Timnit Gebru's new AI institute is a challenge to Silicon Valley

A little over a year has passed since Timnit Gebru was fired from Google. The 38-year old Ethiopian-American researcher and former co-lead of the company's Ethical AI unit, believes she was pushed out for working on an academic paper that raised red flags about using large language models in Google's quest to develop "superintelligent" AI systems. The research highlighted the ways AI can misinterpret language on the internet, which can lead to "stereotyping, denigration, increases in extremist ideology, and wrongful arrest," as Gebru and her co-authors put it. Tired of tussling with the internal politics of mega corporations, Gebru has struck out on her own. She recently launched an independent practice called Distributed AI Research Institute or DAIR--a homonym for "dare"--with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Kapor Center, the Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Foundation.