> Unfortunately, this particular paper was only shared with a day’s notice before its deadline — we require two weeks for this sort of review — and then instead of awaiting reviewer feedback, it was approved for submission and submitted.
It seems like someone short-circuited the review process and submitted without review to meet a deadline, with a post-submission review. When this occurred, it was not all green lights. The expectation is that you then pull the submission and, post review, submit elsewhere. After all, conferences are all virtual now, it is not a hardship to submit elsewhere.
If you have other information as to the facts or the internal process do tell.
A summary of the events, as best as I can tell, is the normal presubmission review was done. After the paper was approved and submitted, someone, whether this was upper management or some other entity, did some additional review and required that the authors withdraw (?, but retract is the wrong term) the paper.
From what I know, both firsthand and from other sources[0], while not spotless, the issues with the paper were mostly nitpicks and fairly straightforward to resolve. That they weren't even provided until some escalation from Dr. Gebru is strange. That even after they were, sort of, provided, she and her team were not given the option to address them in the paper, is extraordinarily strange.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k69eq0/n_t...
What makes you think they weren't given the opportunity? We were told specifically they _were_ given an opportunity to revise, and instead, demanded HR(!?) provide attributed versions of any and all statements made by any colleagues regarding the paper (!??!!?), or they'd 'work on setting an end date'
I'm not exactly proud, excited, or anything but pensive about this series of developments, and it's _highly_ likely Jeff feels the same way. Everything got too hostile and out of control here for people to be able to work together healthily moving forward, and I'm skeptical of anything beyond that being anything more than people attaching a narrative to an unfortunate breakdown in a relationship.
His words were, and I quote "we require two weeks for this sort of review". That is an absolutely false statement, and Jeff knows it. I see no other characterization than a lie. I take no solace in that fact, priors were that Jeff Dean was an above average executive and ran a more ethical then average org. I'm disappointed to see my trust was misplaced and that Jeff was willing to endorse that document, but I'm not going to not hold someone accountable when I see them do something obviously wrong, even if we work for the same employer. Ethics extend beyond that.
> 1 day is certainly unreasonable.
It is not though. It's the norm.
> We were told specifically they _were_ given an opportunity to revise
This is not true (if you believe this to be true, can you cite said statement?). I'd be more than happy to discuss this with you privately, my username should be obvious ;)
> It is not though. It's the norm.
Not sure what I'm supposed to do with this. A literal intrepretation has you claiming that all Google researchers only allow 24 hours of review of their papers before submitting them for publication. That sounds wrong!
Full Disclosure: I work at Google.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/10/14/the-gervais-principle-...
> This is a simple and child-like example of the operation of a basic human instinct: the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose or HIWTYL (let’s pronounce that “hightail”) instinct. It is the tendency to grab more than your fair share of the rewards of success, and less than your fair share of the blame for failure.
Now whether one buys into that as literally true or not is one thing, but I think it is definitely a useful way of thinking about situations like these.
In fact, the “Golden Ticket Reconsidered” section at the link sounds somewhat like I imagined incentives within AI ethics research at Google are structured:
1. Cut a deal for performance-linked bonus for successful initiative
2. Set up a committee and charter it to collect, vet & recommend ideas
3. Drop hints & suggestions to create things that leadership favors
4. Create appropriate urgency in the work of the committee to achieve the risk-levels you want in the ideas produced.
The outcome of such a system:
> If it works, you praise everybody generously, hand out a few gift certificates, keep your bonus to yourself, and move on. If it fails, you blame the people in charge of the work for failing to consider an “obvious” (with 20/20 hindsight) issue. The chair of such a committee would likely be Clueless [a term of art in the blog series], his appointment being a false honor — a case of being set up take a fall
Further on, the author brings up the “Hanlon Dodge.” Dean’s characterization of Gebru’s termination (“resignation”) seems quite like that to me.
