Talk:Timnit Gebru

Deletion discussion for Stochastic parrot

I started a deletion discussion for Stochastic parrot, which is an article originally created as an article about Gebru's paper: "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" and then renamed to the term "Stochastic parrot" with sources added to support that term. I'm posting this notice here so that maybe we can have wider participation in the deletion discussion. ---Avatar317^(talk) 22:41, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

@Avatar317 I'm honestly surprised Timnit still has a page here after TESCREAL was deleted out of retaliation. Guessing you'll get your wish. 47.223.183.201 (talk) 01:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

A gentle reminder to WP:AGF. The content of the TESCREAL page was merged, not deleted; it just exists as a redirect now. Suriname0 (talk) 15:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

TESCREAL - Hughes source

For background, the TESCREAL section WITH the Hughes (James Hughes (sociologist)) source came from the deletion discussion on the standalone notability of "TESCREAL" WP:Articles_for_deletion/TESCREAL. It was decided to Merge it into here. Editor @Tumnal: modified the statement based on that source when the content was moved, so they also likely support having the Hughes content in this article.

My argument is essentially what I put in my edit summary: While WP:SPS says: "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer." (my emphasis) - This source isn't being used to talk about Gebru, it is discussing a theory, TESCREAL, she has initiated. This is what is called "academic discourse". It is NOT Hughes being used as a reference to talk about details of her life or her achievements. It is also the ONLY source that addresses the TESCREAL subject in any more depth and detail than simply parroting "Gebru (& Torres) have used this acronym", which is why is it essential to have this source if we are to even have a section or any statement at all on TESCREAL. ---Avatar317^(talk) 01:24, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

An AfD merge consensus doesn't necessitate that we include any content here. Are there more sources that talk about TESCREAL and Gebru than the FT op-ed and the Medium piece? If not, I'm thinking it would be better not to mention it at all. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:46, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Here is a link to the TESCREAL article before it was merged; these seem to be the best sources that could be found. (I couldn't find anything better on my searches.) Some people have commented that this may be WP:TOOSOON.

If we exclude the Medium source than I support excluding the TESCREAL statement altogether. ---Avatar317^(talk) 06:31, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

The FT is a legitimate source and material for inclusion in an entry doesn’t need to meet the notability threshold required for creating an article, so TOOSOON is not relevant. However I agree there was undue weight on a single source so I have removed the subhead and trimmed the account to focus on Gebru. Innisfree987 (talk) 14:10, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

• Exclude Medium source per WP:SPS policy on use for BLPs. The idea that a source characterizing her as a conspiracist might somehow not be about her does not pass the straight-face test. But yes if it’s not about her then it doesn’t belong on her page. Moreover SPS cautions about using such sources on any page, saying "if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources." Innisfree987 (talk) 02:20, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Lede?

Hello, my recent edit was reverted. I am concerned that the current version of the lede is not written from a neutral point of view. I am still a bit new to Wikipedia, so not sure what the correct etiquette is here; I have added this to the talk page instead of editing the same section to (hopefully) avoid any edit wars.

The reversion claimed that my edit was not sourced – I think this is not true, given that I added a source (from the Financial Times, which is generally considered reputable – as per Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources) and the existing sources corroborate the new paragraph? The old "sourced" lede also lacked citations? I would be super grateful if someone could explain this to me :)

A few issues I have

• The current lede is quite vague and non-descriptive which is not helpful to readers?
• I think stating that "Gebru was the center of a public controversy" is not neutral because it implies the controversy was about her rather than her employment (or termination thereof) at Google. This could be better phrased as "In December 2020, Gebru's employment at Google was terminated".
• I think it's appropriate to mention that the paper was about potential harms and safety issues of LLMs, because this is valuable context useful to the reader. The paper itself is also quite famous.
• The article states that "she [Gebru] requested insight into the decision and warned that non-compliance would result in her negotiating her departure" which I think is a very aggressive way to phrase this. I rewrote this as "Gebru requested an explanation from Google, stating that she would resign if they did not meet a number of conditions" which I think communicates the same thing in a more neutral way?
• Even if "higher management" shouldn't be "Google management" it should probably be "senior management"?

Ambientcalculus (talk) 02:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The current lead is a summary of the sources that were already in the article before you edited it. Please see WP:LEADCITE. As I stated in my edit summary, please see the NYT and NPR sources and the included quotes from those sources.

It seems that you are trying to push an NON-neutral POV with your edit; why did you remove "and said that the paper ignored recent research." from the lead? That important fact answers the WHY this situation came about, WHY Google wanted the paper withdrawn.

And "employment was terminated" is HER POV; Google says that they accepted her resignation. ---Avatar317^(talk) 19:46, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the useful link about leads.

I don't think I am trying to push a non-neutral POV, in my reading (including of the NYTimes source) I thought this was something that Jeff Dean had later stated in his email.

Re termination – the lead says that "Google terminated her employment" as a statement of fact, so I accepted that. Legally I think it's also questionable given the well-established facts (Gebru stating she would intend to resign if Google didn't meet her conditions, Google claiming this constituted a resignation) to not call this a termination. If California employment law does allow an employee's stated intention to resign as a resignation, then this would be appropriate I think. Ambientcalculus (talk) 22:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

TESCREAL Subheading

I would like to go make a subheading for TESCREAL as a logical split on Timnit's page.

I've known about the deleted article, and from what I can tell, there was no established consensus that it was a conspiracy theory (A single link to someone's substack (WP:SPS) seems much less useful than the peer-reviewed articles about TESCREAL). This is more like her research topic, and part of what she communicates.

I don't necessarily disagree with the deletion of the article at the time, the concept that Dr gebru and Torres are pioneering is just new enough there weren't much sources to cite. User:Sawerchessread (talk) 05:25, 26 June 2024 (UTC)