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yesAnna KramerNone
December 7, 2020
Google AI lead Jeff Dean is in hot water with members of Timnit Gebru's team at Google, who published a letter Monday challenging his story about Gebru's resignation and calling the research paper review process discriminatory. Gebru's forced departure stemmed from conflict over a research paper about ethical questions for large-language models (which are a big research focus at Google Brain): Google wanted Gebru to take her name off the paper, Gebru threatened to resign, and then Google took that opportunity to remove her from the team.
- The biggest revelation from the letter is that almost half of all research papers submitted for approval through Google's internal process are done so with a day or less notice to reviewers, despite Dean's claim that the process requires two weeks. He used that claim to justify why Google tried to force Gebru to retract or take her name off of the paper, and this letter seems to debunk that main defense.
- The letter also states that Gebru was fired and did not actually resign, despite Dean's insistence on calling it a resignation in his email to the team. Her team has coined a new word for what happened: "resignated," according to her former colleague and co-lead Margaret Mitchell.
More than 1,500 people at Google have signed a petition in support of Gebru and calling for changes to Google's paper review process, including senior engineers and team leaders. Gebru's boss, Samy Bengio, said he was "stunned" at her firing in a post. Others on her team and in the AI ethics community more broadly have written about their disappointment with Dean specifically, who has been a hero for many in the field. Google did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The pushback against Google and Dean specifically here has reached a pretty unprecedented level — and I seriously try to avoid using the word unprecedented. Rather than dying out over the weekend, the anger has escalated. As a number of folks in the industry told me last week, the reputational damage for Google and Dean could be long-lasting here, even when the media circus dies down. Research integrity is paramount for anyone who is remotely serious about AI, and that integrity is a big question mark for anyone looking at Google research now.
Shoot me an email at akramer@protocol.com if you work at Google or in the AI ethics space and would like to talk, or if you'd like my Signal. A version of this article will appear in Tuesday's Source Code newsletter, which you can find here.
Anna Kramer
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Big Tech benefits from Biden’s sweeping immigration actions
Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai praised President Biden's immigration actions, which read like a tech industry wishlist.
Newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden signed two immigration-related executive orders on Wednesday.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
January 20, 2021
Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
January 20, 2021
Immediately after being sworn in as president Wednesday, Joe Biden signed two pro-immigration executive orders and delivered an immigration bill to Congress that reads like a tech industry wishlist. The move drew enthusiastic praise from tech leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
President Biden nullified several of former-President Trump's most hawkish immigration policies. His executive orders reversed the so-called "Muslim ban" and instructed the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which the Trump administration had sought to end. He also sent an expansive immigration reform bill to Congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals and make it easier for foreign U.S. graduates with STEM degrees to stay in the United States, among other provisions.
<p>Biden's Day One moves suggest that immigration reform will be one of the key areas for allyship between Silicon Valley and the Biden administration over the next several years. The industry is sorely in need of common ground as Democrats pledge to use their power over Congress and the White House to crack down on Big Tech. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>"We welcome President Biden's commitment to pursuing comprehensive immigration reform that reflects the American values of justice, fairness and dignity," said Cook in a statement to Protocol. "This effort will strengthen American communities and the pathways to opportunity this country has long fostered." </p><p>Cook, who is the chair of Business Roundtable's immigration committee, said he looked forward to working with Democrats and Republicans on a "permanent solution for Dreamers that includes a path to citizenship."</p><p>"We applaud @POTUS's quick action on COVID relief, the Paris Climate Accord, and immigration reform," Pichai <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1352021111479832576?s=21" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> Wednesday. "Google has supported action on these important issues & we look forward to working with the new administration to help the US recover from the pandemic + grow our economy."</p><p>An Uber spokesperson also affirmed the company's support for President Biden's actions. "At Uber, we have long supported positive immigration reform and an effective system that upholds core American values," the spokesperson said. "Uber will continue to support Dreamers, and we welcome the new Administration's effort to reform our nation's immigration system."</p><p>The tech industry, which relies heavily on foreign workers, has spent the last four years <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/08/31/tech-industry-prepares-new-trump-fight-over-daca-dreamer-protection-program/622897001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">battling with the Trump administration</a> over efforts to shut down vital talent pipelines from countries including India, China and Iran. Over the last four years, tech giants have filed <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/dreamers-embody-apples-innovation-strategy-apple-ceo-tim/story?id=66030999" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">amicus briefs</a> in high-profile <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/16/21069827/twitter-microsoft-linkedin-public-charge-trump-immigration-tech-companies" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">court cases</a> and lobbied in favor of opening up U.S. borders to high-skilled workers. Despite protestations from Silicon Valley leaders, the Trump administration continually added uncertainty to the H-1B visa application process, resulting in significant backlogs. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Biden's immigration bill would put money towards clearing visa backlogs, eliminate visa caps on certain countries and make it easier for people on temporary work visas to get green cards. Perhaps most significantly, it would immediately give the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. a pathway to become citizens. </p><p>The executive orders on DACA and the Muslim ban will immediately appease immigration advocates, including those inside the tech industry, but the toughest battle still lies ahead: rallying support in Congress for immigration reform, which has failed for years. Still, there may be some in the Republican party who are willing to work with the Biden administration on key pillars of the proposal. On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a leading player in immigration talks during the Obama years and a top Trump ally, told CBS he is open to creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.</p><p>"What we are really looking for is making sure there is congressional action and there is a legislative solution," said Karolina Filipiak, senior director of government affairs at the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech trade group. "We don't want to be in the same position four years from now or eight years from now [with] a new administration that could rescind the program." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Companies including Facebook and Google are hoping to work with lawmakers in Congress to create bipartisan support for reform, particularly as they face regulatory headwinds of their own. </p>
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Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.
Politics
Is this the future of the FTC?
In conversation with Protocol, Commissioner Becca Slaughter, whose name has been floated as a possible FTC chair, laid out her priorities for the next four years.
FTC commissioner Becca Slaughter may be President Biden's pick for FTC chair.
Photo: David Becker/Getty Images
January 20, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 20, 2021
Becca Slaughter, a commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission, made a name for herself last year when she famously breastfed her newborn baby during video testimony before the Senate, raising awareness about the plight of working parents during the pandemic.
But lately, Slaughter's name has been circulating for other reasons: She's a likely candidate to be President Joe Biden's pick for FTC chair, an appointment that would put Slaughter at the head of antitrust investigations into tech giants, including Facebook.
<p>Biden has yet to formally announce his selection. But this week, Slaughter took some time to speak at <a href="https://youtu.be/UFksDi3ygyU" target="_blank">a Protocol event</a> about the FTC's Facebook case, how antitrust enforcement can be "anti-racist" and what she hopes to see the FTC prioritize these next four years — whether she's in charge or not.</p><p><em>This interview has been lightly edited.</em></p><p><strong>It's indisputable that in the last few weeks since the Capitol riot, we've seen tech giants from Facebook to Amazon taking more action on dangerous speech on their platforms than ever before. Everyone's talking about regulation, but obviously any government regulation having to do with speech is a really dicey area. What do you anticipate the Biden administration's approach will be to this, and what are the appropriate legislative and regulatory remedies here? </strong></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>I can't speak to the president's plans, but I do think what we're seeing is, on the one hand, eminently appropriate action being taken by the companies to stop violence. I am concerned as a citizen that that actually came too late, and it might have been much better taken much earlier. But at the same time, we're seeing really important questions surface about the fact that those decisions are lying in the hands of private companies with enormous market power. The decisions can be correct, while at the same time, we can take a step back and say: What does this tell us about the state of our markets that these really important conversations and decisions are governed entirely by individual companies with enormous market share?</p><p><strong>What are some ways the FTC, in particular, can respond to that?</strong></p><p>Within our mandate is antitrust law. One thing I've found really interesting is a lot of the voices that are decrying the actions of the platforms to remove some of this dangerous content are the same ones who resist government antitrust intervention. I think we have to be mindful of the fact that we have laws in place, and we need to be vigorously enforcing those laws that address outsized market share. The FTC has at least one big lawsuit pending on this topic. Colorado Attorney General <a href="https://www.protocol.com/Politics/google-phil-weiser-attorney-general" target="_self">Phil Weiser</a> is leading another one. We will continue to do investigations and bring cases that address misuse of market power under our antitrust laws.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p><strong><strong>Y</strong>ou mentioned the FTC case against Facebook. When you brought that suit, and a number of states brought a similar suit, Facebook <a href="https://www.protocol.com/facebook-antitrust-zuckerberg" target="_self">responded</a> by saying the FTC is looking at all of these past mergers and setting a standard where no company that had a merger settled in the past can be sure it will be permanent. What is your response to that criticism from Facebook?</strong></p><p>I don't find it particularly persuasive. That we've brought one lawsuit that seeks to address two, among many, mergers that happened as part of an ongoing course of conduct does not suggest all mergers in all industries for all companies are forever in legal uncertainty. That is beyond a stretch. </p><p>What we have to do, as enforcers, and what we do in this case, is look at the particular facts at issue and the particular conduct at issue. And it is the case under the law that when the FTC or the Department of Justice review mergers in advance, we don't clear mergers. We don't approve mergers in advance. What we have an opportunity to do is to say: At this moment, are we going to take effort to block the merger? And in fact, in the occasions where we do the investigations and decline to take effort, we don't say we will never take action. We say: Right now, we're not going to take action, but that does not mean if we later understand this conduct to have been illegal we are precluded from bringing a suit. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>So that should be a disincentive to companies to enter into conduct, whether it's mergers or other conduct, that's illegal. That's what we want to disincentivize, and the threat of future lawsuits is an important part of that incentive structure. </p><p><strong>Beyond the Facebook suit, what do you think the priority of this FTC ought to be, and are there any big mistakes over the last four years that need to be corrected?</strong></p><p>Well, I can tell you what my priorities are. First, I think we do need to be thinking, like everyone across the government is right now, about pandemic response. COVID touches on a lot of areas of the FTC's mandate. There are some obvious ones, like work we've done to stop scams and phony cures, but some that are less obvious, including thinking about the effects of market concentration on, for example, supply chain resiliency. I think we need to be thinking about how all of our lives have moved digitally and the implications that has for privacy and data issues. </p><p>The second thing I would say is a huge priority for me has been making sure that our enforcement efforts continue and sharpen in our long, arduous and very large national task of being anti-racist. So I want us to be, in our enforcement efforts on marginalized communities, focusing on cases where harm disproportionately falls on people of color, whether that is as workers or as consumers. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>The third, generally, is I think we need to focus on being really strategic with the resources that we have. That means bringing cases that have big effects and can create deterrence across markets, rather than counting how many cases we bring or how many dollars we get. I want us to think very carefully about how each federal dollar we spend can best effectuate deterrence so we don't have to spend more federal dollars bringing the same sort of cases. </p><p>To the extent that I think there are things we could have done better over the last four years, there are a number of cases where I had dissented, because I thought that our resolutions, while they were good enforcement resolutions, didn't go far enough on that deterrence front. I'm concerned that we're going to end up back at the table with the same companies with the same problems if we are not bringing cases and really fighting for the outcome that will best protect consumers from having the same problems again. </p><p><strong>I want to go back to what you said about the anti-racism work. Can you give us an example of that?</strong></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>We brought a really important case under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act last year involving auto financing for violations of fair lending rules and discriminatory behavior on financing. That's one kind of case. This is something we're very comfortable talking about in the consumer protection sphere. We are less comfortable talking about it as a general matter in the antitrust space. But for me, antitrust enforcement is fundamentally about market structure and making sure markets are fair. And one thing we know statistically is that our markets are currently structured in a way that is unfair and unequal for communities of color. So when we make decisions to do enforcement in certain places or not do enforcement in certain places, those decisions are never neutral. They will either help make our society less unequal or they will reinforce existing inequality. </p><p>So the first step for us, from my perspective, is just opening our eyes and understanding the effects of those decisions better. When we choose to bring a case — let's say, for example, a hospital enforcement case, because health care is an area where we know there are huge disparities in access and outcomes across races — we [should bring] cases that improve access, improve quality of care and reduce costs, particularly when the populations being served are communities of color. That's a big thing that we can do, and we already do, to help make our markets more anti-racist. </p><p>I would rather that we be honest and transparent about the effect our actions have and think about those decisions seriously, because we don't have the resources or the capacity to enforce all the violations of the law in all the markets. When we set priorities, for me, the priority has to include helping historically disadvantaged and marginalized communities where we need to equalize our society more effectively.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p><strong>Where do you see the role of the FTC when it comes to mitigating algorithmic bias?</strong></p><p><strong></strong>I think we do need a multi-stakeholder process. I think the FTC is one of the interested stakeholders that should be involved. I also think we need to be critically examining the toolbox we have and thinking creatively about how we can use all the tools in it to address this issue. This is something I spoke about and wrote about a year ago. For me, algorithmic bias is an economic justice issue. We see disparate outcomes coming out of algorithmic decision-making that disproportionately affect and harm Black and brown communities and affect their ability to participate equally in society. That's something we need to address, and we need to think about whether it fits under our unfairness framework, whether we might have rule-making authority that could apply to it or whether we use statutes like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act or the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But I think it's one of those things where really good, creative thinking needs to be applied. </p><p>The issue is new, and it is hard. But one thing I remind myself all the time: My older daughter, who is in Zoom school downstairs in my house right now and hates it, she was in kindergarten last year, and her teacher would say to her all the time, "Kindergarteners can do hard things." And I say to myself: "OK, well if kindergarteners can do hard things, the FTC can do hard things. Government can do hard things, and we have to start trying to tackle the big problems."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
The current state-of-the-art quantum computers are a tangle of wires. And that can't be the case in the future.
Photo: IBM Research
January 15, 2021
Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
January 15, 2021
The iconic image of quantum computing is the "Google chandelier," with its hundreds of intricately arranged copper wires descending like the tendrils of a metallic jellyfish. It's a grand and impressive device, but in that tangle of wires lurks a big problem.
"If you're thinking about the long-term prospects of quantum computing, that image should be just terrifying," Jim Clarke, the director of quantum hardware at Intel, told Protocol.
<p>The problem is scale. When your quantum computer is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/noisy-intermediate-scale-nisq" target="_self">based on just a few dozen qubits</a>, it's fine to designate one or more wires to each qubit in order to send and receive signals. But quantum computers are growing, and they will need to reach <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">thousands, if not millions, of qubits to truly be useful</a> for <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/machine-learning-ai-quantum-computing-move-beyond-hype" target="_blank">companies and organizations</a> — at which point, using wires is going to become a literal knotty problem. </p><p>"It's no longer sufficient to just be able to make a qubit device and talk about the properties of a qubit," said David Reilly, a quantum researcher at Microsoft. "It's all about scale. And it's all about the infrastructure that you need to get there."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Multiple companies investing in quantum computers are now looking toward this future, and trying to develop better methods of controlling their qubits. These quantum control chips are similar to the silicon wafers produced using CMOS technology, with a few alterations to make them work at ultracold temperatures and with qubits. </p><p>In December, <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-debuts-2nd-gen-horse-ridge-cryogenic-quantum-control-chip/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intel announced</a> its Horse Ridge 2 control chip, which builds off its predecessor to perform more specific applications, such as manipulating and reading qubits. Research <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01299" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">soon to be published</a> in Nature Electronics looks at Microsoft's quantum control chip, which operates at the coldest temperatures yet: a tenth of a degree above absolute zero. But Microsoft and Intel aren't alone; other companies have also been developing quantum control chips. In 2019, Google debuted <a href="https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/on-path-to-cryogenic-control-of-quantum.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">its own</a>.</p><p>The goal is to help build the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">infrastructure required for a future quantum computer</a> that has actual applications for corporations and research institutes, not just one that can <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">out-speed classical supercomputers in proof-of-principle tests</a>. </p><h3>Going wireless
</h3><p>Quantum computers rely on unsettling properties of the quantum world, such as superposition: the combination of states exemplified famously by Schrödinger's feline, which can be neither dead nor alive, but exists in some superposition of both states. Quantum effects like superposition are fragile, and tend to collapse out in our noisy, warm, macroscopic world. To preserve the qubits' delicate quantum states, they are kept extremely cold, usually below 1 Kelvin (about -457 degrees Fahrenheit)</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>To achieve those temperatures, qubits are kept in dilution fridges, which use liquid helium to keep their contents ultracold. Those devices have limited internal space and limited cooling power, both of which are hampered by a nest of wires. To explain the impetus for better quantum control, Clarke uses an analogy. </p><p>"Imagine that you are in charge of 100 dogs, and you have to take them for a walk," Clarke says. "Do you take them on 100 separate leashes? Or do you have one leash that fans out and do it more efficiently?" </p><p>In classical computers, control chips are small silicon wafers with some input and output pins that connect to billions of transistors. This CMOS technology is well-known, so it's tempting to slap a classical control chip onto a quantum computer, but it's not feasible. There are two main problems: First, quantum control chips have to operate at extremely low temperatures, so circuits must be designed to dissipate far less heat. Second, quantum control chips require alterations to interface with qubits, which are far more finicky than their classical counterparts. </p><p>Solving both problems entails reworking control chips: though hopefully not so much that they can't still be fabricated at scale, with traditional silicon manufacturing techniques.</p><p>Intel claims its Horse Ridge series (named for Horse Ridge, one of the coldest places in Oregon) operates at 4 K — above the temperature of the qubits it can control — and seeks to build on the company's preexisting expertise with semiconductor technology. While Horse Ridge 1 was designed for a wide variety of qubits, the recently unveiled Horse Ridge 2 focuses on expanded applications for spin qubits, Intel's preferred choice in <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/nobody-agrees-on-how-to-build-quantum-computer" target="_self">the qubit wars</a>. The goal, according to Clarke, is to "customize these low-temperature control chips for different applications." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Google's control chip is similar, operating at 3 K, but is designed for yet another type of qubit, called a transmon. The chip has been tested on a few qubits, but not the 53-qubit Sycamore device that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">made headlines</a> in 2019. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8865458" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research from Google</a> has focused on reducing heat dissipation from the quantum control chip. Where a classical control chip outputs about one watt of heat, Google's dissipates less than two thousandths of a watt. "Getting power down is going to be very important for any of these approaches," Joseph Bardin, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a researcher at Google, wrote in an email to Protocol. </p><p>Microsoft's quantum control chip relies on similar semiconductor technology, but it is designed to work with topological qubits, though it can be adapted for other qubit architectures. (Worth noting: Topological qubits are theoretical, and have not actually been demonstrated.) </p><p>Where it really departs from Intel's and Google's designs is temperature. Microsoft's quantum control chip can dissipate less than a millionth of a watt, allowing it to stay at a chilly 0.1 K, about the same temperature as the qubits themselves.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><h3>Is it hot in here?</h3><p>The companies insist on the advantages of their own approaches.</p><p>"What is really unique is that our signals are generated at low temperature," Intel's Clarke said. By putting its classical CPU — which sends signals to the control chip — with the control chip at these temperatures, Intel hopes to avoid the noisiness inherent to signals generated by CPUs at high temperatures. Microsoft's Reilly disputes this claim of uniqueness, and notes that Microsoft has generated its signals at temperatures as low as 1 K. </p><p>For Reilly, running the control chip at 3 or 4 K — as Google and Intel do — is much too hot: Though the difference between 0.1 K and 4 K may sound small, it's also the difference between the quantum world and the classical world. By operating the quantum control chip at the same temperature as the qubits, Reilly hopes to avoid the bottleneck between shuffling information from quantum to classical or vice versa. </p><p>"If their control system is at 4 Kelvin, then you still have this I/O bottleneck," Reilly said. "You still have a bird's nest of cables that run from four Kelvin to the millikelvin stage where the qubits are." One possible solution to that would be to bring the qubits up to 4 K — and there is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2170-7" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some progress</a> in that direction.</p><p>All three companies will be presenting updates at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which will be <a href="http://isscc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">held virtually</a> Feb. 13 through Feb. 22.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>For now, though, no one has remotely enough qubits to necessitate these quantum control chips, let alone determine which of those compromises is preferable. Testing is still done on a few qubits, or devices that model qubit behaviors — not even the full ensemble of dozens of qubits that make up the current cutting-edge of quantum computers.</p><p>At any rate, quantum computing is still in its heady early days, where firsts are being made, and — despite some corporate jousting about progress — demonstrating the possibility of the technology often takes precedence over long-term plans to make it practical. And at this stage, we don't even know what all those roadblocks might be.</p><p>"Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out that making the qubits turned out to be a little bit of a challenge?" Reilly asked. "And the real roadblocks were in the systems integration and the construction of cryogenic control at scale?"</p>
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Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
Election 2020
Google says it’s fighting election lies, but its ads fund them
A new report finds that more than 1,600 brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, have advertisements running on sites that push pro-Trump conspiracy theories. The majority of those ads are served by Google.
Google is the most dominant player in programmatic advertising, but it has a spotty record enforcing rules for publishers.
Photo: Alex Tai/Getty Images
January 14, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 14, 2021
Shortly after November's presidential election, a story appeared on the website of far-right personality Charlie Kirk, claiming that 10,000 dead people had returned mail-in ballots in Michigan. But after publishing, a correction appeared at the top of the story, completely debunking the misleading headline, which remains, months later, unchanged.
"We are not aware of a single confirmed case showing that a ballot was actually cast on behalf of a deceased individual," the correction, which quoted Michigan election officials, read.
<p>The note was a clear bait-and-switch on a story that boldly pushed a false conspiracy theory about the election. But just as striking as the editor's note is what sits at the top of this story, and every story on Kirk's site: a Google ad.</p><p>Since the 2016 election, endless attention has been paid to the way election misinformation can spread through targeted ads on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. But an equally insidious and less-discussed problem is how programmatic advertising, a field dominated by Google, has become the lifeblood of misinformation sites. With or without social platforms, these ads allow misinformation sites to exist and even thrive all on their own by providing a source of revenue, and companies like Google have a shoddy record of policing them. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In a new <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-report-advertising-on-election-misinformation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> released Thursday by the news rating company NewsGuard, researchers found ads for more than 1,600 mainstream brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, running on <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/election-misinformation-tracker/" target="_blank">160 sites</a> (including Kirk's) that have openly pushed election conspiracies. Google was responsible for ads on a whopping 80 percent of those sites. Another ad exchange, The Trade Desk, was running ads on roughly half.</p><p>Among the examples NewsGuard lists: ads for Harvard University appearing on One America News Network's website, ads for AARP appearing on sites like The Gateway Pundit and ZeroHedge, and Walmart ads appearing on NOQ Report, a site that recently argued Satan uses Democrats to do his bidding, including stealing the election.</p><p>In some cases, the ads create discordant messaging between publisher and advertiser. While reporting this story, Protocol found ads for Planned Parenthood on Kirk's site, despite Kirk's frequent <a href="https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1263209491581018114?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">calls</a> for Planned Parenthood to be defunded. Thanks to these ads, Planned Parenthood is effectively funding Kirk.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1MDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTY4MDEwOH0.qplQOYcTtVCBgeOXCbDihtGMd6uAjeg-XL39oaEr8Bw/img.png?width=980" id="f1e64" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="42c21c19889922502d0fba8fec366b71" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2226" data-height="712">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">A Planned Parenthood fundraising ad appears on a story containing election misinformation at the top of Charlie Kirk's website.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Screenshot: Protocol</small></p><p><br></p><p>Google has <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564?hl=en&visit_id=637461598271119369-2898334728&rd=1" target="_blank">policies</a> forbidding publishers who post demonstrably false election misinformation and other types of content from placing Google ads on their websites. "Claims that voter fraud was widespread or that the election was stolen are all prohibited by our policies. When we find content that violates our policies we remove its ability to monetize," a Google spokesperson said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The company demonetizes individual stories first, reserving site-wide demonetization for egregious, persistent offenders (The company recently demonetized a far-right militia site following the Capitol riot). In 2019, the company removed ads from 21 million individual pages, the Google spokesperson said. The problem: Google serves billions of ads every day. </p><p>It's not that the company is unaware it's serving ads on the sites NewsGuard noted in its report. In August, a group of philanthropists <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-ads-charities-disinformation-sites" target="_self">wrote</a> to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai after reports showed that ads for groups like the Red Cross and Save the Children were appearing alongside COVID-19 misinformation on TheGatewayPundit and elsewhere. The philanthropists urged Google to institute a new model that "does not put [advertisers] into unwanted and damaging associations that undermine their good works and values." </p><p>Since then, the company has taken action on individual Gateway Pundit articles, but five months later, Google has yet to fully demonetize the site despite repeated violations, enabling it to continue growing and spreading misinformation. </p><p>The power programmatic advertising has in sustaining these sites is particularly relevant now as social media giants begin to more forcefully crack down on accounts, including the president's, that regularly post dangerous conspiracy theories or incitements to violence. For many of these companies, last week's riot in the U.S. Capitol was a wake-up call, showing them the disastrous real-world consequences of allowing people to believe lies about the election being stolen. But chasing the accounts that peddle those lies off of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is only part of the solution. As long as the people behind those accounts have a way to make money on their falsehoods, why would they ever stop?</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
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Google’s productivity guru has some advice for you
Here's how Laura Mae Martin helps Google's top execs work smarter.
Laura Mae Martin, Google's executive productivity adviser, works one-on-one with the company's top brass.
Image: Google
January 9, 2021
Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
January 8, 2021
If productivity were a product at Google, then Laura Mae Martin would be its product manager.
She's Google's executive productivity adviser, a job she created following a successful 20% project about managing inboxes that she debuted while working in keyword sales. As the company's top expert on productivity, her remit seems simple enough: Make Googlers more efficient in their day-to-day work lives. But in practice, that means working directly with the top executives of a trillion-dollar company to make some of tech's most sought-after talent better at what they do.
<p>For Martin, cooking up ways to phase out inefficiencies didn't begin at the tech giant, but in her childhood kitchen. While making cupcakes with her sister she realized that rather than frosting and adding sprinkles to each cupcake one-by-one, a frost-first, sprinkle-second method saved time. Martin now advocates for similar concepts at Google — even if the processes have more to do with Python than pastries these days.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>While Google's executive team has been taking advantage of some of Google's best tips and tricks internally for years, the company recently made a lot of them public. Just a couple of months ago, in October, Google transitioned G Suite into Google Workspace, and in the process rolled out many of the tried-and-true hacks to its over 2 billion users. </p><p>While the revamp may have caused you to mistake Calendar for Drive this fall, Google sees the criticism of its homogenous icons as a feature, not a bug. Each Workspace app is still distinct in its purpose, it argues, but a focus on integration means each one can now do a little bit of what the others do too.</p><p>We spoke to Martin to find out how she helps Google's execs boost their productivity and how to make best use of some of Workspace's feature integrations. Here are some of the highlights.</p><p><em><a href="http://protocol.com/nine-favorite-tricks-from-googles-productivity-guru" target="_blank">Read nine of Martin's favorite productivity tricks here.</a></em></p><h3>Know who you are</h3><p>Martin's approach starts with a diagnosis. There's a spectrum Martin sees among the people she works with: On one side are the executives who need to approach productivity with a different mindset altogether to reclaim large stretches of time, and on the other are the executives who need to fine-tune their use of products and repurpose shorter chunks of time. She likens it to finding ways to eat better.</p><p>"You pick up a book about healthy eating, and you want to hear all the things about why you should eat that way or what's healthy about fruits and vegetables," she said. "But you also want the recipes. You need both."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>In Google's case, that journey to a healthy work diet begins with a questionnaire Martin prepares for any of her one-on-one meetings with the company's C-suite. Martin says in her years of working with executives, she's developed archetypes of executives at the company that serve as frameworks for how she begins coaching. For global executives, for example, she needs to find time in the middle of the day, since international calls consume mornings and nights. When working with senior engineers, she often needs to look for tips that will keep them in a single product to limit the time spent switching back and forth and breaking their concentration.</p><p>"I have a couple of profiles of types of executives, and nobody fits perfectly, but it helps me guide through what my tips or thoughts would be," Martin said. "Some people prefer in-person communication, some people really need downtime or really need an agenda. I've seen enough of those profiles that I can now guide my advice instead of saying this is what works because it works for me."</p><h3>Learn how you work</h3><p>In a recent session with an executive who was overseeing product reviews that were eating up his days, with hour-long demos and subsequent time for feedback, she saw someone who needed more time back than product hacks alone could offer.</p><p>"We took the radical approach, saying, 'Let's just shave 30 minutes off those meetings,'" she said. "What if we cut that in half and challenged the teams to make the most of that time? It forced them to send a lot of material ahead of time, and we started blocking pre-read time so that he could review things that didn't need to be presented" </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Martin said the transition for the team, like most changes, made people uncomfortable at the start. But the payoff came when the meetings were more engaging and helpful to the employees presenting, since questions could be more specific following the pre-reads.</p><h3>Stop switching context<br></h3><p>Though Martin occasionally gets to use an axe to reshape an executive's schedule, her work is more often done with the precision of a scalpel. That's typically where she leans into product tips that can additively save a few minutes each day. One of Martin's favorite tricks: a calendar invite from an email.</p><p>"You have an email going, people are talking and you're like, 'let's just meet about this,'" she said. "You click a button and it makes a calendar invite with the description and all those people, instead of backing out, opening Google Calendar and copying all those people in. That one tip could save you minutes multiple times a day, and that really adds up."</p><p>Another small hack she advocates for is tab grouping in Chrome. Instead of wading through a sea of tiny tabs at the top of the browser, the grouping feature allows users to put multiple tabs under a heading for easy navigation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Both illustrate how Google is trying to cut down on the amount of time between thinking something in a business context and actually doing it.</p><h3>Become a super user</h3><p>Those instances of integrating one product with another just scratch the surface of what the company sees Workspace allowing users (and its own employees) to do.</p><p>Already, Google has rolled out new preview features in Docs that don't require users to go to a new tab to scroll through a document. In the "<a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/introducing-google-workspace" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">coming months</a>," Google plans to introduce picture-in-picture video via Meet into Docs and Slides, which will allow users to create on-demand, instant meetings with the other people editing a document simultaneously.</p><p>So much of productivity is thought of as getting from point A to point B faster, but Google's approach is increasingly about getting people in and out of each point between the beginning and the end more quickly. For Martin, the minutes shaved off of switching from task to task and the resulting focus are what can actually help cut down the total time needed to complete a project.</p><p>"Those are the types of things that our products are developing more and more of as far as collaboration across teams," she said. "We're really at an exciting place right now with Workspace, seeing how those are now all coming together."</p><h3>Work how your brain works</h3><p>Perhaps unsurprisingly at the company that revolutionized the search engine, search can also play a key role in productivity as well. For Martin, that means advocating for executives to employ the infrastructure that makes a search effective in their own file management — whatever their file management style is. It's a strategy she says is particularly effective when someone is trying to work even at times when their setup is inconvenient. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In a recent productivity session, she aimed to address that exact challenge with a marketing executive who most often found himself having ideas outside of the office. Trading extemporaneous notes for a platform that was searchable and organized allowed him to take notes the way he naturally wanted to. When he'd see an image, an ad or just a visual that he thought might be useful for future campaigns while he was out in the world, he would take a picture and hashtag it with a keyword that would populate a folder of ideas for quick reference later on.</p><p>"He then had a bulletin board in Google Keep that was just ideas, and he had an organization system that wasn't how I would organize, but it was how his brain worked," Martin said. "Because he could color-code all of these things, it was where he went for his ideas later."</p><h3>Think of email like laundry</h3><p>Introducing order where there is none is a big part of how Martin works. In fact, it was the thesis of one of her first initiatives around managing an inbox effectively, particularly through multiple inboxes. A standard feature on Gmail now, it was originally just an add-on that Martin began teaching in her internal course on productivity. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>"I think about email like laundry. Your inbox is your dryer, but then you need to take everything out and make tiles like you're folding and you're hanging clothes," she said. "It can't just be all in the dryer all the time."</p><p>Teaching employees at Google about how to properly organize emails between inboxes led Martin to conversations with the Gmail team directly, and her feedback about how people were using the product catalyzed the feature's implementation.</p><p>"That was one cool feature that I feel like I saw from like a little baby add-on to a full-blown adult product," she said. "That's probably my favorite part of my job: Not just teaching the products, but helping shape them in the long run."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>In launching Workspace late last year, Google laid out its products in such a way that each tool becomes slightly more reliant on the features that work well in its sister applications over time. Similarly, Martin's work has led her to try to get Google employees to do the same. </p><p>In a weekly email, she highlights to more than half the company the use cases for product features she's observed, and gives tips on how those same hacks could be replicated across different company processes and teams.</p><p>We can't all enjoy that kind of bespoke advice. But we can probably all find a cupcake trick or two somewhere in Martin's tips.</p>
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Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
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