Distributed AI Research Institute
In plain wordsTimnit Gebru set up this institute in 2021, a year after her departure from Google, to research the damage AI can do, especially to marginalized communities, without relying on big-tech money.
A research institute, funded by foundations rather than technology companies and organized around the communities it studies, that investigates the harms of AI systems and alternative ways of building them, especially as they affect marginalized groups and the Global South. Its 'distributed' model employs researchers where they live instead of relocating them to technology hubs. Its work includes studies of the data workersghost work, n.: The hidden human labor behind AI: people, often poorly paid and far away, who label data, check outputs and handle cases the software cannot, while the product appears fully automatic. who label data and moderate content for AI companies, of social-media harms during armed conflicts such as the Tigray war, and of satellite imagery tracing the legacy of spatial apartheid in South Africa. Gebru and the philosopher Émile P. Torres coined the acronym TESCREALTESCREAL, abbr.: A critical label for a cluster of related belief systems, including transhumanism, effective altruism and longtermism, that its coiners say drive the push to build AGI and share roots with eugenics. (2023) for a bundle of ideologies, including transhumanism, effective altruismeffective altruism, n.: A movement that treats charity like a research problem, comparing causes by how much good each dollar or working hour achieves; many of its members came to rank risks from advanced AI as a top priority. and longtermismlongtermism, n.: The belief that we should care a great deal about how things go for humanity thousands or millions of years from now, since far more people may live then than have ever lived., that they argue drive the race to build artificial general intelligenceartificial general intelligence, n.: AI that could learn and do almost any mental task a capable adult can, rather than excelling at one narrow job. Experts disagree on the exact bar and on when, or whether, it will arrive..
Origin
Founded on 2 December 2021 by Timnit GebruTimnit Gebru, prop. n.: An Ethiopian-born American computer scientist who exposed racial and gender bias in AI systems, co-wrote the 'stochastic parrots' paper, and founded an independent AI research institute., a year after her contested departure from Google, where she had co-led the Ethical AI team; it was launched with foundation grants rather than corporate funding.
Related
- Timnit GebruTimnit Gebru, prop. n.: An Ethiopian-born American computer scientist who exposed racial and gender bias in AI systems, co-wrote the 'stochastic parrots' paper, and founded an independent AI research institute.
- AI ethicsAI ethics, n.: The study of what is right and wrong in how AI is built and used: who it may harm, who is responsible when it fails, and which values it should respect.
- ghost workghost work, n.: The hidden human labor behind AI: people, often poorly paid and far away, who label data, check outputs and handle cases the software cannot, while the product appears fully automatic.
- stochastic parrotstochastic parrot, n.: A critical label for AI language systems, likening them to parrots that echo patterns in the text they were trained on, fluently but with no grasp of what the words mean.
- AI Now InstituteAI Now Institute, prop. n.: A research and advocacy group that examines who is harmed by AI and argues that the deeper problem is the power of a few big technology companies, which it wants curbed by law.
Mentioned in
Timnit GebruTimnit Gebru, prop. n.: An Ethiopian-born American computer scientist who exposed racial and gender bias in AI systems, co-wrote the 'stochastic parrots' paper, and founded an independent AI research institute., AI Now InstituteAI Now Institute, prop. n.: A research and advocacy group that examines who is harmed by AI and argues that the deeper problem is the power of a few big technology companies, which it wants curbed by law., Algorithmic Justice LeagueAlgorithmic Justice League, prop. n.: Joy Buolamwini's organization, known for showing that face-analysis software made far more mistakes with darker-skinned women, which campaigns to hold the makers of biased AI systems accountable.