Timnit Gebru
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Timnit Gebru (
Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...
and ; 1982/1983) is an Eritrean Ethiopian-born
computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
who works in the fields of
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI),
algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable harmful tendency in a computerized sociotechnical system to create " unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the a ...
and
data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...
. She is a co-founder of Black in AI, an advocacy group that has pushed for more Black roles in AI development and research. She is the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). In December 2020, public controversy erupted over the circumstances surrounding Gebru's departure from
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, where she was technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team. Gebru had coauthored a paper on the risks of
large language models A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...
(LLMs) acting as stochastic parrots, and submitted it for publication. According to Jeff Dean, the paper was submitted without waiting for Google's internal review, which then asserted that it ignored too much relevant research. Google management requested that Gebru either withdraw the paper or remove the names of all the authors employed by Google. Gebru requested the identity and feedback of every reviewer, and stated that if Google refused she would talk to her manager about "a last date". Google terminated her employment immediately, stating that they were accepting her resignation. Gebru maintained that she had not formally offered to resign, and only threatened to. Gebru has been recognized widely for her expertise in the ethics of artificial intelligence. She was named one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders by ''Fortune'' and one of ''Nature'''s ten people who shaped science in 2021, and in 2022, one of ''Time'''s most influential people.


Early life and education

Gebru was raised in
Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...
, Ethiopia. Her father, an electrical engineer with a
Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
(PhD), died when she was five years old, and she was raised by her mother, an economist. Both her parents are from
Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...
. When Gebru was 15, during the
Eritrean–Ethiopian War The Eritrean–Ethiopian War, also known as the Badme War, was a major armed conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea that took place from May 6, 1998 to June 18, 2000. After 1993 Eritrean independence referendum, Eritrea gained independence from E ...
, she fled Ethiopia after some of her family were deported to Eritrea and compelled to fight in the war. She was initially denied a U.S. visa and briefly lived in
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
, but she eventually received
political asylum The right of asylum, sometimes called right of political asylum (''asylum'' ), is a juridical concept, under which people persecuted by their own rulers might be protected by another sovereignty, sovereign authority, such as a second country or ...
in the U.S., an experience she said was "miserable". Gebru settled in
Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the city had a total population of 81, ...
, to attend high school, where she says she immediately started to experience
racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their Race (human categorization), race, ancestry, ethnicity, ethnic or national origin, and/or Human skin color, skin color and Hair, hair texture. Individuals ...
, with some teachers refusing to allow her to take certain
Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board. AP offers undergraduate university-level curricula and examinations to high school students. Colleges and universities in the US and elsewhere ...
courses, despite being a high-achiever. After she completed high school, an encounter with the police set Gebru on a course toward a focus on ethics in technology. A friend of hers, a Black woman, was assaulted in a bar, and Gebru called the police to report it. She says that instead of filing the assault report, her friend was
arrest An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be question ...
ed and remanded to a cell. Gebru called it a pivotal moment and a "blatant example of systemic racism." In 2001, Gebru was accepted at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
. There she earned her
Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
and
Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...
degrees in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
and her PhD in
computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...
in 2017. Gebru was advised during her PhD program by Fei-Fei Li. During the
2008 United States presidential election Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John Mc ...
, Gebru canvassed in support of
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
. Gebru presented her doctoral research at the 2017 LDV Capital Vision Summit competition, where computer vision scientists present their work to members of industry and
venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...
s. Gebru won the competition, starting a series of collaborations with other entrepreneurs and investors. Both during her PhD program in 2016 and in 2018, Gebru returned to Ethiopia with Jelani Nelson's programming campaign AddisCoder. While working on her PhD, Gebru authored a paper that was never published about her concern over the future of AI. She wrote of the dangers of the lack of diversity in the field, centered on her experiences with the police and on a
ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. ProPublica's investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to ne ...
investigation into
predictive policing Predictive policing is the usage of mathematics, predictive analytics, and other analytical techniques in law enforcement to identify potential criminal activity. A report published by the RAND Corporation identified four general categories predi ...
, which revealed a projection of human biases in
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
. In the paper, she scathed the "boy's club culture", reflecting on her experiences at conference gatherings of drunken male attendees sexually harassing her, and criticized the hero worship of the field's celebrities.


Career


2004–2013: Software development at Apple

Gebru joined
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
as an
intern An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. Once confined to medical graduates, internship is used to practice for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and g ...
while at Stanford, working in their hardware division making
circuitry An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electric ...
for audio components, and was offered a full-time position the following year. Of her work as an
audio engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduc ...
, her manager told ''Wired'' she was "fearless", and well-liked by her colleagues. During her tenure at Apple, Gebru became more interested in building software, namely
computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...
that could detect human figures. She went on to develop signal processing algorithms for the first
iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...
. At the time, she said she did not consider the potential use for surveillance, saying "I just found it technically interesting." Long after leaving the company, during the #AppleToo movement in the summer of 2021, which was led by Apple engineer
Cher Scarlett Cher Scarlett (born ) is an American software engineer, workers' rights activist, and writer who is known for starting #AppleToo. She has organized staff at Apple, Activision Blizzard, and Starbucks. Scarlett, who has bipolar disorder, experi ...
, who consulted with Gebru, Gebru revealed she experienced "so many egregious things" and "always wondered how they manage to get out of the spotlight." She said that accountability at Apple was long overdue, and warned they could not continue to fly under the radar for much longer. Gebru also criticized the way the media covers Apple and other tech giants, saying that the press helps shield such companies from public scrutiny.


2013–2017: Research at Stanford and Microsoft

In 2013, Gebru joined Fei-Fei Li's lab at Stanford. She used
data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...
of publicly available images. She was interested in the amount of money spent by governmental and non-governmental organisations trying to collect information about communities. To investigate alternatives, Gebru combined
deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...
with
Google Street View Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expa ...
to estimate the demographics of
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
neighbourhoods, showing that socioeconomic attributes such as voting patterns, income, race, and education can be inferred from observations of cars. If the number of
pickup truck A pickup truck or pickup is a Truck_classification#Table_of_US_GVWR_classifications, light or medium duty truck that has an enclosed cabin (truck), cabin, and a back end made up of a cargo bed that is enclosed by three low walls with no roof (th ...
s outnumbers the number of
sedans A sedan (American English) or saloon (British English) is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo. The first recorded use of ''sedan'' in reference to an automobile body oc ...
, the community is more likely to vote for the Republican party. They analysed over 15 million images from the 200 most populated U.S. cities. The work was extensively covered in the media, being picked up by
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
, ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...
'', ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'', and ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. In 2015, Gebru attended the field's top conference, Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), in Montreal, Canada. Out of 3,700 attendees, she noted she was one of only a few Black researchers. When she attended again the following year, she kept a tally and noted that there were only five Black men and that she was the only Black woman out of 8,500 delegates. Together with her colleague
Rediet Abebe Rediet Abebe (Amharic: ረድኤት አበበ; born 1991) is an Ethiopian computer scientist working in algorithms and artificial intelligence. She is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Previousl ...
, Gebru founded ''Black in AI'', a community of Black researchers working in artificial intelligence. Black in AI aims to democratize access to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) by increasing the presence, visibility, and well-being of Black professionals and leaders within the field. In the summer of 2017, Gebru joined
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
as a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI (FATE) lab. In 2017, Gebru spoke at the Fairness and Transparency conference, where ''
MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...
'' interviewed her about biases that exist in AI systems and how adding diversity in AI teams can fix that issue. In her interview with Jackie Snow, Snow asked Gebru, "How does the lack of diversity distort artificial intelligence and specifically computer vision?" and Gebru pointed out that there are biases that exist in the software developers. While at Microsoft, Gebru co-authored a research paper called ''Gender Shades'', which became the namesake of a project of a broader
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
project led by co-author
Joy Buolamwini Joy Adowaa Buolamwini is a Canadian-American computer scientist and digital activist formerly based at the MIT Media Lab. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), an organization that works to challenge bias in decision-making software ...
. The pair investigated facial recognition software, finding that in one particular implementation Black women were 35% less likely to be recognized than White men.


2018–2020: Artificial intelligence ethics at Google

Gebru joined Google in 2018, where she co-led a team on the
ethics of artificial intelligence The ethics of artificial intelligence covers a broad range of topics within AI that are considered to have particular ethical stakes. This includes algorithmic biases, Fairness (machine learning), fairness, automated decision-making, accountabili ...
with
Margaret Mitchell Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one novel that was published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel ''Gone With the Wind (novel), Gone ...
. She studied the implications of artificial intelligence, looking to improve the ability of technology to do social good. In 2019, Gebru and other artificial intelligence researchers "signed a letter calling on Amazon to stop selling its facial-recognition technology to law enforcement agencies because it is biased against women and people of color", citing a study that was conducted by MIT researchers showing that Amazon's facial recognition system had more trouble identifying darker-skinned females than any other technology company's facial recognition software. In a ''New York Times'' interview, Gebru has further expressed that she believes facial recognition is too dangerous to be used for law enforcement and security purposes at present.


Exit from Google

In 2020 Gebru and five co-authors wrote a paper titled "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜". The paper examined risks of very large language models, including their environmental footprint, financial costs, the inscrutability of large models, the potential for LLMs to display prejudice against certain groups, the inability of LLMs to understand the language they process, and the use of LLMs to spread
disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...
. In December 2020, her employment with Google ended after Google management asked her to either withdraw the paper before publication, or remove the names of all the Google employees from the paper. Of the six authors, only Emily M. Bender was not at the time employed at Google. In a six-page mail sent to an internal collaboration list, Gebru describes how she was summoned to a meeting at short notice where she was asked to withdraw the paper and she requested to know the names and reasons of everyone who made that decision, along with advice for how to revise it to Google's liking. She said she would work with Google on an employment end date after an appropriate amount of time if not provided with that information. Google did not meet her request and terminated her employment immediately, declaring that they accepted her resignation. Jeff Dean, Google's head of AI research, replied with an email saying that they made the decision because the paper ignored too much relevant recent research on ways to mitigate some of the problems described in it, about environmental impact, and bias of these models. Dean went on to publish his internal email regarding Gebru's departure and his thoughts on the matter, defending Google's research paper process to "tackle ambitious problems, but to do so responsibly." Gebru and others blame this initial publication, and Dean's subsequent silence on the matter, which Gebru says have both catalyzed and enabled harassment that followed close behind his response. Gebru was serially harassed by a number of
sock puppet account A sock puppet, sock puppet account, or simply sock is a false online identity used for deceptive purposes. The term originally referred to a sock puppet, hand puppet made from a sock. Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, ...
s and
internet troll In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or who performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and ...
s on
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
, making racist and obscene comments. Gebru and her supporters alleged that some of the harassment came from machine learning researcher
Pedro Domingos Pedro Domingos (born 1965) is a Professor Emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He is a researcher in machine learning known for Markov logic network enabling uncertain inference. Education Domingos rece ...
and businessman
Michael Lissack Michael Lissack (born 1958) is an American business executive, author, business consultant and former director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence. In 2019 Lissack was inducted into the International Academy for Systems and C ...
, who had said that her work was "advocacy disguised as science". Lissack also allegedly harassed Mitchell and Bender, along with other colleagues on Gebru's former team. Twitter temporarily suspended Lissack's account access on 1 February 2021. Gebru has repeatedly maintained that she was fired, and close to 2,700 Google employees and more than 4,300 academics and civil society supporters signed a letter condemning Gebru's alleged firing. Nine members of Congress sent a letter to Google asking it to clarify the circumstances around Timnit Gebru's exit. Gebru's former team demanded that
Vice President A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...
Megan Kacholia be removed from the team's management chain. Kacholia had allegedly fired Gebru without notifying Gebru's direct manager Samy Bengio first, and Gebru's former team demanded Kacholia and Dean apologize for how Gebru was treated. Mitchell took to Twitter to criticize Google's treatment of employees working to eliminate bias and toxicity in AI, including its alleged dismissal of Gebru. Mitchell was later terminated for alleged exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees. Following the negative publicity over the circumstances of her exit,
Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (pronounced: ), is an American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Pichai began his career as a mate ...
,
CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...
of
Alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
, Google's parent company, publicly apologized on Twitter without clarifying whether Gebru was terminated or resigned and initiated a months-long investigation into the incident. Upon conclusion of the review, Dean announced Google would be changing its "approach for handling how certain employees leave the company", but still did not clarify whether or not Gebru's leaving Google was voluntary. Additionally, Dean said there would be changes to how research papers with "sensitive" topics would be reviewed, and diversity, equity, and inclusion goals would be reported to Alphabet's board of directors quarterly. Gebru wrote on Twitter that she "expected nothing more" from Google and pointed out that the changes were due to the requests she was allegedly terminated for but that no one was held accountable for it. In the aftermath, two Google employees resigned from their positions at the company. Following her departure, Google held a forum to discuss experiences with racism at the company, and employees reported to ''
NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...
'' that half of it was spent discrediting Gebru, which they took as the company making an example of her for speaking out. The forum was followed up with a
group psychotherapy Group psychotherapy or group therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which one or more therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. The term can legitimately refer to any form of psychotherapy when delivered in a group format, i ...
session for Google's Black employees with a licensed
therapist A therapist is a person who offers any kinds of therapy. Therapists are trained professionals in the field of any types of services like psychologists, social workers, counselors, etc. They are helpful in counseling individuals for various mental ...
, which the employees said was dismissive over the harm they felt Gebru's alleged termination had caused.


Since 2021: Independent research

In November 2021, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, partnered with Open MIC and endorsed by
Color of Change Color of Change is a progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization in the United States. It was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Americ ...
, filed a shareholder proposal calling for a "
racial equity Social equity is concerned with justice and fairness of social policy based on the principle of substantive equality. Since the 1960s, the concept of social equity has been used in a variety of institutional contexts, including education and pu ...
audit" to analyze Alphabet's "adverse impact" on "Black, Indigenous and
People of Color The term "person of color" (: people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is associated with, the United States. From th ...
(BIPOC) communities". The proposal also requests investigation into whether or not Google retaliated against minority employees who raised concerns of discrimination, citing Gebru's firing, her previous urge for Google to hire more BIPOC, and her research into racially based biases in Google's technology. The proposal followed a less formal request from a group of
Senate Democratic Caucus The Democratic Caucus of the United States Senate, sometimes referred to as the Democratic Conference, is the formal organization of all senators who are part of the Democratic Party in the United States Senate. For the makeup of the 119th Co ...
members led by
Cory Booker Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2013. A member of the Democ ...
from earlier that year, also citing Gebru's separation from the company and her work. In December 2021, ''
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...
'' reported that Google was under investigation by California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) for its treatment of Black women, after numerous formal complaints of discrimination and harassment by current and former workers. The probe comes after Gebru, and other BIPOC employees, reported that when they brought up their experiences with racism and sexism to
Human Resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ' ...
, they were advised to take medical leave and therapy through the company's
Employee Assistance Program An employee assistance program in the United States generally offers free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals, and follow-up services for employees. EAP counselors may also work in a consultative role with managers an ...
(EAP). Gebru, and others, believe that her alleged dismissal was retaliatory and evidence that Google is institutionally racist. Google said that it "continue to focus on this important work and thoroughly investigate any concerns, to make sure oogleis representative and equitable." In June 2021, Gebru announced that she was raising money to "launch an independent research institute modeled on her work on Google's Ethical AI team and her experience in ''Black in AI''." On 2 December 2021 she launched the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), which is expected to document the effect of artificial intelligence on marginalized groups, with a focus on Africa and African immigrants in the United States. One of the organization's initial projects plans to analyze satellite imagery of townships in South Africa with AI to better understand legacies of apartheid. Gebru and Émile P. Torres coined the acronym neologism TESCREAL to criticize what they see as a group of overlapping futurist philosophies:
transhumanism Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the human enhancement, enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cogni ...
,
extropianism Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of extropy, is an "evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition". Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people li ...
,
singularitarianism Singularitarianism is a Social movement, movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that t ...
, cosmism,
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the Epistemology, epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge", often in contrast to ot ...
,
effective altruism Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates impartially calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest good. It is motivated by "using evidence and reason to figure out how to b ...
, and
longtermism Longtermism is the ethical view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. It is an important concept in effective altruism and a primary motivation for efforts that aim to reduce existential risks to h ...
. Gebru considers these to be a right-leaning influence in
Big Tech Big Tech, also referred to as the Tech Giants or Tech Titans, is a collective term for the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. The label draws a parallel to similar classifications in other industries, such as "Big Oi ...
and compares proponents to "the
eugenicists Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the ferti ...
of the 20th century" in their production of harmful projects they portray as "benefiting humanity". Gebru has criticized research into
artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...
(AGI) as being rooted in eugenics. Gebru states that focus should be shifted away from AGI and that trying to build AGI is an inherently unsafe practice.


Awards and recognition

Gebru, Buolamwini, and Inioluwa Deborah Raji won ''
VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. ''VentureBeat'' is a tech news source that publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. The ''VentureBeat'' company was fou ...
''s 2019 AI Innovations Award in the category ''AI for Good'' for their research highlighting the significant problem of algorithmic bias in facial recognition. Gebru was named one of the world's 50 greatest leaders by ''Fortune'' in 2021. Gebru was included in a list of ten scientists who had had important roles in scientific developments in 2021 compiled by the scientific journal ''Nature''. Gebru was named one of ''Time'''s most influential people of 2022. In 2023, Gebru was named by
Carnegie Corporation of New York The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...
as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Awards. She was awarded as recognition for her significant contributions to the field of ethical artificial intelligence. In November 2023, she was named to the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
's 100 Women list as one of the world's inspiring and influential women.


Selected publications

* * * * *


See also

* Coded Bias * Claire Stapleton * Meredith Whittaker * Sophie Zhang


References


External links


Profile
at Stanford University * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gebru, Timnit Living people 21st-century African-American women 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American women scientists 21st-century Ethiopian women 21st-century Ethiopian people African-American activists African-American businesspeople African-American computer scientists African-American social scientists African-American women in business American computer scientists American social justice activists 21st-century American social scientists American women computer scientists American women social scientists Apple Inc. employees Artificial intelligence ethicists Artificial intelligence researchers Criticism of Google Data miners Ethiopian activists Ethiopian emigrants to the United States Ethiopian women activists Ethiopian women computer scientists Ethiopian women scientists Google employees Machine learning researchers Microsoft employees Political refugees in the United States Stanford University alumni People from Addis Ababa 1983 births