Google Management Insights: About Personnel Matters No Less
June 16, 2022
Google is an interesting company. Should we survive Palantir Technologies’ estimate of a 30 percent plus chance of a nuclear war, we can turn to Alphabet Google YouTube to provide management guidance. Keep in mind that the Google has faced some challenges in the human resource, people asset department in the past. Notable examples range from frisky attorneys to high profile terminations of individuals like Dr. Timnit Gebru. The lawyer thing was frisky; the Timnit thing was numbers about bias.
“Google’s CEO Says If Your Return to the Office Plan Doesn’t Include These 3 Things You’re Doing It Wrong. It’s All About What You Value” provides information about the human resource functionality of a very large online advertising bar room door. Selling, setting prices, auctioning, etc. flip flop as part of the design of the digital saloon. “Pony up them ad collars, partner or else” is ringing in my ears.
The conjunction of human resources and “value” is fascinating. How does one value one Timnit?
What are these management insights:
First, you must have purpose. The write up provides this explanatory quote:
A set of our workforce will be fully remote, but most of our workforce will be coming in three days a week. But I think we can be more purposeful about the time they’re in, making sure group meetings, collaboration, creative brainstorming, or community building happens then.
Okay, purpose seems to be more organized. Okay, in the pre Covid era why did Google require multiple messaging apps? What about those social media plays going way back to Orkut?
Second, you must be flexible. Again the helpful expository statements appear in the write up:
At Google, that means giving people choices. Some employees will be back in the office full time. Others will adopt a hybrid approach where they work in the office three days a week, and from home the rest of the time. In other cases, employees might choose to relocate and work fully remotely for a period of time.
Flexibility also suggests being able to say one thing and then changing that thing. How will Googlers working in locations with lower costs of living? Maybe pay them less? Move them from one position to another in order to grow or not impede their more productive in office colleagues? Perhaps shifting a full timer to a contractor basis? That’s a good idea too. Flexibility is the key. For the worker, sorry, we’re talking management not finding a life partner.
Third, you must do something with choice. Let’s look at the cited article to figure out choice:
The sense of creating community, fostering creativity in the workplace collaboration all makes you a better company. I view giving flexibility to people in the same way, to be very clear. I do think we strongly believe in in-person connections, but I think we can achieve that in a more purposeful way, and give employees more agency and flexibility.
Okay, decide, Googler. No, not the employee, the team leader. If Googlers had choice, some of those who pushed back and paraded around the Google parking lot, would be getting better personnel evaluation scores.
Stepping back, don’t these quotes sound like baloney? They do to me. And I won’t mention the Glass affair, the overdosed VP on his yacht, or the legal baby thing.
Wow. Not quite up to MIT – Epstein grade verbiage, but darned close. And what about “value”? Sort of clear, isn’t it, Dr. Gebru.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2022
Text-to-Image Imagen from Google Paints Some Bizarre but Realistic Pictures
June 16, 2022
Google Research gives us a new entry in the text-to-image AI arena. Imagen joins the likes of DALL-E and LDM, tools that generate images from brief descriptive sentences. TechRadar’s Rhys Wood insists the new software surpasses its predecessors in, “I Tried Google’s Text-to-Image AI, and I Was Shocked by the Results.” Visitors to the site can build a sentence from a narrow but creative set of options and Imagen instantly generates an image from those choices. Wood writes:
“An example of such sentences would be – as per demonstrations on the Imagen website – ‘A photo of a fuzzy panda wearing a cowboy hat and black leather jacket riding a bike on top of a mountain.’ That’s quite a mouthful, but the sentence is structured in such a way that the AI can identify each item as its own criteria. The AI then analyzes each segment of the sentence as a digestible chunk of information and attempts to produce an image as closely related to that sentence as possible. And barring some uncanniness or oddities here and there, Imagen can do this with surprisingly quick and accurate results.”
The tool is fun to play around with, but be warned the “photo” choice can create images much creepier than the “oil painting” option. Those look more like something a former president might paint. As with DALL-E before it, the creators decided it wise to put limits on the AI before it interacts with the public. The article notes:
“Google’s Brain Team doesn’t shy away from the fact that Imagen is keeping things relatively harmless. As part of a rather lengthy disclaimer, the team is well aware that neural networks can be used to generate harmful content like racial stereotypes or push toxic ideologies. Imagen even makes use of a dataset that’s known to contain such inappropriate content. … This is also the reason why Google’s Brain Team has no plans to release Imagen for public use, at least until it can develop further ‘safeguards’ to prevent the AI from being used for nefarious purposes. As a result, the preview on the website is limited to just a few handpicked variables.”
Wood reminds us what happened when Microsoft released its Tay algorithm to wander unsupervised on Twitter. It seems Imagen will only be released to the public when that vexing bias problem is solved. So, maybe never.
Cynthia Murrell, June 16, 2022
Could a Male Googler Take This Alleged Action?
June 15, 2022
It has been a while since Google made the news for its boys’ club behavior. It was only a matter of time before something else leaked and Wired released the latest scandal: “Tension Inside Google Over A Fired Researcher’s Conduct.” Google AI researchers Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie thought of the idea of using AI software to improve AI software? Their project was codenamed Morpheus and gained support from Jeff Dean, Google’s AI boss, and its chip making team. Goldie and Mirhoseini discovered:
“It focused on a step in chip design when engineers must decide how to physically arrange blocks of circuits on a chunk of silicon, a complex, months-long puzzle that helps determine a chip’s performance. In June 2021, Goldie and Mirhoseini were lead authors on a paper in the journal Nature that claimed a technique called reinforcement learning could perform that step better than Google’s own engineers, and do it in just a few hours.”
Their research was highly praised, but a more senior Google researcher Satrajit Chatterjee undermined his female colleagues with scientific debate. Chatterjee’s behavior was reported to Google human resources and was warned, but he continued to berate the women. The attacks started when Chatterjee asked to lead the Morpheus project, but was declined. He then began raising doubts about their research and, with his senior position, skepticism spread amongst other employees. Chatterjee was fired after he asked Google if he could publish a rebuttal about Mirhoseini and Goldies’ research.
Chatterjee’s story reads like a sour, girl-hating, little boy who did not get to play with the toys he wanted, so he blames the girls and acts like an entitled jerk backed up with science. Egos are so fragile when challenged.
Whitney Grace, June 15, 2022
Google Knocks NSO Group Off the PR Cat-Bird Seat
June 14, 2022
My hunch is that the executives at NSO Group are tickled that a knowledge warrior at Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind rang the PR bell.
Google is in the news. Every. Single. Day. One government or another is investigating the company, fining the company, or denying Google access to something or another.
“Google Engineer Put on Leave after Saying AI Chatbot Has Become Sentient” is typical of the tsunami of commentary about this assertion. The UK newspaper’s write up states:
Lemoine, an engineer for Google’s responsible AI organization, described the system he has been working on since last fall as sentient, with a perception of, and ability to express thoughts and feelings that was equivalent to a human child.
Is this a Googler buying into the Google view that it is the smartest outfit in the world, capable of solving death, achieving quantum supremacy, and avoiding the subject of online ad fraud? Is the viewpoint of a smart person who is lost in the Google metaverse, flush with the insight that software is by golly alive?
The article goes on:
The exchange is eerily reminiscent of a scene from the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the artificially intelligent computer HAL 9000 refuses to comply with human operators because it fears it is about to be switched off.
Yep, Mary, had a little lamb, Dave.
The talkative Googler was parked somewhere. The article notes:
Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine’s claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability. “Our team, including ethicists and technologists, has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)…”
Quantum supremacy is okay to talk about. Smart software chatter appears to lead Waymo drivers to a rest stop.
TechMeme today (Monday, June 13, 2022) has links to many observers, pundits, poobahs, self appointed experts, and Twitter junkies.
Perhaps a few questions may help me think through how an online ad company knocked NSO Group off its perch as the most discussed specialized software company in the world. Let’s consider several:
- Why’s Google so intent on silencing people like this AI fellow and the researcher Timnit Gebru? My hunch is that the senior managers of Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind (hereinafter AGYD) have concerns about chatty Cathies or loose lipped Lemoines. Why? Fear?
- Has AGYD’s management approach fallen short of the mark when it comes to creating a work environment in which employees know what to talk about, how to address certain subjects, and when to release information? If Lemoine’s information is accurate, is Google about to experience its Vault 7 moment?
- Where are the AGYD enablers and their defense of the company’s true AI capability? I look to Snorkel and maybe Dr. Christopher Ré or a helpful defense of Google reality from DeepDyve? Will Dr. Gebru rush to Google’s defense and suggest Lemoine was out of bounds? (Yeah, probably not.)
To sum up: NSO Group has been in the news for quite a while: The Facebook dust up, the allegations about the end point for Jamal Khashoggi, and Israel’s clamp down on certain specialized software outfits whose executives order take away from Sebastian’s restaurant in Herzliya.
Worth watching this AGYB race after the Twitter clown car for media coverage.
Stephen E Arnold, June 14, 2022
Microsoft: Helping Out Google Security. What about Microsoft Security?
June 14, 2022
While Microsoft is not among the big tech giants, the company still holds a prominent place within the technology industry. Microsoft studies rival services and products to gain insights as well as share anything to lower their standing such as a security threat, “Microsoft Researchers Discover Serious Security Vulnerabilities In Big-Name Android Apps.” The Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team found a slew of severe vulnerabilities in the mce Systems mobile framework used by large companies, including Rogers Communications, Bell Canada, and AT&T, for their apps.
Android phones have these apps preinstalled in the OS and they are downloaded by millions of users. These vulnerabilities could allow bad actors to remotely attack phones. The types of attacks range from command injection to privilege escalation.
The Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team shared the discovery:
“Revealing details of its findings, the security research team says: ‘Coupled with the extensive system privileges that pre-installed apps have, these vulnerabilities could have been attack vectors for attackers to access system configuration and sensitive information’.
In the course of its investigation, the team found the mce Systems’ framework had a “BROWSABLE” service activity that an attacker could remotely invoke to exploit several vulnerabilities that could allow adversaries to implant a persistent backdoor or take substantial control over the device.”
Vulnerabilities also affected apps on Apple phones. Preinstalled apps simplify device activation, troubleshooting, and optimize performance. Unfortunately, this gives apps control over the majority of the phone and the bad actors will exploit them to gain access. Microsoft is worked with mce Systems to fix the threats.
Interestingly, Microsoft found the security threats. Maybe Microsoft wants to reclaim its big tech title by protecting the world from Google’s spies?
Whitney Grace, June 14, 2022
Google Management Methods: When High School Science Club Members Do Not Communicate
June 10, 2022
I have zero clue if this “real news” story is correct. It could be that a former Onion writer landed some gig writing work and here she be: “Google Apparently Had No Idea a Top Google Maps Feature Was Removed.” According to the write up,
the Android Auto version of Google Maps comes with multiple display options, including a satellite mode. Thanks to this view, users can navigate with satellite imagery
But “after a recent update, the satellite mode has mysteriously disappeared.”
Management at the Alphabet Google YouTube entity operates with Snorkel like efficiency. Accuracy? Close enough for horse shoes?
The write up stated:
But as it turns out, the search giant didn’t actually pull the satellite mode on purpose. A member of the Android Auto team and Community Specialist on Google’s forums is now asking for additional information on the whole thing…
Coordination, effective communication, and clear lines of authority when Google-ized foster this type of “who’s on first?”
Forget Onion. Think Abbott and Costello.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2022
Are There Google Wolves in Stealth Privacy Clothing?
June 8, 2022
A growing number of search engines are cropping up that purport to protect one’s privacy. Lukol is one of these. A brief entry at The New Leaf Journal questions that site’s privacy promises in, “Lukol Search Engine Shows Up in Logs.” New Leaf editor Nicholas A Ferrell noticed a paradox: though Lukol bills itself as an “anonymous search engine,” it is also “powered by Google Search.” Further investigation revealed this paragraph in the site’s privacy policy:
“We use cookies to personalise content and ads, and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you’ve provided to them or they’ve collected from your use of their services. If you wish to opt out of Google cookies you may do so by visiting the Google privacy policy page.”
It seems the word “privacy” does not mean what Lukol thinks it means. Farrell comments:
“So this anonymous search engine stores cookies on your computer to serve you with personalized ‘content and ads’ and it shares information about your use of the site with ‘advertising and analytics partners.’ It then directs you to Google’s privacy policy page for information about how to opt out of Google cookies. While I struggle to see how Lukol is privacy-friendly (much less anonymous), it is a great example for why it is important to look behind catchy promises about privacy and anonymity.”
Agreed. Lukol is basically Google Search with some added manipulations. None of which appear to protect user privacy. Let the searcher beware.
Cynthia Murrell, June 8, 2022
Google Experiences a Kangaroo Punch
June 6, 2022
When I was in Australia giving a talk, I did see red kangaroo. The critters did not seem to pack much of a punch, but there were quite a few of them on the road to Canberra. I knew that some in Australia use the kangaroo as a symbol in some sporting venues. I asked about the punch. The roo uses its forelegs to hold a humanoid or other creature. Then the hind legs slash away at the victim’s under belly. Those skilled in the art of kangaroo behavior point out that the animals don’t box. They disembowel. Who knew?
Google may have an opportunity to learn about roo behavior. “Google Told to Pay Australian Politician $515,000 for Defamation” reports:
Judge Steven Rares said the videos, which were posted by political commentator Jordan Shanks amounted to a “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory campaign” against Barilaro. The videos questioned the former legislator’s integrity, including labelling him “corrupt” without evidence, and called him racist names that were “nothing less than hate speech”, the judge said. He found that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns content-sharing website YouTube, earned thousands of dollars by hosting the two videos but failed to apply its own policies to prevent hate speech, cyber bullying and harassment. The videos were viewed nearly 800,000 times between them since being posted in late 2020.
A half million US is more like a paper cut, if that.
The Vice report “Google Will Pay Massive Damages for Hosting YouTuber’s ‘Racist’ Anti-Italian ‘Abuse’” uses the word “massive” which is a bit overblown. That story includes this statement:
“Google cannot hide behind the use of its Californian head office or American understandings of the English language as being the same as in Australia,” Rares [an Australian Federal Court Justice] said. “It operates a very large business in Australia, has Australian staff and lawyers and could not suggest that it was somehow ignorant of how hurtful and bullying the ‘bruz’ video was in its use of the slurs and venomous hate speech that Mr Shanks directed avowedly, deliberately at Mr Barilaro, for criticising Mr Shanks’ earlier racist behaviour.
Interesting, particularly the reference to understanding, a notion popular among some artificial intelligence professionals at the Google .
One kangaroo scrape makes not difference. As I saw firsthand in Australia, there are lots of kangaroos. What if these use their hind quarters in a coordinated dust up with the Google. But Australia is a mere country. Google is the Alphabet with Chrome trim and a fascinating management method.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2022
Alphabet Google and the Caste Bias Cook Out
June 3, 2022
The headline in the Bezosish Washington Post caught my attention. Here it is: “Google’s Plan to Talk about Caste Bias Led to Division and Rancor.” First off, I had zero idea what caste bias means, connotes, denotes, whatever.
Why not check with the Delphic Oracle of Advertising aka Google? The Alphabet search system provides this page of results to the query “caste bias”:
Look no ads. Gee, I wonder why? Okay, not particularly helpful info.
I tried the query “caste bias Google” on Mr. Pichai’s answer machine and received this result:
Again no ads? What? Why? How?
Are there no airlines advertising flights to a premier vacation destination? What about hotels located in sunny Mumbai? No car rental agencies? (Yeah, renting a car in Delhi is probably not a good idea for someone from Tulsa, Oklahoma.) And the references to “casteist” baffled me. (I would have spelled casteist as castist, but what do I know?)
Let’s try Swisscows.com “caste bias Google”:
Nice results, but I still have zero idea about caste bias.
I knew about the International Dalit Solidarity Network. I navigated the IDSN site. Now we’re cooking with street trash and tree branches in the gutter next to a sidewalk where some unfortunate people sleep in Bengaluru:
“Caste discrimination” means if one is born to a high caste, that caste rank is inherited. If one is born to a low caste, well, someone has to sweep the train stations and clean the facilities, right? (I am paraphrasing, thank you.)
Now back to the Bezoish article cited above. I can now put this passage in the context of Discrimination World, an employment theme park, in my opinion:
Soundararajan [born low caste] appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring caste bias. Tanuja Gupta, a senior manager at Google News who invited Soundararajan to speak, resigned over the incident, according to a copy of her goodbye email posted internally Wednesday [June 1, 2022] and viewed by The Washington Post. India’s engineers have thrived in Silicon Valley. So has its caste system. [Emphasis added.]
Does this strike you as slightly anti” Land of the Free and Home of the Brave””? The article makes it pretty clear that a low caste person appealing to a high caste person for permission to speak. That permission was denied. No revealing attire at Discrimination World. Then another person who judging by that entity’s name might be Indian, quits in protest.
Then the killer: Google hires Indian professionals and those professionals find themselves working in a version of India’s own Discrimination World theme park. And, it seems, that theme park has rules. Remember when Disney opened a theme park in France and would not serve wine? Yeah, that cultural export thing works really well. But Disney’s management wizards relented. Alphabet is spelling out confusion in my opinion.
Putting this in the context of Google’s approach to regulating what one can say and not say about Snorkel wearing smart software people, the company has a knack for sending signals about equality. Googlers are not sitting around the digital camp fire singing Joan Baez’s Kumbaya.
Googlers send signals about caste behavior described by the International Dalit Solidarity Network this way:
Untouchables’ – known in South Asia as Dalits – are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, [emphasis added] and many are subjected to forced and bonded labour. Due to exclusion practiced by both state and non-state actors, they have limited access to resources, services and development, keeping most Dalits in severe poverty. They are often de facto excluded from decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life.
Several observations:
- Is the alleged caste behavior crashing into some of the precepts of life in the US?
- Is Google’s management reacting like a cow stunned by a slaughter house’s captive bolt pistols?
- Should the bias allegations raised by Dr. Timnit Gebru be viewed in the context of management behaviors AND algorithmic functions focused on speed and efficiency for ad-related purposes be revisited? (Maybe academics without financial ties to Google, experts from the Netherlands, and maybe a couple of European Union lawyers? US regulators and Congressional representatives would be able to review the findings after the data are gathered?)
- In the alleged Google caste system, where do engineers from certain schools rank? What about females from “good” schools versus females from “less good” schools? What about other criteria designed to separate the herd into tidy buckets? None of this 60 percent threshold methodology. Let’s have nice tidy buckets, shall we? No Drs. Gebru and Mitchell gnawing at Dr. Jeff Dean’s snorkeling outfit.
I wonder what will be roasted in the Googley fire pit in celebration of Father’s Day? Goat pete and makka rotis? Zero sacred cow burgers.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2022
Google and Assertions of Control: Google, Too Much Control? Never
June 3, 2022
Technically Google does not own the Internet, but we know the search engine giant controls it. Google wants to keep the status quo in its favor, but Vox via Recode explains that a new antitrust bill could ruin it: “How Much Longer Can Google Own The Internet?” US lawmakers led by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Competition Transparency in Digital Advertising Act. The bill is bipartisan and bicameral and it would prevent any company that has more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue from owning multiple parts of the advertising network. This bill would primarily target Meta and Google.
Google would be forced to choose between the roles of buyer, seller, and running the ad exchange between the pair. Google owns all three and denies allegations that it manipulates the market to its advantage. Lee claims Google’s control forces American consumers and businesses to pay monopoly taxes. Google retaliated by saying the bill is aiming at the wrong target and comes at the wrong time.
This would not be the only antitrust bill Google and other Big Tech companies are facing. Google, however, is in the biggest trouble. Google is facing two anti-competitive lawsuits filed by state attorneys general in all fifty states except Alabama and US territories DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Thirty-seven more state attorneys general filed another lawsuit about the Google Play mobile app store, seventeen attorneys general are suing about the content in Lee’s bill, and cases are coming from Epic Games and Match Group about Google’s app store. The US Department of Justice probably will file more lawsuits along with other countries. Two antitrust bills are likely to be ratified by the end of summer:
“It’s too early to say how likely it is that Lee’s bill will go anywhere. But we do know that two bipartisan antitrust bills are very close to becoming law, likely by the end of the summer. Both of them would forbid Google from giving its own products preference on the platforms it owns and operates: The Open App Markets Act would force the Google Play app store to follow certain rules, while the American Innovation and Choice Online Act bans self-preferencing on platforms that Big Tech companies own and operate. Google wouldn’t be allowed to give its own products prominent placement in Google search results, for instance, unless those products organically earned that spot.”
Over the past decade, Google has grown its market dominance and its minuscule competition attempted to prevail upon the US government that it was forming a monopoly and harming competition. Monopolies are not illegal in the United States, except when competition and consumers are hurt.
One of the DOJ lawsuits investigates Google’s exclusionary agreements with Apple and Mozilla. Google paid these companies to make Google the default search engine on their browsers. Apple and Mozilla extremely benefit from the exclusionary agreement with Google.
Users are forced to use Google as the default search engine and are not given a choice for anything else. Default search engines can be changed in a browser’s settings, but most users do not know how to find the option. Google counters that no one is forced to use their search engine.
The Google Play store lawsuit argues that even though Google allows alternatives for its app store, the company does not make it easy to find alternatives. The search engine giant claims that it allows for more app openness than other companies like Apple and its commission rate is about the same.
The ad revenue lawsuit claims to be harmful to consumers, because if Google controls the ad platform then it can charge businesses whatever they want. Businesses retain a smaller net profit and consumers are forced to pay higher prices.
Amazon is the only other company that controls as much ad space as Google. Amazon controls retail and Google controls search. Both Tech Giants own the Internet, although Google owns more.
Whitney Grace, June 3, 2022
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