“Let’s not talk about machines like they have their own life or agency. Let’s talk about who are creating them and what their responsibilities are.” –Timnit Gebru
“For challenging concentrated power in artificial intelligence and pioneering digital technology rooted in justice, lived experience and human agency.”
Timnit Gebru is a US artificial intelligence researcher and founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), whose work challenges the concentration of power in the technology sector and exposes the harms AI systems are already causing in people’s everyday lives, particularly among communities facing discrimination and exclusion. Her research has helped reshape international debates about how and for what purposes AI is developed and governed.
Born in Ethiopia to a family of Eritrean origin, Gebru left the country at 15 during the Ethiopian-Eritrean war and later sought asylum in the United States. Experiences of discrimination throughout her life shaped her understanding that science and technology are not neutral and can reproduce existing inequalities. She co-founded Black in AI to build community and increase the presence of Black people in the field. After a dispute over a pioneering academic paper warning about the risks posed by large language models, she was fired from Google, where she was co-leading the Ethics AI team.
Through DAIR, Gebru now combines exposing technological bias with building alternatives. Its distributed model brings together researchers and collaborators across countries and continents, defying the centralised and corporate-driven concepts that mainstream AI entails. Through community-rooted research, Gebru is broadening who gets to shape technology and the purposes and values that guide its future.