Highlights from The Guardian's interview with Timnit Gebru

The British news outlet recently asked questions to the well-known computer scientist who specializes in algorithmic bias and data mining

Image credit: Kimberly White - CC BY 2.0 (with added blue filter and cat face)

Today, The Guardian posted an interview with Timnit Gebru.

The Ethiopian-born computer scientist, lost her job at Google (where she co-led the ethical AI team) in late 2020 after raising concerns about the biases and inequalities embedded in artificial intelligence systems.

She is now concentrating her efforts at the Distributed AI Research Institute (Dair), where she advocates for transparency, responsible development, and the exposure of exploitation in the AI realm.

Here are some highlights from her conversation with John Harris:

• Gebru believes that the AI industry is driven by a profit motive and lacks self-regulation.

• She highlighted the need for external pressure and regulation to ensure that AI frameworks are developed responsibly.

• Her own experiences with discrimination (both as an immigrant and a woman of color) have shaped her understanding of the biases found in AI.

• She critiques the dominance of white, male viewpoints in the creation of AI systems and cautions about the possibility for biased data sets to entrench inequality.

• She underlines that it is people, not AI tools, who are responsible for the societal effect of these technologies, and she asks for more attention to the genuine problems produced by biased AI.