Timnit Gebru is shaping the future of tomorrow.
Nonlinear career journey
Geblu always loves math, Science,music. She attended Stanford University from 2008 to 2017, earning her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. In electrical engineering, the same field that her father worked, she first combined her interests in 2004 to begin her career at Apple as an audio hardware intern. A year later she was hired as an audio system engineer and worked part-time as an audio player. engineer From 2007 to her departure four years later.
Gebru’s professional journey was not linear. In 2011, she co-founded Motion Think. This is a company that leverages design thinking to create solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. While pursuing her PhD, she at Stanford Co-founded After attending one of the biggest academic conferences in 2016, he became president of AI’s Black. At the time, she realized that black experts were significantly underrated.
“The following year there was a workshop where black people from all over the world came. We provided funding. We gathered money and they were able to present their work and meet each other. And we jumped from five to 300. And then we created a forum where people could ask each other’s questions.
Furthermore, Gebru worked before working as a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft in New York. Google In 2018, he was a joint leader of the Ethical AI Research Team. As Afrotech™ Previously reported GEBRU was the only black female researcher at the time of being appointed to Google’s Ethical AI Research Team. With the help of her co-leader Margaret Mitchell, she was meant to advocate for diversity and establish a “safe space” for all marginalized backgrounds, including queer individuals, black individuals and Latino people.
“We had to fight against discrimination in the workplace. We had to fight against the voices being heard and the voices trying to guide the company in a direction that wasn’t being taken seriously or that wasn’t going to lead the company in a direction that wasn’t going to create harmful AI systems,” she explained.
Was fired by Google
In 2020, Google fired Gebru. She says this is the result of a research paper that wrote about the dangers of large-scale language models, the underlying technologies behind what later forms a platform like ChatGPT (launched in 2022), and other similar systems.
“We saw this race create large, large models, and these were mainly hurting marginalized communities,” Gebru says. “To train, evaluate and implement these models, we need a lot of environmental resources and computing power. People who are burdened and costed due to environmental racism are not the same as those who benefit from these systems. And when you look at the views that are propagated through these systems, they are hegemonic views, and of course, they do all things for all races, all races. So we wrote this paper and we were told that we must take our name from this paper.
Distributed AI Research Institute
After she was fired, Geblu received support from other companies and letters from the Congress. She reorganized and launched the Decentralized AI Institute (DAIR). that It’s been built AI always exists, but its harm is It will be reduced Through thoughtful development, responsible use, and inclusion of diverse perspectives, According to Information about your organization’s LinkedIn.
Dair works with computer scientists and engineers, but is taking it a step further by working with individuals who have been directly affected by the harmful aspects of AI.
“When Openai was first established in 2015, they were touted as saviors of the world trying to do useful AI for humans and others. “So I was very frustrated by the uncritical take and how they were described.”
Dair’s team includes individuals like Adrienne Williams, a former Amazon Delivery driver. Some of her observations from these roles included billionaires in which individual education and workers are allegedly being monitored and managed by algorithmic management.
As a result, she has been organizing since 2018 and has worked with activists, politicians and researchers in the hopes of producing better results between the intersections of technology, labor and education industries, according to information on Dair’s website.
“So when I created Dair, I wanted to make sure that the work at the lab was shaped not only by computer scientists and engineers, but by people who had experienced experiences of harm that was perpetuated in their lives through technology and how to stop harm through surveillance and exploitation of workers,” Gebru said.
Afrotech™Future 50
Gebru’s contribution to the field landed her among Afrotech™’s 2025 legacy leaders in the future manufacturer category. Our legacy leaders have already set the standards for 50 impact, vision and excellence of the future. Other categories include dynamic investors, visionary founders, corporate catalyticists and changemakers.
If you’re going to build something that changes the game, move the industry forward, or break down barriers for the next generation, I’d like to hear you do the same job as Gebru.
“Build a network. You can’t become a sacrificial lamb yourself, so everyone plays a role. When I was fired from Google, I had it lots of Gebru backs me up inside and out as I took the time to build that network,” Gebru expressed as advice to future manufacturers. That’s like that If there is no table, build it. There is no need to boil the ocean. Start small. Start local. Start with classmates, your Trying to build a neighbor, or someone around you, and the environment that You wanted for yourself that did not exist for you. And I think it helps you change things rather than trying to do things on your own. ”
Please submit as it is considered. The deadline is April 11th, 2025.
