S2:E7 - Cyberpunk 2077, Timnit Gebru’s Firing, GitHub’s ‘State of the Octoverse,’ and Google’s New Chip

In this episode, we talk about Google’s move to put their own chips in Pixels and Chromebooks, and notable items in GitHub’s “State of the Octoverse.” Then we speak with Nathan Grayson, senior reporter at Kotaku and co-host of Kotaku’s Splitscreen, about crunch culture in game development and the differences between a company like Supergiant Games and CD Projekt Red, the maker of the newly released and highly anticipated RPG, Cyberpunk 2077. Finally, we chat with Julien Cornebise, an honorary associate professor at University College London and a former researcher with DeepMind, Google’s A.I. lab, about Google’s firing of Timnit Gebru, a co-leader of Google’s Ethical A.I. team, who said she was fired after she sent an email criticizing the company’s efforts to hire more minorities as well as biases in their A.I.

Show Notes

• DevDiscuss (sponsor)
• CodeNewbie (sponsor)
• Avalanche (sponsor)
• Scoop: Google readies its own chip for future Pixels, Chromebooks
• Apple Preps Next Mac Chips With Aim to Outclass Top-End PCs
• The 2020 State of the Octoverse
• The Secret To The Success Of Bastion, Pyre, And Hades: No Forced Crunch, Yes Forced Vacations
• Cyberpunk 2077 Publisher Orders 6-Day Weeks Ahead of Launch
• Google Researcher Says She Was Fired Over Paper Highlighting Bias in A.I.
• We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says.

Nathan Grayson

Nathan Grayson is a senior reporter at Kotaku who primarily focuses on streaming, labor, and PC gaming. He also cohosts the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast and is working on a book tentatively titled "STREAMERS" to be published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in the future.

Julien Cornebise

Julien is a mathematician, scientist and coder, was the 5th research at DeepMind from 2012 working on their early algorithms, and co-created their Health Research team. He left in 2016 to start helping NGOs and charities with machine learning, and for that created in 2018 Element AI's "AI for Good" team and their London office. From ASMx86 to convergence theorems, from Google to Amnesty International and academia, he believes in depth and breadth, and that individual responsibility never dilutes in an organization: it multiplies. We must do better!