Timnit Gebru

Dr. Timnit Gebru is a computer scientist known for her work in artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, algorithmic bias, and fairness. She attended Stanford University, where she earned her Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, with her doctoral advisor being Fei Fei Li.

Timnit Gebru has been recognised globally for her contributions, being named among Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, Nature’s Ten People Who Shaped Science, and Time’s Most Influential People. In 2023, she received the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award and was included in BBC’s 100 Women list. Edelman also listed her among the key AI creators to know in 2025.

Gebru worked at Apple, designing signal processing algorithms, including for the first iPad. She later joined Microsoft Research as a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI (FATE) lab. In 2017, she co-founded Black in AI, an organisation promoting diversity in AI research. Her work includes the Gender Shades project, which highlighted racial and gender biases in facial recognition technology.

She joined Google in 2018 as co-lead of the Ethical AI team. In 2020, she co-authored a paper discussing the risks of large language models. Google requested changes to the paper, and after a dispute, her employment was terminated. This led to public criticism from academics and employees.

In 2021, she founded the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), focusing on AI’s impact on marginalised communities. She has criticised artificial general intelligence (AGI) research and highlighted issues in AI development. She co-authored a paper with Émile P. Torres introducing the term TESCREAL to describe certain AI-related futurist ideologies.

She was born in Ethiopia in 1982/1983 and fled the country at the age of 15 due to the Eritrean–Ethiopian War. After a short stay in Ireland, she received asylum in the United States and settled in Massachusetts. She continues her work on ethical AI research and advocacy.

Dr. Timnit Gebru was born in 1982 or 1983 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her father, an electrical engineer with a PhD, passed away when she was five years old, and she was raised by her mother, an economist. Her parents were originally from Eritrea. 

At the age of 15, she fled Ethiopia due to the Eritrean–Ethiopian War. Some of her family members were deported to Eritrea and forced to fight in the war. She initially lived in Ireland but was later granted political asylum in the United States. She settled in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she completed high school. While in high school, she faced racial discrimination, as some teachers discouraged her from taking Advanced Placement (AP) courses despite her academic abilities. A significant event that shaped her perspective on ethics and justice occurred when she reported an assault on a Black friend at a bar, but instead of filing the report, the police arrested her friend.

In 2001, she was accepted to Stanford University, where she earned a Bachelor's and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. She later pursued a PhD in Computer Vision, completing it in 2017 under the supervision of Fei-Fei Li. During her time at Stanford, she participated in AddisCoder, a programme founded by Jelani Nelson that teaches programming to students in Ethiopia and Jamaica. She also canvassed for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Her research focused on how Google Street View images could be used to infer socioeconomic attributes such as income, race, education level, and voting patterns. Her study, which used 15 million images from 200 cities in the United States, found that the number of pickup trucks versus sedans in a neighbourhood could indicate whether the community leaned Democratic or Republican. This research was widely covered by BBC News, The Economist, Newsweek, and The New York Times.

While studying at Stanford University, Gebru interned at Apple in 2004 and later joined the company full-time as an Audio Systems Engineer. She worked on signal processing algorithms and contributed to the first iPad. Her work also involved designing audio hardware for products like Apple TV, iMacs, MacBooks, and iPhones. She helped vendors develop CODECs (audio chips) and researched new technologies for improving Apple’s next-generation products. After working at Apple for six years, she decided to shift her focus to software development, particularly in computer vision and artificial intelligence. In 2013, she joined Fei-Fei Li’s lab at Stanford University to work on deep learning and data mining.

In 2015, while attending the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference, Gebru noted the underrepresentation of Black researchers in the field. In 2016, she counted only five Black men and herself as the only Black woman among 8,500 attendees. This led her to co-found Black in AI, an organisation that aims to increase Black representation, inclusion, and visibility in artificial intelligence research. 

In 2017, she joined Microsoft Research as a postdoctoral researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI (FATE) lab. During this time, she co-authored the Gender Shades project, which demonstrated that facial recognition software had significant racial and gender biases. The study found that Black women were 35% less likely to be correctly identified compared to White men.

In 2018, Gebru joined Google’s Ethical AI team as co-lead alongside Margaret Mitchell. She worked on ethical issues related to AI, including the risks of large language models. In 2020, she co-authored a paper titled “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” The paper highlighted risks such as the environmental costs of training large AI models, the financial burden of AI development, bias and discrimination in AI models, and the spread of misinformation due to unreliable AI-generated content. Google requested that she withdraw the paper or remove the names of Google employees. When she refused, her employment was terminated. Google claimed it accepted her resignation, but Gebru stated that she had not formally resigned. Following her exit, nearly 2,700 Google employees and 4,300 academics signed a letter condemning Google’s actions. Nine U.S. Congress members also sent a letter demanding clarification on the matter. Google later announced changes in how it would review sensitive AI research but did not reinstate her.

In 2021, Gebru launched the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) to study AI’s impact on marginalised communities. The institute focuses on preventing AI harms, promoting inclusive AI development, and ensuring AI serves the public interest rather than corporate goals. She has been vocal about the limitations and risks of artificial intelligence, advocating for greater transparency and accountability. 

She has criticised the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), arguing that it is unsafe and influenced by eugenics-based ideologies. She co-authored a 2024 research paper introducing the acronym TESCREAL, describing overlapping futurist philosophies such as transhumanism, effective altruism, and longtermism. She has also been involved in policy discussions around AI ethics and has spoken at numerous academic and industry conferences.

She has written and contributed to several publications, including Gender Shades, a study on bias in facial recognition, On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots, a paper discussing risks in large language models, The TESCREAL Bundle, a paper on AI futurist ideologies, and The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI. She is also currently working on a book titled "The View from Somewhere," a memoir and manifesto on AI, discrimination, and technology’s role in society. Gebru’s work has influenced AI policy discussions globally and has raised awareness about the ethical implications of AI technologies.

Gebru has been widely recognised for her contributions to AI ethics. She was named one of Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2021, included in Nature’s 10 People Who Shaped Science in 2021, and selected as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2022. In 2023, she received the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award and was included in BBC’s 100 Women list. Edelman also listed her among key AI creators to know in 2025. Her work continues to shape discussions around AI ethics, fairness, and accountability. 

As of 2025, she remains the Executive Director of DAIR, focusing on research that ensures AI is developed and deployed responsibly, with a focus on marginalised communities. She continues to advocate for better AI governance and works towards making AI systems more transparent and equitable.

Dr. Timnit Gebru's vision is to create artificial intelligence that is fair, ethical, and beneficial to all communities, especially marginalised groups. She believes AI should be developed with transparency and accountability, ensuring that it does not reinforce biases or cause harm. Through the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), she works to challenge harmful AI practices and promote inclusive research. She advocates for greater diversity in AI, fair policies, and responsible AI governance. Her goal is to ensure that AI serves people, rather than corporations or governments, and is used to improve society rather than deepen inequalities or discrimination.

Dr. Timnit Gebru has received global recognition for her work in AI ethics and fairness. In 2021, she was named one of Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and included in Nature’s 10 People Who Shaped Science. In 2022, she was recognised as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. In 2023, she received the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants Award and was featured in BBC’s 100 Women list. Edelman listed her among the key AI Creators to Watch in 2025. Her contributions to AI ethics, fairness, and diversity continue to shape policies, research, and industry discussions worldwide.