I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece on Google and published with Google's name. For me, it's correct they demand a retraction. It's simply unprofessional to critque your company for something while not mentioning the work they're doing to combat that.
It would seem deeply problematic for an AI ethics researcher to have the expectation that when they critique their own employer, they should mention all their work to ameliorate bias or ethics problems, but to not have a similar expectation when they're critiquing other companies. Is the point of having an ethics researcher to expand our understanding of ethical issues, or merely to aid in PR?
If a university administrator were to attempt to tell a PI not to submit a paper critical of work from another lab at the same institution, I think that would be judged as a shocking overreach. But for Google, we're not even in agreement that this behavior is a problem. It's unfortunate that we expect so little from corporations, even if those corporations are some of the main drivers of research in a field.
But the parent comment to which I responded, and which I quoted, specifically said the problem was to criticize google while working for google, and seemed to approve that this should be judged unacceptable.
> I get the impression that she wrote a hit piece on Google and published with Google's name. For me, it's correct they demand a retraction.
The "regardless of who's doing the work" part is key, and not all participants in this conversation are on the same page about it.
Seriously. Choosing who to cite is a discussion and a battle. It's not done thoughtlessly.
Ethics researcher publishes piece critical of company's activities
Company is shocked as to how this could happen.
Company calls it out.
Researcher realizes the limits of her narrative setting powers.
Non-vocal majority is happy to see runaway activism being curbed in corporate settings. Slow march through institutions is slowed down for a day.
Reasons for not citing research, especially recent research, range from lack of relevance (since even though environmental improvements could have been done, they were not done! So the actual impact wasnt lessened by them at all!); To simply not having known about it. The correct reviewer response to this would be an "accept with corrections" to "revise and resubmit"; retraction is overboard. Moreover, that's the role of a conference reviewer, not the employer. Once your employer starts interfering with what you can and can't publish, it's time to find a new affiliation indeed.
Hopefully the paper gets leaked so we can judge for ourselves.
