Google stated on Monday it had not too long ago fired a senior engineering supervisor after colleagues, whose landmark analysis on synthetic intelligence software program he had been making an attempt to discredit, accused him of harassing behaviour.
The dispute, which stems from efforts to automate chip design, threatens to undermine the fame of Google’s analysis within the educational neighborhood. It additionally might disrupt the circulation of tens of millions of {dollars} in authorities grants for analysis into AI and chips.
Google’s analysis unit has confronted scrutiny since late 2020 after staff lodged open critiques about its dealing with of personnel complaints and publication practices.
The brand new episode emerged after the scientific journal Nature in June revealed “A graph placement methodology for quick chip design,” led by Google scientists Azalia Mirhoseini and Anna Goldie. They found that AI might full a key step within the design course of for chips, referred to as floorplanning, quicker and higher than an unspecified human professional, a subjective reference level.
However different Google colleagues in a paper that was anonymously posted on-line in March — “Stronger Baselines for Evaluating Deep Reinforcement Studying in Chip Placement” — discovered that two various approaches based mostly on primary software program outperform the AI. One beat it on a widely known check, and the opposite on a proprietary Google rubric.
Google declined to touch upon the leaked draft, however two staff confirmed its authenticity.
The corporate stated it refused to publish Stronger Baselines as a result of it didn’t meet its requirements, and shortly after fired Satrajit Chatterjee, a number one driver of the work. It declined to say why it fired him.
“It is unlucky that Google has taken this flip,” stated Laurie Burgess, an legal professional for Chatterjee. “It was all the time his aim to have transparency concerning the science, and he urged over the course of two years for Google to handle this.”
Google researcher Goldie instructed the New York Instances, which on Monday first reported the firing, that Chatterjee had harassed her and Mirhoseini for years by spreading misinformation about them.
Burgess denied the allegations and added that Chatterjee didn’t leak Stronger Baselines.
Patrick Madden, an affiliate professor targeted on chip design at Binghamton College who has learn each papers, stated he had by no means seen a paper earlier than the one in Nature that lacked an excellent comparability level.
“It is like a reference drawback: Everybody will get the identical jigsaw puzzle items, and you may evaluate how shut you come to getting every thing proper,” he stated. “In the event that they have been to provide outcomes on some commonplace benchmark and so they have been stellar, I’d sing their praises.”
Google stated the comparability to a human was extra related and that software program licensing points had prevented it from mentioning assessments.
Research by massive establishments similar to Google in well-known journals can have an outsized affect on whether or not related initiatives are funded within the trade. One Google researcher stated the leaked paper had unfairly opened the door to questions concerning the credibility of any work revealed by the corporate.
After “Stronger Baselines” emerged on-line, Zoubin Ghahramani, a vice chairman at Google Analysis, wrote on Twitter final month that “Google stands by this work revealed in Nature on ML for Chip Design, which has been independently replicated, open-sourced, and utilized in manufacturing at Google.”
Nature, citing a UK public vacation, didn’t have rapid remark. Madden stated he hoped Nature would revisit the publication, noting that peer reviewer notes present a minimum of one requested for outcomes on benchmarks.
“Someway, that by no means occurred,” he stated.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
