Story: I knew a dude who made a lot of money early in life doing IT for an online gambling company, where keeping the servers up is worth a whole lot of money. And in my twenties I thought that was super cool, was jealous even 'cause he bought a house at a young age. Then years later, I wound up with a routine (details irrelevant) that had me taking the metro past the local casino very frequently, and saw first hand how the ads on the train for said casino, which you and I would find totally absurd, seemed quite reasonable to the some of the ridership who were less educated, or even borderline mentally handicapped (it went through a poor neighbourhood). And it really brought home how happy these companies are to lie to the most vulnerable populations and make addicts out of them. I saw folks frequently enough to realize they were really getting fucked over and our BC government was happy to collect the taxes from casinos whilst closing down mental care institutions. No amount of money would make me work for that sector now. I'm sure others have similar lines in the sand. So good on the prof, a $60k grant is nothing compared to knowing you took money for something you find morally reprehensible, IFF you're already living comfortable above the poverty line (as a prof would be).

This had nothing to do with Google ads, it was AI ethics team stuff.

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

This is what is known as a principal-agent problem, where the agent (the professor) has the ability to make decisions for the principal (the university) but their motives are not fully aligned. The university may prefer to have $60,000 and a good relationship with a mega corporation but the professor probably benefits more from having his name out there and known as a crusader.

This is known as having a moral backbone. A condition that is somtimes misidentified due to its rarity.

Sure, but announcing it loudly and publicly is self-serving.

Announcing it loudly puts more pressure on Google to improve, which is the whole point. I don't see any reason to disparage this guy for being public about this.

You're arguing a false dichotomy

“Luke Stark declined a $60,000 research award from Google in support of the ousted leaders of its ethical AI group.”

Ugh...I’m all for standing up for what you believe in, but I think he was foolish for turning down this money.

He's an assistant professor, so although he's probably not rich, I imagine he has pretty good career prospects in general, and is probably financially secure already. I'm sure he could use the $60,000 (he was applying for it in the first place after all!) but I suspect that getting or not-getting that money isn't going to be really life-changing for him. So it doesn't seem so foolish to me.

Besides, what's the point in principles if you're not willing to sacrifice anything to stick to them?

Money is to fund research, not personal use. Job security highly dependent on bringing in grants.

Yes, this is an important point, thank you. The research award goes to the university, not personally to the researcher (at least so says the award information at [1]). Nevertheless, I think this guy will have other opportunities and this grant isn't going to make or break him.

[1] https://research.google/outreach/research-scholar-program/

Lots of luck in academia, he’s taking a risk at assistant level.

Asst. professor is tenure-track probably, but not yet tenured. So he will be out unless he can bring in the kickbacks (overhead) for his institution.

Also the PR and street cred from this move is likely worth more to him?

To be fair this is really not that much money. Cannot even pay for a postdoc for a year.

It may not be much in the scheme of things, but most universities pool grants. After taking operational costs (as much as 50%) the funds are then delegated to department for dispersement across payroll, research, etc. Depending on grant stipulations.

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.

Can in the social sciences, which he may be.

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.

Integrity is worth more than money. It's not the cash but the principle. It made the news, so his moral courage clearly had an impact. You can't buy integrity but you can sell it.

I guess it depends on the strings attached. If there are basically none, then he could have taken the money and donated it to a charity he believes in.

You can't do that if you work for a university and the grant goes through your workplace.

Visiting Gebru's Twitter reveals that he is, for now, getting a lot of positive attention for his decision, which could be more valuable to him.

Yeap. It's entirely possible some angel investor-types and foundations could throw even more coin his way than he turned down. I praise him for his moral courage.

He's a non-tenured faculty at a school nobody heard of with an 'ok' publication track record and managed to put himself in a CNN article + HN frontpage.

I guess to him that's worth more than 60K.

I don’t think so. The CNN article and HN front page (really?) will mean zero to the tenure committee that will decide his fate in the near future.

He might try to use his 15 minutes of glory to jump fence to a better institution.

And if the tenure committee has non-technical folks in it, they might be sympathetic to the fired Google researchers so who knows!

People prioritize lots of stuff. It’s funny to me when people stand up for dumb causes, but to each their own as what seems dumb to me is important for another.

Sometimes taking money from someone hurts your reputation or public identity, then it makes sense to decline... but this particular case is hard to relate to.

If you consider Google as the embodiment of evil (which is a reasonable position to have in some circles), then refusing its money is just as natural as it should have been for MIT to refuse Epstein's.

Might be smart "antifragile" behavior in the NNT sense. Though I'd argue he's investing in a social identity where, due to his immutable characteristics, he can never have too high a status.

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.

it's a great symbolic gesture

If it helps him attract grad students, the ROI is better than $60k

If he can get an offer from Google, he’ll find the money in other ways.

In your view is there ever a reason to turn down money?

Declining a research award due to supporting a toxic employee with a long history of unnecessarily hostile and combative behavior (just look at the yann lecun twitter thread). Sounds fine to me!

Can you link it? Googling it results in too many threads

This article has a summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23696427

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.

Timrit's actions are deeply unpleasant on Twitter. I don't care what side of the coin you're on - vile, contemptful behavior like this must be condemned. These people want to get famous and they're thirsty for social-martyr points. In their wake, they coerce people into shame, social media justice and other despicable behavior. She seems to tweet at an alarming frequency - some 10 mins between tweets all day when she isn't sleeping.

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.

I recall the news when she was fired, and that her language seemed somewhat unsavory.

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?

Personally, I refuse to work for Google no matter how many $100k's or flexibility in role design and department choices they throw at me. This is because "don't be evil" was only an ostensible mission statement that has long since fell by the wayside since it obviously never was a primary value.

Of FAANG, Apple and Netflix aren't nearly as evil as the others.

So contracting with overseas factories with work conditions so poor that they need to have suicide nets is not as evil as what Google does as a search engine?

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.

All buildings that allow access to the roof should have suicide nets or tall fencing.

You should compare rates in those factories with similar sized factories in the US -- as far as I can tell the rates are similar.

I'd love to see data for that. Do you work for Apple? Amazon warehouses, as notorious as they are for working conditions, don't even have a suicide problem. Note that the nets were installed reactively:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

Evil and suffering are relative, not absolutes. It's less evil than inciting and enabling genocides. Making workers pee in bottles or fire them for not moving fast enough is a different evil.

Netflix seems a pretty ethically- and morally-benign company of the FAANG gang: they're an online (and by-mail) Blockbuster.

From my understanding of the events, there was not really anything wrong with the way Google handled the AI Ethics researchers it fired. One threatened to quit unless a long list of demands were met. The other was exfiltrating company data.

Why would this guy give up real money to defend them?

> 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.

Dr. Gebru is a she

Are you daft? You can use “he or she” if you don’t care or “she” if you do but to say “he” is patently incorrect.

Luke is a male name. It's about Luke's peers. They are his peers (if they weren't, it wouldn't matter who has influence on them). It's not about their status as Timnit Gebru's peers, so her gender doesn't matter and "his peers" obviously referred to "Luke Stark's peers".

This elevates him in his field, which isn't CS.

I think this is sad but true.

Equity is not equality.

Is it a coincidence that, in corporate settings, we've started using the word "equity" like this, when it is a synonym for "stock ownership"? I don't think so...

To eschew ambiguity, what exactly is meant by both terms? Is there a social trend to do something that's counter to fairness?

I respect the gesture but I think it would be more useful if accompanied with some plan of action for improving the current state of ethics in CS. It's a field-wide problem, not a Google specific problem.

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.

> I respect the gesture but I think it would be more useful if accompanied with some plan of action for improving the current state of ethics in CS. It's a field-wide problem, not a Google specific problem.

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."

It seems unreasonable to demand industry/field leadership and a plan for turning down a grant out of moral courage. I would advocate "be the change you seek" rather than expecting everyone else to throw their energy into solving complex, systemic problems.

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.

Dude isn't a CS professor per-se. Just look at his website. He comes out of sociology, not CS.