Who Is Making Sure the A.I. Machines Aren't Racist?

Hundreds of people gathered for the first lecture at what had become the world's most important conference on artificial intelligence -- row after row of faces. Some were East Asian, a few were Indian, and a few were women. But the vast majority were white men. More than 5,500 people attended the meeting, five years ago in Barcelona, Spain. Timnit Gebru, then a graduate student at Stanford University, remembers counting only six Black people other than herself, all of whom she knew, all of whom were men. The big thinkers of tech say A.I. is the future.