1. Timnit Gebru is an Eritrean Ethiopian-born computer scientist who works in the fields of artificial intelligence, algorithmic bias and data mining.
38 Facts About Timnit Gebru
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Timnit Gebru is a co-founder of Black in AI, an advocacy group that has pushed for more Black roles in AI development and research.
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Timnit Gebru is the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute.
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Timnit Gebru had coauthored a paper on the risks of large language models acting as stochastic parrots, and submitted it for publication.
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Google management requested that Timnit Gebru either withdraw the paper or remove the names of all the authors employed by Google.
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Timnit 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".
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Timnit Gebru maintained that she had not formally offered to resign, and only threatened to.
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Timnit Gebru has been recognized widely for her expertise in the ethics of artificial intelligence.
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Timnit Gebru 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.
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Timnit Gebru was initially denied a US visa and briefly lived in Ireland, but she eventually received political asylum in the US, an experience she said was "miserable".
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Timnit Gebru settled in Somerville, Massachusetts, to attend high school, where she says she immediately started to experience racial discrimination, with some teachers refusing to allow her to take certain Advanced Placement courses, despite being a high-achiever.
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Timnit Gebru says that instead of filing the assault report, her friend was arrested and remanded to a cell.
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Timnit Gebru was advised during her PhD program by Fei-Fei Li.
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Timnit 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 capitalists.
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Timnit Gebru won the competition, starting a series of collaborations with other entrepreneurs and investors.
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Timnit Gebru wrote of the dangers of the lack of diversity in the field, centered on her experiences with the police and on a ProPublica investigation into predictive policing, which revealed a projection of human biases in machine learning.
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Timnit Gebru joined Apple as an intern while at Stanford, working in their hardware division making circuitry for audio components, and was offered a full-time position the following year.
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Timnit Gebru went on to develop signal processing algorithms for the first iPad.
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Timnit Gebru criticized the way the media covers Apple and other tech giants, saying that the press helps shield such companies from public scrutiny.
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Timnit Gebru was interested in the amount of money spent by governmental and non-governmental organisations trying to collect information about communities.
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In 2015, Timnit Gebru attended the field's top conference, Neural Information Processing Systems, in Montreal, Canada.
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Together with her colleague Rediet Abebe, Timnit Gebru founded Black in AI, a community of Black researchers working in artificial intelligence.
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In 2017, Timnit Gebru spoke at the Fairness and Transparency conference, where MIT Technology Review interviewed her about biases that exist in AI systems and how adding diversity in AI teams can fix that issue.
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Timnit Gebru joined Google in 2018, where she co-led a team on the ethics of artificial intelligence with Margaret Mitchell.
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Timnit Gebru studied the implications of artificial intelligence, looking to improve the ability of technology to do social good.
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Timnit Gebru said she would work with Google on an employment end date after an appropriate amount of time if not provided with that information.
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Timnit 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 Timnit Gebru's alleged firing.
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Timnit 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.
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The forum was followed up with a group psychotherapy session for Google's Black employees with a licensed therapist, which the employees said was dismissive over the harm they felt Timnit Gebru's alleged termination had caused.
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The proposal requests investigation into whether or not Google retaliated against minority employees who raised concerns of discrimination, citing Timnit Gebru's firing, her previous urge for Google to hire more BIPOC, and her research into racially based biases in Google's technology.
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Timnit Gebru considers these to be a right-leaning influence in Big Tech and compares proponents to "the eugenicists of the 20th century" in their production of harmful projects they portray as "benefiting humanity".
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Timnit Gebru has criticized research into artificial general intelligence as being rooted in eugenics.
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Timnit Gebru states that focus should be shifted away from AGI and that trying to build AGI is an inherently unsafe practice.
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Timnit Gebru was named one of the world's 50 greatest leaders by Fortune in 2021.
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Timnit 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.
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Timnit Gebru was named one of Time's most influential people of 2022.
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In 2023, Timnit Gebru was named by Carnegie Corporation of New York as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Awards.
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Timnit Gebru was awarded as recognition for her significant contributions to the field of ethical artificial intelligence.