Thread by @emilymbender

.@jeffdean is quoted here saying about Stochastic Parrots that “surveyed valid concerns with large language models, and in fact many teams at Google are actively working on these issues.”

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https://twitter.com/dinabass/status/1511386596485914633

@JeffDean (His earlier comments that Stochastic Parrots “didn’t meet our bar for publication” are also cited --- nvm that it was published, after **anonymous** peer review, and that the PALM paper is just a preprint...)

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Anyway: "Google is actively working on these issues" is not a satisfactory response to the concerns that we & others have raised, esp when they come out with papers like the PaLM paper which are so utterly sloppy in how they handle ethical considerations.

https://twitter.com/emilymbender/status/1511123935085006848

... or when they're coming out with a steady stream of really unhinged techno-chauvinism, in education:

https://twitter.com/emilymbender/status/1509382036284342272

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... and in attempted (unregulated!) public health responses to mental health and domestic violence crises:

https://twitter.com/emilymbender/status/1505176804796948482

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Btw, "Google is aware and working on these issues" is also what @chirag_shah and I heard in response to our #CHIIR2022 paper,

https://twitter.com/emilymbender/status/1503363994622455811

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For those who'd like the tl;dr on that paper, here's our Q&A with @uwnews

https://twitter.com/uwnews/status/1503855813407948807

Despite attempting to organize "all the world's knowledge", researchers at @Google are not in fact exempt from the processes of peer review if they want to be part of the scientific community.

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@Google "Google is aware of the issues and is working on it," especially when framed as a reason that critical work shouldn't be published or shouldn't be heeded, just doesn't cut it. If you're working on it, good: show us the results. Anything else just sounds defensive & petulant.