Keeping an eye on AI
When she co-led Google’s Ethical AI team, Timnit Gebru was a prominent insider voice questioning Big Tech’s approach to artificial intelligence.
That was before Google pushed her out of the company in an internal dispute tied to her work there. Now Gebru is trying to make change from the outside as the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, or DAIR. It centers AI research from the places and people most likely to experience its harms.
Gebru spoke with The Associated Press recently about how poorly Big Tech’s AI priorities — and its AI-fueled social media platforms — serve Africa and elsewhere.
What was the impetus for DAIR?
When I decided to (start DAIR), the very first thing that came to my mind is that I want it to be distributed. If there is AI to be built or researched, how do you do it well? You want to involve communities that are usually at the margins so that they can benefit. When there’s cases when it should not be built, we can say, ‘Well, this should not be built.’ We’re not coming at it from a perspective of tech solutionism.
Why the emphasis on distribution?
Technology affects the entire world right now and there’s a huge imbalance between those who are producing it and influencing its development, and those who are feeling the harms.
Can you describe projects DAIR is pursuing that might not have happened elsewhere?
One of our initial projects is about using satellite imagery to study spatial apartheid in South Africa. Our research fellow is someone who grew up in a township. It’s not her studying some other community and swooping in. It’s her doing things that are relevant to her community.
How has your Google experience changed your approach?
At Google, I spent so much of my time trying to change people’s behavior. They would organize a workshop and they would have all men—like 15 of them—and I would just send them an email, ‘Look, you can’t just have a workshop like that.’ I’m now spending more of my energy thinking about what I want to build and how to support the people who are already on the right side of an issue.
In the U.S., are there actions you’re looking for from the White House and Congress to reduce harmful AI?
Right now there’s just no regulation. I’d like for some sort of law such that tech companies have to prove to us that they’re not causing harms. Every time they introduce a new technology, the onus is on citizens to prove that something is harmful. Many years later there might be talk about regulation—then the tech companies have moved on to the next thing. That’s not how drug companies operate. They wouldn’t be rewarded for not looking (into potential harms)—they’d be punished. We need to have that kind of standard for tech companies.