Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning entitled, Who Is Making Sure the A.I. Machines Aren’t Racist?  Written by technology correspondent Cade Metz, it comments that the big thinkers of tech say A.I. is the future. It will underpin everything from search engines and email to the software that drives our cars, directs the policing of our streets and helps create our vaccines. But it is being built in a way that replicates the biases of the almost entirely male, predominantly white work force making it.

Metz raises issues with technology companies such as Google and Amazon that are the leaders in A.I. development.  He reflects on the cases of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, who were building a group inside Google dedicated to “ethical A.I.”   Dr. Mitchell had previously worked in the research lab at Microsoft. She had grabbed attention when she told Bloomberg News in 2016 that A.I. suffered from a “sea of dudes” problem. She estimated that she had worked with hundreds of men over the previous five years and about 10 women.  Gebru’s and Mitchell’s  work was hailed as groundbreaking at a time that the A.I. industry needed minders and people with different perspectives.  Both Gebru and Mitchell were recently fired by Google.

The article goes on to raise ethical questions regarding A.I.  that continue to linger and are not going away!

Tony

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