Timnit Gebru is part of a wave of Black women working to change AI

Following the publication of that paper, IBM and Microsoft released statements acknowledging the research and announcing their commitments to improving the accuracy of their facial recognition technologies.In recent years, a growing body of research has found race-, gender- and ability-based biases embedded in algorithms used in policing, health care, hiring tools and remote testing technologies, among others.Gebru, Buolamwini and others have attributed these biases to the underrepresentation of women of all races, and people of color of all genders, in the AI workforce.A report published last year by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence found that women have accounted for just 18.3 percent of graduates of AI and computer science doctoral programs within the past 10 years and that Black and Latino 2019 graduates of AI doctoral programs accounted for just 2.4 percent and 3.2 percent of graduates overall, respectively. “DAIR’s focus on research that centers the lived experiences of the excoded — those impacted by algorithmic harms — is a necessary intervention in a tech ecosystem that so often excludles, exploits, and expunges the very people who can transform the industry from within and without,” Buolamwini said in an emailed statement.“Dr. Timnit Gebru’s intellect is only outmatched by the depth of her compassion and the strength of her convictions in fighting for those whom society has relegated to the margins,” Buolamwini added, noting that she also hopes to see the organization receive more funding in the future.Gebru does, too: She’s hopeful that DAIR’s alternative approach to conducting AI research will give rise to new incentive structures that reward and fund research based not on the speed at which it’s produced, but on the communities that it serves.“A proactive approach means funding other visions of AI,” she said.