Don’t Fall for the AI Hype w/ Timnit Gebru
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Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the misleading framings of artificial intelligence, her experience of getting fired by Google in a very public way, and why we need to avoid getting distracted by all the hype around ChatGPT and AI image tools.
Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute and former co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google. You can follow her on Twitter at @timnitGebru.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
Also mentioned in this episode:
- Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7
- Timnit wrote about the exploited labor behind AI tools and how effective altruism is pushing a harmful idea of AI ethics.
- Karen Hao broke down the details of the paper that got Timnit fired from Google.
- Emily Tucker wrote an article called “Artifice and Intelligence.”
- In 2016, ProPublica published an article about technology being used to “predict” future criminals that was biased against black people.
- In 2015, Google Photos classified black women as “gorillas.” In 2018, it still hadn’t really been fixed.
- Artists have been protesting AI-generated images that train themselves on their work and threaten their livelihoods.
- OpenAI used Kenyan workers paid less than $2 an hour to try to make ChatGPT less toxic.
- Zachary Loeb described ELIZA in his article about Joseph Weizenbaum’s work and legacy.
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It sounds like Google's main mistake was in hiring someone who thinks everything is sexism or racism. For example, I did not hear her make any case whatsoever for "environmental racism". At best, she posited a hypothesis for differential environmental effects by socio-economic status. It is inaccurate, reprehensible, and reckless to use SES and race as surrogates for one another. Although she talks a lot about professional resposibility and ethical rigor, she seems entirely unencumbered by either. I can imagine why Google might have fired her, and I suspect she sees it--just as everything else--as racism and sexism. How convenient for her, and there's clearly a ready audience for her fomentation and possible (metaphorical) arson.
It's interesting to hear so many young people who've learned to see everything in terms of identity politics, and to express themselves with implied and scattershot aspersions, grievances, and bleating indignation. What I hear is admirable earnestness fueled by poor education and a sense that this is the only way they can get attention and influence. Actual substance seems to take too long for them; flippant and reckless accusations are much more convenient. It's unfortunate that their well intentioned petulance often serves as a caricature of liberalism.