiliation, according to internal webpages explaining the policy."
"Studying Google services for biases is among the “sensitive topics” under the company’s new policy, according to an internal webpage. Among dozens of other “sensitive topics” listed were the oil industry, China, Iran, Israel, COVID-19, home security, insurance, location data, religion, self-driving vehicles, telecoms and systems that recommend or personalize web content."
To be clear, there was a review policy prior to the new one, but it's focus was rather different, the primary concern was on not revealing proprietary information. Which is a fairly reasonable restriction, though I would be interested to know what, if any, papers were asked to be withdrawn or retracted under the old policy.
All too true. The biggest challenge Google is struggling through right now is that it's not just impractical, but dangerous for it to continue to behave like a small and scrappy startup.
Behavior patterns that are beneficial for a small company are harmful to a big company. To give a concrete example, "move fast and break things" is fine when you have 100 people relying on you, and should probably be sanctionable (though, in our industry, it is often not outside the context of contracts and pre-arranged agreements) when you have 2 billion people using your system several dozen times a day for critical information, where their lives are materially negatively impacted if that information is false or out-dated.
”employers know the difference between the bird courses and the ones with real meat on the bones.”
I’ve never been asked my GPA or what courses I took. Most of my interviews have been focused on my professional experience (internships, full time work, programming projects, etc.)
GPA (and major of course) can matter right out of school. It's hard for me to imagine in most circumstances though someone scouring a transcript, if they even ask for one, to see if someone took some easier classes as electives.
no one is going to bother looking at a transcript, but fresh graduates should definitely list any challenging/relevant electives they took on their resume (and be prepared to answer some basic questions). if you don't list anything challenging that wasn't a core requirement, it kinda implies you took the softball approach.
That's a strange position at a company whose board and top executives are huge political activists spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying. Political activism is a big part of what Google does, and at a scale that exceeds many if not most non-profits.
So do you honestly believe that if Gebru were to interview at another company and they performed a background check asking why her last position was terminated if she put "voluntary" it would come back with no problems?
Do you likewise honestly think that if she applied for unemployment services in the US should we be denied because of willful termination from her last job?
Everyone I know who has been fired, when it's reported to the company, the phrasing is always "Person X and the company have come to a mutual agreement", but in my experience it's never really mutual.
I've known many coworkers that threaten to quit over issues, but it still depends on them making that choice formally. Otherwise they are fired.
I’m not sure about math, but in physics it would be string theory which has been a dead end and has mostly served as a welfare program for boomer scientists