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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Why do you think Google reached out to the press?

Why do you think I think that? I never said anything about who reached out to the press.

> I’d bet the employee leaking documents did

I bet they didn’t, because none of the articles include anything that the employee would have given them, only that they could not immediately be reached for comment. If that employee was the first source of information, then there would actually be some information from their perspective.

> and Google just responded to a request for comment.

The normal response (for a variety of good reasons, including legal and ethical ones) from a company on a matter like this when asked by the press when they haven’t completed an internal investigation would be to decline comment on personnel matters. Google’s behavior is grossly unethical here irrespective of who reached out to the media first.

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> "publicly naming and blaming and specific employee"

They're not doing this if the press reaches out to them for comment with the specific details first. Given the bad faith actions of Gebru already (and apparently she's at least partially the source here from the other reply to your comment) it makes sense for Google to clarify with the response they gave (and in that response Google also did not mention the name of the employee).

This issue is way too heated for real productive discussion on internet forums. It's obviously tribal, flamewar bait, with a massive undercurrent of partisan politics (and perceived partisan politics on the side of the person you're disagreeing with).

I found what Gebru did earlier to be wrong, my prior is that the behavior here by the employee is also likely to be wrong. I've been generally disappointed in the level of discussion from the political fringes (both 'woke' and pretty much the entire GOP at this point). I find a lot of overlap between this Google AI ethicist community and critical race theory woke politics.

I suspect in the end when all the details are out Google will be in the right.

Without waiting there's no point for all the arguing that's going to go back and forth in these comments.

> They’re not doing this if the press reaches out to them for comment with the specific details first.

The press didn’t have the specific details until given them by Google, which is the “naming and blaming”.

The press had a report from another party of an apparently nonfunctional corporate email address. Describing the existence and basis of an internal investigation that had not been completed from that is grossly unprofessional; I’d be mildly surprised if it was done by a small outfit where media inquiries were regularly fielded by someone with no corporate PR, HR, or legal training, advice, or guidance, but for anything at Google’s scale it is unimaginable as anything but a conscious, deliberate breach of norms with the intent of harming the subject employee in public without developing a full picture of the facts, and that’s assuming Google’s statement is completely truthful as far as it goes.

> The normal response (for a variety of good reasons, including legal and ethical ones) from a company on a matter like this when asked by the press when they haven’t completed an internal investigation would be to decline comment on personnel matters. Google’s behavior is grossly unethical here irrespective of who reached out to the media first.

To give a counter-argument to this: If party A makes a claim or accusation, and party B just says "no comment for now", it'll be near-impossible to reduce the (potentially unjustified) fallout of the premature verdict made. Public opinions matter, and stories told one-sided should not be desired by anyone interested in an objective discourse.

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