Alex Hanna left Google to try to save AI's future

It was a move that capped a dramatic period in Hanna's professional life. In late 2020, her manager, Timnit Gebru, had been fired from her position as the co-lead of the Ethical AI team after she wrote a paper questioning the ethics of large language models (including Google's). A few months later, Hanna's next manager, Meg Mitchell, was also shown the door. DAIR, which was founded by Gebru in late 2021 and is funded by various philanthropies, aims to challenge the existing understanding of AI through a community-focused, bottom-up approach to research. The group works remotely and includes teams in Berlin and South Africa.