A professor declined a $60K research award from Google
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
Google did not stop a researcher who issued an ultimatum ..
And also fired one who forwarded company and employee confidential information to another company.
The prof was absolutely ok before that
Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.
Besides, what's the point in principles if you're not willing to sacrifice anything to stick to them?
[1] https://research.google/outreach/research-scholar-program/
Every grant no matter the size is important. When I sat on the board of a Computer Science department, the University was pushing professors and students alike, to press for research grants of any size to help bolster the coffers.
It's a messed up system honestly, but they definitely have a set number of grants they need at a minimum.
Fortunately this will probably work out in the professors benefit in the long run within his industry and hopefully help with future grant writing endeavors.
Also it’s an unrestricted award, which might be used in an existing project, e.g. to buy your students or post docs new computers, or go to a few conferences or such.
But yes, not much money.
I guess to him that's worth more than 60K.
And if the tenure committee has non-technical folks in it, they might be sympathetic to the fired Google researchers so who knows!
That said, he's already gotten the PhD and the professorship, so a lot of those are sunk costs at this point. Incrementally, this is cheap. And it might not be worth backing out of his dead end.
That’s not how I would interact with a Turing award winner. And it’s not the first time they have had that reaction.
From what I’ve observed it could be a classic case of borderline personality disorder. Generally polite and nice to people but when they get offended they go ballistic.
It is asymmetric social warfare. We're not listening to the other half of the story, other half being a giant corporation that can't go argue on a Twitter thread with her.
Seriously, go on her twitter page and see it for yourself. I implore you. It's like we've lost our ability to discuss difficult topics, politely present our case and be respectful to everyone.
But right now, visiting her Twitter, there's nothing unsavory within a couple minutes' worth of scrolling.
Separately--you're, defending the giant corporation? Is that necessary?
Of FAANG, Apple and Netflix aren't nearly as evil as the others.
Did you hear about the most recent debacle in India where Apple factory workers weren't getting paid their $3 USD monthly wages on time?
The fact that this trillion dollar company does this is pure evil.
You should compare rates in those factories with similar sized factories in the US -- as far as I can tell the rates are similar.
Netflix seems a pretty ethically- and morally-benign company of the FAANG gang: they're an online (and by-mail) Blockbuster.
Why would this guy give up real money to defend them?
Dr. Gebru has a lot of support among the professor's peers in AI ethics; accepting the award would paint a target on his back.
Edited for clarity.
Also, let's be clear here on who bears the brunt of these actions - when a lab is short on funding, it's the grad students who lose out first. Vijay tweeted as much, saying he'd rather his grad students need to TA an extra semester or two rather than take Google's money.
That's a really odd comment. Sure it would be nice if he could come up with such a plan, but it's a non sequitur to couple that to a decision to decline a grant. It's like saying, "Joe bought an electric car because he's concerned about global warming, but it would have been useful if he solved the worldwide problem, too...and developed a warp drive."
Also, you can't make people more ethical with a course. It doesn't work like that. People either have a semblance of a moral compass or they don't, and unfortunately I think there is less and less big-picture moral courage and critical thinking amongst the majority of knowledge workers. Maybe it's the way people were raised in the past 30 years, e.g., latchkey kids who grew up feral without mentors or active parental involvement due to two full-time working parents.