Timnet Gebru

Millions of people get to hear and read the news that a reporter of the news known as Tucker Carlson spent Monday night attacking the physical appearance of Nancy Pelosi. How many get to hear or read about the recent success of Timnet Gebru, Google’s top AI ethics researcher who was fired from Google more than a year ago for coauthoring a brilliant and groundbreaking paper detailing the potential problems of large language systems, and showed where facial recognition fails in being accurate?

Her story is a story I feel like we all ought to know more about. It’s shocking, but more recently, uplifting. I feel like I have the ability to be in front of cameras and make I-am-pooping-in-my-pants-right-now faces and report on the physical appearance of a woman, too. “Timnet Gebru bounced back after her firing from Google and was spotted in public with makeup and lipstick on her woman face that received $3.7 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kapor Center, Open Society Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. You should have seen her woman eyelashes and that shirt she wore from forming an AI Research Institute of her own.”

I’ve been telling her story in all of my math classes since they are populated with women who wear makeup but also have computer science ambitions.