School of Information May 2022 Commencement

Keynote Speaker: Timnit Gebru

Dr. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) and is one of the most prominent researchers working in the field of ethics in artificial intelligence.

Gebru made headlines in 2020 after being forced from her position at Google, where she co-led the Ethical Artificial Intelligence research team. Her dismissal sent shockwaves through the tech world and amplified the issue of Big Tech’s blindness to the bias that’s often baked into the powerful tools they create; it also sparked a labor movement that resulted in the first union formed by tech workers at Google.

Gebru received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, and completed a postdoctorate at Microsoft Research, New York City in the FATE (Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics in AI) group, where she studied algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying projects aiming to gain insights from data. She also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility, and health of Black people in the field of AI, and she serves on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian high school students, free of charge.

Her work has been covered by outlets ranging from the New York Times to The Economist, and she has been named to notable lists such as the Bloomberg 50, Wired 25, and Forbes 30 inspirational women. In 2020 she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award along with Joy Buolamwini and Deborah Raji, for their work in pursuit of algorithmic justice.