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Welcome to Radical A.I., a podcast about radical ideas, radical people and radical stories at the intersection of ethics and artificial intelligence.

We are your hosts, Dylan. And just just as a reminder, for all of our episodes, while we love interviewing people who fall far from the norm and interrogating radical ideas, we do not necessarily endorse the views of our guests on this show.

In this episode, we interviewed Dr. Timit Gebru, a research scientist at Google on the ethical A.I. team and co-founder of Black and A.I.. Tim Mnet previously did her postdoc at Microsoft Research for The Fate, which stands for Fairness, Transparency, Accountability and ethics in a group where she studied algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying any data mining project. She received her P.H. HD from the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory setting computer vision under Dr Fay Fay Lee.

In this interview, we explore the topic of representation and diversity in the field of technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially as it relates to the personal experiences of Timna Geb room. And we also explore Timbits motivation as a researcher. And so what led her to eventually co-found the Black in AI community?

I'm very excited and very humbled that we were able to have this conversation and that we're able to present this conversation to folks today, especially with what is going on in the world as we release this episode. We recorded this episode a few weeks ago, and so that was before George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. It was before protests started springing up around the country to address and to protest systematic oppression and racism in our country. And right now is we're we're releasing this episode.

There is just so much pain and fear and an anger and righteous anger out in the world about these just deep seeded systems of oppression and. Violence that have been committed against black bodies and black folks and people of color for hundreds of years. And so just not released this episode with with a lot of humility. And as two white folks, Justin, I didn't want to center our voices in framing the discussion of what is going on in the country right now. And so we actually reached back out to Timna a few weeks after the interview as we got prepared to release this episode to see if Tim would be willing to share some words from her perspective. So the following are words that Timna wanted to share with all of you. And following those words, we will go straight into the interview with Tim Gbara.

Hi, everybody.

I got a message for the great people of this podcast asking if I wanted to preface this podcast with a message, given the kind of times we're in right now, at least in the US. And actually, I want to you know, I am an immigrant to the U.S.. And I before coming to the U.S., I did face ethnic based discrimination, of course, but I found that the racism in the U.S. is something just so deep and just really, really deep.

And like anything else I've ever seen before and probably, you know, other countries like South Africa and Brazil who have similar racial dynamics probably might feel the same. And a lot of times when you talk about this kind of stuff, people outside of the US, like many times Europeans, for example, different European countries would kind of want to tell you, you know. But is it isn't the U.S. so terrible like we don't have that, you know, or all made so bad? Things are better here. You know, you don't know where things aren't better. They are not despite white supremacy is basically a global phenomenon. The only difference is really how it manifests itself in different places. And and the amount of dialogue and discourse and conflict that exists because of it. If you have people who are completely powerless, then they or will not be.

Protests broke out white supremacy because they just don't have a way to speak up. And if you have people who have not thought about the history and its connections and its roots to many different things, then obviously you won't have this discourse.

So don't think that this is just an American thing. This is a global phenomenon. Anytime I see Eritreans trying to get away and sinking boats and the way they are treated as refugees in Italy, for example, let's not forget, Italy colonized Eritrea. I remember that white supremacy is a global phenomenon.

And of course, any time an unarmed person of color, I'd say a black person is killed by police. We are we remember that police brutality is not also a US specific thing. So even though these things are happening in the US right now, and it might seem that talking about them might be U.S. centric, this is really a global phenomenon. I thought I had to say this because I just heard some people saying that, you know, coming out and saying Black Lives Matter or something like that will make their organization or their institution. That is supposed to be international. Seem like it's biased towards the U.S. or something like that. No, this is a global phenomenon. It's just that we're witnessing it in the U.S. right now.

And of course, I remember that we should respond to things that are happening in our context in a specific way. So we are responding to what's happening in the U.S. right now in this way. But it's not only a U.S. specific problem. I think I don't know what else to say is just so exhausting. I think Red said we're not going to solve racism this month. And that's true. This is just a long haul. This is a marathon. And it's not going to. Be solved today is not going to be solved tomorrow. I'm happy to see that. It just seems that tech companies, for example, just can't. They've been forced to not ignore it right now. I'm happy to see the virtual walkout at Facebook. And people are talking about it at Google. And I know we should demand more. But I'm just thinking about like 2012, you know, just saying Black Lives Matter was not acceptable. You were considered someone who is an agitator conflict. You know, someone is looking for conflict just for saying the words Black Lives Matter or even having a T-shirt or something like that. And I don't know, maybe this is progress. Maybe it just feels hard to say that it doesn't feel like progress. It just feels like nothing has changed.

In some ways, I feel like this is the same scene out of the late 60s where I don't know, the same brutalities happening and the same. The media is every acting in the same exact way against protesters.

And, you know, people care more about property, it seems, than black lives.

I don't know, maybe maybe the fact that people can't hide from it might be progress.

Who knows? It's really difficult to see anything as progress right now.

But I'm just trying to think that maybe we are making progress at it.

I don't know. Feels like doesn't feel like it, though.

So, yeah, I just wanted to send a message of to everyone who is just must be feeling terrible right now. And to anybody. To everybody else. You know, this is who is not in the US. This is not just a U.S. thing. Many of these events happen, you know, in the 60s. People indiv fighting for independence. We're very much connected with people in this civil rights movement.

Right. And did all of these movements many times their goal. And so just because we're seeing Black Lives matter, I don't think that this is just like us specific thing. I don't know why I'm so focused on this, but this really struck a nerve for me. So, I mean, that's all I have to say for now and take care of yourselves. And thank you for listening.

We are so excited to be on the line today with Dr. Timna Gabeira Timna. How are you doing today? Angad. How are you doing? OK. Thank you so much for joining us. As we begin this interview, we wanted to start with almost a million dollar question, which is what motivates you to do this work that you do? And we were wondering if you could paint a picture of your journey up to this point.

You know. Sometimes motivation is hard to come by. So there are days that are like really hard to get motivated. And so anything that gets me motivated when I am motivated, it's it's good feeling, actually, even like, you know what, I'm anxious or things like this. Like being completely demotivated is one of the real feeling and feeling empty is this is one of the things that I. I don't like feeling that way. I did. I had days where I felt like that many times. But so I think what motivates me is. I think like sometimes when I see something that I think is clearly wrong, it's hard for me to step away from it. And like, you know, I'm learning how to step away now. How many times? Because you can't you can't just try to address everything. Right. But like. But I think each email I get from someone who talks about, like, how my work has touched something in their life or my work has changed the way they're thinking about it or inspired them to do something that's really motivating for me. So I think, like ever since I was a little kid, I.

I had a little bit of an activist streak.

I wouldn't say, you know, I'm totally 100 percent activist because many times I feel like changing something is about actually the execution, just the day to day, kind of boring Excel spreadsheet, just calling phones, whatever, her kind of execution, you know. And there is many times where I've worked on a lot of people, where there are a lot of grand ideas and things, you know, that the execution is not there and the execution is never glamorous, like it's really never anything to, you know, show off. It's just kind of boring stuff you you want to do. So. As a little kid or mom told me, I was like four years old or something like that. And so, you know, I grew up in Ethiopia and, you know, older people are really, really respected. They just get the first dibs on everything. Right. Like you, you know, food or just they and they order you around. And as the youngest, you know, as a little kid, you're always just going, you know, you have to serve them. And so and then there was you know, there is communist government and they had a motto that was like modem that lands on us, which means it's in. And that's an I'm Horak, which means like the best for for the kids. And so I protested. I went to my mom and I was like, you know, we always have these get togethers. And what happens is that the older people eat first and all the yummy food.

Like when it gets to me, like some of the great food is gone, like I have to, you know, eat once the stuff that's not done, you know. And so and then you have there is this motto, like, the best for kids. And I don't think this is true because, like, we're not getting the best. We're getting the last place, you know?

And she I really take you seriously. She thought it was funny. You know, it demanded to be taken seriously. And then I remember, like in school, we, like, raised some money to build a library or something. This is a long time ago, like middle school or something. And I feel I don't remember exactly what happened. I don't know if maybe they didn't use their money for the library or maybe they did something. And I think we decided to have a strike or something like that. And my mom was supportive. She was like, you know, don't let them single you out. Like you don't want to be single dad like that. You know, so. So I always, like I, I kind of always had the streak a little bit. And one thing I think that that really helped me growing up is that I grew up in a very supportive environment. So I you know, I saw my my sisters. I was raised basically by a single mom. And my sisters were both electrical engineers. And I went to an all girls school. It's interesting. I went to a Alder's Catholic school and I feel like that school has created some of the most independent women. It's not necessarily something you associate with, you know, with strict kind of disciplinary schools like that. But like when I look at a lot of my friends who are women who went to that school. They're very independent. So I I grew up with that kind of really supportive environment. And I never felt like I can't do something because of any of those identities that I had.

But I was also, you know, M-m Eritrean ethnically. And, you know, there was always this feeling of being Eritrean. I'm like freedom fighters. You know, people fought for independence for 30 years and like this little country. And so you always hear these stories, right? Like your family, people in your family are involved in these kinds of things. And so you always grew up hearing these stories of freedom fighters and struggles. And I think that also kind of shapes your attitude and who you are. And so at some point, we had to leave the country. And so seeing the, you know, the integration process, like we had to leave. I went to Ireland and then I came to the States. And we you know, later the guy had political asylum that we had. We apply for a green card. And that took a very long time because of 9/11. And then after coming to the States, you know, I just. I experienced so many things, I experienced all sorts of racism, all sorts of sexism. I he one day I realized is that, you know, one way to understand how how far we are from equity here is that the story that's told. It's so it's really not accurate at all. Right. Like, as an immigrant, you know, when I was in high school, I basically learned like, oh, yeah, there is this thing called slavery and then, you know, blah, blah, blah, like Native Americans Trail of Tears.

And then, you know, it's fine. Now, that's it. There is this bad guy called Malkmus, good guy called Paul Bloxham with her guitar. And that's all you learn, right. And I and after all the racism I experience in high school, I was just like, this can not be like this can't be the only thing. This is not this cannot be the end of it.

So then I started reading up and I took a class at Stanford and I'm in, you know, like civil rights in the modern era and 20th century. And I was just literally I was shocked. Like, I didn't we didn't learn about lynchings. We didn't learn about none of, you know, we didn't learn about anything in high school. And so how can you move forward when the country is completely in denial with what, you know, its own history? Right. Where it whereas on the other hand, I spent my entire high school learning about Nazi Germany and, you know, we're in the US when we analyze Nazi Germany and like, who is responsible and all that stuff. So anyway, so all it's all to say that all of these things, I think, kind of shaped my thinking. And and I was always, you know, I was always into math and physics. And so I was always kind of interested in engineering and the sciences. And I always thought of anything different. Anything else that I do is separate from that. Like, I never kind of connected the two. I actually liked it. I thought, oh, OK, great. Here's this technical thing I can do like it. This has nothing to do with, you know, societal issues and whatever. I can just go do this thing and then, you know, when I don't want to worry about at all search, I'll just do this thing and then here, here, all these other issues that are going on.

And literally until very recently, when I'm reading like people like Ruaha that, you know, you you you interviewed and when I'm reading the ways in which, you know, engineers are many times can be part of the problem and the ways in which lots of companies were involved in, you know, Nazi Germany or like apartheid and things like that. I mean, that's for me, that's pretty recent. Like when I when I started learning about it, the way, you know, the way the history of Silicon Valley, right. When I was at Stanford, I mean, I did not learn about, you know, some of the histories of Silicon Valley or how the profit profits tied to war or how its development inside those kinds of things. You know, we just kind of learned about how I just I know I was very fascinated by, like, this place and that it was very innovative. You know, I wanted to be a part of it. And so, I mean, even in the last five, six years, I would say like 2012, me and now my thinking is very different. So it makes me wonder, like, how how do I think he will be different, like five years from now or, you know, eight years from now?

That's a whole kind of rambling to to kind of give you a little bit of an idea of what kinds of things I think about and what motivates me coming from your childhood as an activist kid over in Ethiopia and then to being an engineer in the States and in the university level. I'm wondering if you have a specific memory or a moment maybe where you started to realize that the technical and the social could be connected. And if there's anything in particular that comes to your mind, what pushed you towards that direction?

That's interesting, actually.

So I was always, you know, the way in which I connected them always was how there was no representation in in the workforce. So there were no black people. There were not not many women. And so that was the way in which I connected it. What happened, IRA? And so I was actually very worried about being kind of bucketed into this, you know, black woman doing things about black women stuff. And I I always actually got very irritated when people had these studies, like, oh, why don't we have more women in engineering? Well, women want to do things that help people and that kind of stuff. And I was just like, I do. Maybe women don't want to work with assholes like that.

Maybe that's just it. Maybe women just want to, you know, maybe women. There are women who just want to do stuff that that's not related to people just because it's fun, like like some other people do that maybe when they're in those fields, they just can't stand the heat, the environment and. Leave, you know, and maybe maybe that's what it is.

I don't know, so I always kind of get over these kinds of Bucklings and I wanted to make sure that I you know, I did. I was known for, like, my just baseline computer vision, whatever things. Not like my other stuff and the other stuff, it's just completely separate is is sort of how I wanted to tell it to be. And I are really my advisor. I think it's like in twenty fifteen or something like that or twenty sixteen. Twenty fifteen. I think she was like, you know. You know, you have like there's two things you care about, you care about social justice and care about all the stuff. And then you know, also like are you you work on computer vision and things like this and your your thesis should combine both of them, like I think your thesis should combine both. And like social justice and that that should be like your direction is pretty resistant to it. Actually, I was just like, you know, I didn't say no, but I was it's like I don't want to be like the you know, one person you have is kind of what happened. But in the end, it just ended up that way. Right.

Like, I just ended up being that that was the direction I was taking anyways.

And now really I don't really care what exactly you know or anything like that, you know, because you will always feel like you have. You'll have to have something to prove. And at some point, like, who are you trying to prove what to? So it doesn't matter. Right. Like, you do this thing, you have to prove this other thing. You do this other thing after. So, you know, now I don't really care. Like, I'm writing whatever kinds of papers I want to write, which is nice. You know, like I'm collaborating with whoever I want to collaborate with. And I don't care if the paper has math or if it doesn't, you know. So that's nice to be. I'm actually not happy that I'm in that spot right now. But yeah, but that's kind of how how it came to be.

In terms of what you're. Because I saw your face kind of light up when you talked about what you're working on right now. I'm wondering what you're particularly excited about in terms of either your research right now or professionally, what you're looking at right now. So it is just right now.

You know, I I just came from a meeting that was many people by team. So you might know Alex, Hannah and Emily dentin William Isaac, who is of the mind. And he's the general chair of fact, one of the general chairs next year. And also Joe, who I collaborated with on on this paper. She's a historian and she's, I think, finishing up her pace, she at Stanford. So we were just talking about a project we're working on right now. And it was this idea. And she wants to apply, like I'm historical, some methodology from history to analyze biases and data sets and also so. So, you know, historians learn about, you know, analyzing primary sources and things like that. And so that's that's one of the things right now we were discussing. And so that's fun. Right. Like to be able to do that. And I know and I notice I was thinking about like this a lot. I notice this this there is a huge bias in in our community. Right. And I think it was Ma Hicks. And if you feel small ma heggs and love. Yeah, I love them. They're like a historian as a historian of tech. I think it was Mark who is saying that each time, you know, they were saying like why some of these coding boot camps and things like that. Like if there's no systematic change these things and they're on on their own that are trying to bring more people of color or more women or whatever, I want really doing it because what happens is that the moment something becomes dominated by non white men, it becomes not, you know, that is somehow like a get it gets downgraded.

Right. So that's the history of computer science. Right. It Gosa it was supposed to be like a people kind of describe it as Secretary Irial thing or whatever. And they were advertising is if it was this, you know, it was targeted towards women and then it kind of changed. And now it's a bit like when it became lucrative, became a kind of a man only thing. And so and so the problem is, any time you know something, something changes status, then it becomes like dominated by the majority. And so so I was thinking, like in in in my field, for example, there are many cases where you apply a concept from a different feel like like, for example, from physics or from from a different field. And you apply the modeling techniques or or some math that some kind of understanding. And you you apply it to your setting. And that's always something that's welcome. That's always something that that people kind of accept, except the same kind of respect is not afforded. To the disciplines that are not considered technical and what does that even mean? Right, like so if you bring ideas from critical race theory into a machine learning, for example, that's not as respected by the machine learning community. Right. Because they're like, oh. But then whereas the technical component like. Whereas though whatever component.

Why does it. Why do you have to see math in there. You know, math is a tool just like everything else. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to advance a particular field. So why does it matter so much? You know how you're doing it, in my opinion. This is gatekeeping, dissimilar to how, you know, like I said, something loses status or status depending on who in the majority is doing it. And so, in my opinion, this is the way in which people are shut out. This is what this is kind of a gatekeeping mechanism.

So for me, I don't really see the difference if I'm bringing ideas from, for example, from my prior background, analog circuit design into machine learning.

And the thing that I found most compelling was something as simple as data sheets, like why that's not math, that's process. You know, so that's really what I think is important. Or if it's history or if it or it can be like physics, it doesn't matter. Right. But you can bring in different components from this and different disciplines.

And if it's really advancing the fields, I don't really know why it matters whether it has some mathematical component to it versus not.

Do you think the fear of not being taken seriously by the community in technology and I am machine learning, especially played in two part of that fear that you had in initially bringing in those like social justice ideas and and wants for your research originally at assembly.

One hundred percent. One hundred percent. I did not want to be again, like I did not want to be bucketed because, you know, people want to Buckett you into different buckets. That's one thing I noticed about the US. Actually, I remember I always said this coming on immigrating to the U.S. when I was in school. I was never bucketed into either the popular person or the nerdy person or the sporty person or the music person. Right. And here, like in high school, there is like these black kids, like if you were the nerdy person, you can't be the sporty person.

If you're this 40 person, you have to be the job. If you were the band person, you can't be. I mean, it's so it was it's not that's not how how it is.

When I was growing up, right. Like there are the quiet people. They're the nerdy people. The nerdy people can be the popular people. Popular people can be whatever like. It wasn't like this. You have to fit in this one bucket thing. And so this is exactly why I have to read this book after sorting things out of the effects of classification or something like that. This is them or. Yeah. Like Alex Hanna told me to read this book a long time ago, and I really want to read it. And so when I was you know, when you're in an environment where you're already the only one, you're already you're if you're already out of place, you you know, your ideas of reality are already so different from other people's ideas of reality. You always use you already have to like, you know, make sure that everything you say is, like, really accurate because someone is going to, like, challenge you with it with such confidence, you know. And so when you're in an environment like that, what you want is to show to people is that you are being that you are as good as them at their own game or whatever they're doing. Right. But what I realized is like later on, maybe it's really important for us to be educated about our history and how things came to be that way. Right. It's only when I started reading Maarse Works and who has works and other people's works where I realized, like, well, why do I feel that way? Why am I need to feel that way? And why am I trying to shy away from the things that are truly important? I feel like there needs to be some sort of transformation in our industry right now.

So when why am I being made to feel this way? That's when I started. I stopped caring about it. And I also feel it's important. You know, I sort of feel like I've made I've proven myself to a certain extent that like anything more is not necessary. So like in it to a certain extent, like you have to. I was reading, um, Trevor Noah's book. Right, Born a Crime. And he he talks about how, you know, language is is a big tool. Right. For that can be used in many ways. And so when you speak someone's language, you're they're more likely to listen to you anyways. Right. And so if I want to go to the computer vision community or cell or the machine, my computer or whatever, and I want to introduce certain ideas, if I speak their language, it's much more you know, I'm much more likely, I feel, to to to introduce this language to to kind of introduce them. To a certain other ideas, even interdisciplinary ideas that I'm I'm interested in. And I would like the machine learning community to take seriously. But if I don't speak their language and they feel like I am coming from the outside and I'm just, you know, speaking a different language, I don't understand this. I don't understand that. I think it's much harder for people to take me seriously. Right. So even strategically, like even without that fear that you're talking about, even strategically, I think it's important to establish yourself as part of some community so that people take you seriously to a certain extent, so that you you tell them, hey, look, like I do speak your language like, you know.

And so listen to me.

Right? If you don't, then it's much harder to kind of, I think, send a message, I guess, that you want to send.

Yeah. It's when you talk about, like the high school experience, which was very similar to my high school experience, where everyone gets put in a bucket. It sounds very immature. Right. And then you look at what's going on in academia. And then also an industry. And it's like that's what happens. What is that? What's the one thing you know that the why is the question that comes to mind for me, but also. Well, you've been doing this work, actually. Could we take a step back about representation for a second for folks that don't really that aren't aware of the issues of representation either in the academy or out in industry? Could you just give a a kind of representation one to one about what the issue might be and why it matters?

Oh, man, it is dire. You know, it was shocking to me. So when I went to school at Stanford as an undergrad and there is all all of these efforts to bring people in. This is exactly so I people what a lot of people do at work, at Google and Stand, whatever take whichever institution I feel they try to focus on. Oh, you know, kind of like, oh, let's get them interested early. Let's bring them in. Let's hire let's like get whatever the problem is once you're in there. There are a lot of people in prison or a lot of people doing something, but people are not taking this inclusion seriously at the D. AIPA diversity, equity, inclusion. So at Stanford two, what happens is a lot of people are brought in. So I think at the undergrad level, I felt, you know, I saw representation, not necessarily an electrical engineering, though, not in my field. Even people who started it, they would drop off. And by the very end, you had like no black almost no black people in grad school. Zero zero. Right. Like, I saw nobody. And and and in in these conferences, literally, like I always talk about this, I counted at some point like five out of fifty five hundred. Right. And this is an international conference globally.

You know, globally, white people are a minority. Right. You should see maybe like 10 percent white, 20 percent black. Like, you know, I mean, maybe 60 percent, you know, from the Asian continent like this.

This is a global representation of human beings. Right. And so and I saw like five black people out of fifty five hundred at the same time. There was this was in twenty sixteen. Right. And this was and at the same time there was all of this hype about all of this. But at the same time, that was the first time I read on this ProPublica article talking about crime, recidivism and how algorithms were being used to predict who or to supposedly predict who is likely to commit a crime again, et cetera, et cetera. It's being used. Some of this information is being used by judges to post bail amounts and fear in sentencing. And I did not know that this is the first time, a I heard I saw this article at the same time I was aware of Joy's work and we had a race started collaborating on. And so that's kind of where I was starting to put two and two together. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, there's no representation. But at the same time, this is what's happening, you know, with with algorithms that are being used in matters that are not benefiting many people in the world. Right. And so and so that's sort of that was kind of how I felt. And I had experiences, for example, trying to talk to people around me about police violence or like even just telling them my own stories.

And they don't want to believe it. You know, the people I remember people tell me like, oh, things must have been easy for me because they know I'm both black and a woman.

You know, this is the kinds of people telling me in grad school. And I'm just like, are you kidding me? Where you also are?

You know, and and so and so seeing that this was my experience and this is the group of people who are going to be the heads of companies, the heads of the departments, the heads of this that, you know, the professors of the future or whatever, and designing all of these algorithms and and their reality is so different.

I mean, people's reality in this country is so different anyways because as like someone coming from a different country. Well. Not know anything about the history of oppression in the US. Right. And even if you grow up here, you'll have a completely different reality like you completely. You don't learn about it. And so on top of that, there is no representation. And so this is a group of people designing that, you know, technology of the future. So it's and and so it's it's not just about.

Excuse me. I think representation is not just about seeing someone else who looks like you. Right. It's not just about the look. Right. It's also like the reality, the lived experience that you have so many times when people bring in people from underrepresented groups. I feel like they just want. They want the look. They want a black face or a black female face. And and then you just think the same way as everybody else. And do the same thing as everybody else. You just happen to be like a black female face.

But that is not representation. That's not inclusion. Right. If you're a black females face that is advancing the same kind of oppressive system that exists right now. That's in my opinion. Is that representation? Right. And so I feel like each time I speak up, actually, you know, people always have issues with kind of the way I say something or whatever, and we call it hashtag communication difficulties.

There's always Kimie. It's like I'm like I don't have communication difficulties. I'm just communicating difficult things that you don't want to hear. Right.

And so if you don't allow people from underrepresented groups to talk about marginalization, link, what does that mean? It's not representation, in my opinion. Right. So, I mean, I can go on forever regarding representation. But yeah. So. So this is why. So I co-founded Black and I with my colleague Freddie Hubbard. And I mean black in the eye. I think it's I think a lot of people have told me how it has helped them kind of feel less isolated. But it as it has also taken so much of my time. You know, so much of my time starting in 2016, 2015. So one person said, you know, people don't understand how much time. Not just physical time. Just time to do all the groundwork that is necessary to do that. Most people wouldn't do that like physical enter time, but like also mental energy. You know, that it takes to do this kind of stuff and still keep up with the other things you have to do because you can't let those things slip either by any means. Yeah, that's that's my want to want representation. This is something I can talk about for like a very, very long time.

Yeah, well, the community that you co-founded Black in a I would you call it a community or a group or how would you label those.

I would, yeah. I think it's a group. Is it. Maybe it's community is a good way to put it. So we have we we are doing the first thing we wanted to do. It was like, who is out there? You know, I mean, like, let's just know who is out there.

The second thing we wanted to do is provide kind of visibility for people. So there are a lot of people, a lot of great people out there. But, you know, they don't get invited to give keynotes or they're not recruited or whatever. They don't maybe they don't get funding for their startup. So, like, how can we amplify their voices and and get them? So we have a public facing Facebook and Twitter account that just kind of, you know, just like posts, you know, things that are happening by people in black in the eye. Right. Like either papers they wrote or interviews they had or like blog posts, a road or something like this. And then we we also have a workshop.

That's our our biggest thing is to so, you know, to to bring people to these conferences because so many things happen at these conferences. Many decisions are made at these conferences, Riley, people informally kind of network, and then they invite them to some other stuff.

They collaborate together, they get funding for something, you know, and if you're left out of these conversations, these informal conversations is very difficult to to get any any sort of resources or collaborators. And also, I there's also people who met there like and who went off on their own and started their own kind of thing. So, for example, what did I what I find really funny is that a lot of the people I met from Ethiopia, they met at Black me, IRA. They are all living here. They met a black man. And like the US at some point and the black man workshop. And then they went off and like together they organized like the first a conference in Ethiopia. They organized like an in depth is so that deep learning and Delbar so deep learning and rabbis like another organization that are really like and they don't they have summer school and, you know, they rotate in like different African countries. Last year was in Nairobi a lot. Now it's I think I guess virtual. But, you know, so it's it's basically for the four. Well, of African descent everywhere. Right. Like, so people in the black diaspora, like everywhere in the world. Right. And so it's really great to see people kind of. Oh, and then people the online community, people are like working together and collaborating and writing papers. So it's it's really cool to to see people kind of meeting each other and collaborating together. And and I think what we're what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a space where people can thrive, rightly so. Give them more visibility, hopefully give them more resources for for things that they're doing, provide support and kind of net and network. I mean, stuff. Things are not about merit, meritocracy. Things are about networks, actually. And so when people have a network of people who support them and who amplify their voices, I think that's when they succeed. So that's one of the things we're trying to to have here.

Yeah. And you've given us a lot of the motivation, it seems, for why this is important and what caused you to want to create this community and then the what the community is and how it's helping people. And I'm really curious what the experience has been like and the really the response from the A.I. community, these conferences, but also just in general and the response from the people who have joined the community. What has what has the experience been like for you as a co-founder?

I honestly, I think a lot has happened that I didn't anticipate. And so, like I know, for example, all of these other organizations started disabilities in Latin X and I. What else? I mean, I think there might be more. But like, these organizations did not exist before. And and now they exist after a queer and a I. How can I forget queering. Yeah. And so Quirindi I disability's now I let an X and I all of them were not around before. And now they are. Which is great. Right. And a lot of times what happens is that all of us can sort of talk about advocacy together. Right. So for underrepresented groups, we can band together to to then like advocate for four for each of four things that are good for all of us. Right. And so I think that's Bangun. So one example is I remember, you know, Deb. Deborah Araji was like a superstar. Now, you might you might know her. You might have interviewed her. So, for example, she sure all sorts of great people, especially wrote her enjoy, wrote a forlorn paper, two gender shapes that showed that Amazon's recognition that they still sell to law enforcement has a similar type of bias. Right. Similar error disparities and error rates by a mom, for example, darker skinned women and lighter skinned men. You know, so the thing that's we showed and gender shades and they tried to shut down this route, you know, they tried to shut them down.

They were like BP after BP was going after her enjoy. And and, you know, my dad told me that by the time she came to the first black man workshop, she was ready to leave the tech industry. You know, and she was just rich. She was feeling isolated and was kind of ready to leave the tech industry. Right. And so for me, that's that's really what it's all about. Right. It's a research is not just about. So if you're interested in advancing a particular field, there are many ways in that can happen that can be done. One is you yourself doing something. But the better way is having a multiplier effect where a lot of other people are doing something who wouldn't otherwise do this thing. And it's really important for people like Deb to be involved in this research because there are very few people who will take the kinds of risks that people who care about their community take. Right. Like, it's not just writing a paper for Deb. It was also kind of making sure that something a community is not harmed. And so it's a for me, it's really important to make sure that people like that still stay in the field and get the support that they need. So. So I think so. I mean, when I look back and see many of the things we've done, I'm I'm proud of the organization, but I always see the things we have to do.

Like, it's always like the favorite me and black man is always like I have this like to do list right now of so much to do list, like, you know, send email to this person and finalize goals and stuff, create applications for this thing, like figure out what to do for this other thing. You know, this is this is my list of to dos for black.

And I always I just you know, there's always a never ending like this huge list of to DOS. And I always think about like all the stuff in which which we could improve. Right. And so I think there's a lot we can do. There's a lot we can do with our online community management. I think that's one thing we want to. Focus on this year and just kind of because, of course, like by necessity as well. Make sure that our online community is strong and people and kind of encourage people to find each other and have collaboration's that there have been many, many people like writing, writing us about, you know, how like The Gap got a particular internship because of us or they got a scholarship to go to some summer school or they got this job or they got this peach d they got into a pastry program or postdoc or whatever.

And that feels good, right? Like, that feels really good. So this reminds me of something that you said earlier that I want to follow up with when you were talking about the call, the denial of kind of the American meal, you about slavery, about difficult conversations in general about racism. You know, the list goes on and you said, you know, how can we move forward when the country is in denial? And my experience has been that especially when Gert's representation, the tech industry is still it's it's getting there, but it's still in denial in certain ways. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts about, you know, how and maybe Block and I is is a is a way that you're beginning this conversation. But how do we move forward as an industry when we're still so stuck?

And, you know, I think that that the combination of denial and talking about diversity can be can be dangerous sometimes, because if you understand the history of this country and you understand just how oppressed certain groups of people have been, then you talk about diversity. You can put it in a particular context. But if you don't understand this trip, this country and what is going on and then you just talk about diversity, then diversity just becomes about variety. Right. It's like, oh, we need X number of this people, X number of that people. And then that's diversity. And then the the whole conversation, in my opinion, just gets derailed. Right. Like so. So I mean, for me, I say this when we were talking about black in the eye, for example, and we were talking about, shall we call it like something more broad, like underrepresented people now or whatever. And we decided finally, no, what let's call it black and. Because there is enough to it. We want it to be focused. You know, there are things that are spaces that are happening there specific to black people. And I. Right. And if we just called it like, let's say, underrepresented people or whatever, that specific thing would not be addressed. And I think as symbol, I see a similar thing happening with diversity. Right. Like, the conversation just becomes about all groups of people, all types of representation.

Right. But there are specific things that are happening with specific groups that you have to look at. Historically, that historical context is really important. Right. And so, for example, when you talk about, you know, reverse recently, let's have if when we say racism, anti black racism is, I think, manifest itself. And Selma is such a different way than, let's say, like some other kind of racism, that because because of the deep historical roots in this country. Right. I'm telling you that I'm not saying that we're ontime of this country. Right. And so and so I think like having that conversation about diversity without specific historical and understanding it just I just feel like it just derails the whole conversation. Right. And then people like, what about this thing? What about this? Other than like, you know. And so it seems to I can say the same thing about like let's see people with disabilities, for example. Right. Like the like of we understand the historical context and the struggle. And, you know, I mean, we can we can go on and on like the same thing. Same thing with the LGBTQ plus movement. Right. Like, we have to look at his specific groups and the historical context of what it what diversity and equity means for that group of people. If we just start talking about diversity like it's some sort of, like, variety, why don't we have this group? Well. Why do we only have one of this group? Why do we only have two of this? You know, then it just becomes a conversation that's not rooted in why we're talking about diversity in the first place. Right. And so I and I feel like that's that's happening right now in the tech industry.

Right. Like, instead of like in in spite of how much talk there is about diversity, there's like I can't tell. I mean, Rachel Thomas has this great writing about how diversity hurty ag branding hurts diversity. And I think that's as a great reading material. My opinion like so and I my my experience has been like that. Right. Like diversity. Branding is hurting diversity because now everybody is aware that there is something called diversity that we all have to be thinking about. Right. I think very few people in the tech industry have not heard the word diversity. But then now there's like a either a backlash or a different understanding of what diversity is, because we don't have this education of what exactly is a people are enduring in the in the. Right. And so somehow I just don't know. I don't know how to what to do. But like, I think we we need to have this understanding of what the reality is for different groups of people. And people need to be educated. And the second thing I think that is difficult that I have seen, people don't want to have confrontation.

They don't want to feel uncomfortable. They don't like I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been told I should communicate differently or I shouldn't be so public about what I'm saying, or I should try this avenue first. I should try, you know, whatever. You can't tell me that. And then expect and then say you care about diversity and expect to have any sort of change. Right. Seeta Ping, I, I, I don't know if you if you, if you know her. She's so social scientists and she's based out of London right now. But like we were in a workshop together and one day she and she she collaborates with our people on this project called our data bodies. I really like this project. I think you should check it out. And she talks about how there's a lot of anger and that anger needs to be expressed in order to have a shared language and a shared understanding and a shared reality. But what happens right now is that anger cannot be expressed at all.

It's like someone is, you know, let's say someone is shooting you and and you scream because someone is shooting you. And people are criticizing the way in which you're screaming. And but like but they're not really criticizing the fact that someone is shooting you and you're like, how are you? You know, someone is like literally shooting me. And you are criticizing the way in which Hembree acting to it. Right. Like, that's what's happening right now. So if we don't address that equity, the inclusion part.

How do people feel once they're in these spaces? I just can't imagine. I don't I don't know what how we can figure out that the other parts.

Thank you for being so authentic with your experience.

By the way, I think that's is really important always for people, our listeners especially, to hear what what these experiences are like, especially those who are probably experiencing similar things, whether it's in industry or academia. And Dylan and I are our peers. These students were pretty deeply situated in academia right now. And I know a lot of academics. They talk about representation in the tech industry and we use this term the tech industry a lot. But you're uniquely situated in the tech industry right now and you're working in industry and you have a background in academia. So I'm wondering if you see these issues of diversity and representation any differently in industry than you do in academia and what peoples and companies, organizations approaches are for representation in the tech industry?

You know, I, I can be a little positive for a second before I get back to my usual kind of complaining, but that I know the the improvement at least I've seen for me is in my little small island, right in our team. I think we're really we're like collecting people who were at the verge of leaving the tech industry or something like that. That's sort of what what we're doing in our team. And that's because my manager has sort of allowed and he's he's provided me cover like so many times people would tell him to, like, tell me to shut up or something or whatever, like sell me just this or that. But for me to get to a place like that with him. It took us again a lot. It was very emotionally difficult. He did not understand or he would get defensive. And I would like you know, I would talk to him and my some of my allies, like this guy Sergio at Google, he's great.

He's set up like monthly meetings with my manager to, like, talk to him, to educate him, you know, I mean, that's a that's a great ally. That's the kind of stuff you should do. Yeah. And and and like it was just I almost quit so many times.

I mean, the number of times I said I quit was like, you know, I think I think they would not. They just I mean, he is generally surprised that I'm here like more than a year and a half later, I'm still here. But we had to. That's what I mean. Like, if he was not willing to go through that, we wouldn't have gotten to a shared understanding and shared reality. So I can't see how any of these diversity initiatives or anything can work if people like him. So if people like him at the leadership level, I mean date, we should target the leaders, because if that's really where it is, like you can't do a lot of people target the bottom, like let's bring people in, let's do this. Let's do that's what we should target the leaders. If if the leaders change, then they have a lot of power to change other things. Right. To provide coverage, provide protection, to change things, to provide that, to change the direction. If the leaders don't change, it does not matter what you're doing. Like, I mean, it's you know, it's there at the grass. Roots movements can make the leaders change, but otherwise, if you have leadership that doesn't value certain ideas, that doesn't value what you bring to the table. Who is doesn't value like diversity, inclusion and equity. I don't see how anything is going to change if we don't have accountability, like if if people are not held accountable for the things they do. There is. I just don't understand how things can change. So I don't know how this accountability can come.

Like, honestly, like in the Congressional Black Caucus, do something or. I don't know, like.

Because if there is no accountability, I have no idea how we can change things in terms of industry and academia. Oh man. I just feel. Oh, so that's just my situation right now. I felt like I had a lot more. I have I so I was actually thinking about going to act like. And I thought like I'd have more autonomy there. Right. Because I went, you know, do my own thing and have to deal with this and that I don't like. But then people are telling me there's so much politics there and, you know, hiring a new faculty member and like, you know, so many people have to agree. And like some of them have been there for ever and so convincing everybody that this one thing is important. And then so. So whereas, like, right now, I think I have a little bit more of an easier time to make a little small change in my own team brand, in my own little team, perhaps in acting you can do that with the students you recruit to.

Right.

But if this Piech, these students, the pool of peace students you have to admit to your school is already like, you know, zero diversity. And then the pool of students you have to recruit. As a professor is is also like zero diversity. Right. And so then how do you convince the entire department that you need more there? I don't know.

And and what I would say is that I think people don't realize that a lot of times people talk about academia versus industry as if they're like completely separate things. But I see the same people moving around like I mean, once I see professors go into industry and people and industry going back to academia, collaboration's, like visiting researchers, is that people writing grants together. I feel like it's the same people basically as the same people in both places, like is people's, you know, our friends, their colleagues. And so I think this this perceived separation between academia and an industry is not that big, in my opinion. It's the same people with the same ideas kind of going back and forth between the two things. Right.

The same you know, the same group of people basically, in my opinion, run both industry in academia. You know, it's the same colleagues, the same friends and the same group of people are shut out of both opportunities. So I don't think we should think there is too much of a separation between industry and academia. But I. Yeah, but I. Cause I just feel for me. I think there's the same battles in both. Like, I honestly don't see that huge of a difference except I guess an industry. I have a little bit of more power to hire someone if I know if I can convince my manager. Right. And then who can convince his manager. Whereas in academia, I feel like I have to convince so many more people to recruit this one student or whatever. And so, honestly, I see personally, I see academia changing so slowly because they're so conservative. Right. When I'm visiting schools, I remember I visited M.I.T. and students were telling me, like they could not find advisors to, like, work on the kinds of things where we're talking about. And like they started reading groups is stuff that like people are not taking it seriously, like, you know, I am. I just feel like academia moves so slowly on this. And I I don't know when something is going to change in academia. Right.

So I don't know. That was that was sort of my my thinking.

As we near the end of this interview, as you probably expected, you're on a podcast called the Radical A.I. Podcast. So we have to ask you two questions. The first one is, how do you define the word radical? What does that word mean to you? And do you situate yourself your story in your research in that definition? If you do, how.

That's interesting.

Mm hmm.

How do I how do I define the word radical? Man, transform some something that's transformative. Maybe. But, you know, a lot of times I feel like what we consider radical. It happened somewhere different or it happened in a different community or it happened in the past some time, but we just didn't know better or whatever. And so now we're thinking of it as radical. Right. Like, I don't know how to explain it. Like, I think that, like, you know, a practice that we think is radical many times is not a new practice. It adjusts. You know, it just happens that maybe we don't know the historical context under which this practice happened before. I wasn't considered radical by certain groups of people. And so we're trying to bring it into we're trying to practice it now. And so then people might think it's radical, right.

Like people thought it was, you know, like, for example, just one simple example I want to give is, you know, people think it's radical for me to have my hair the way it is in the sense that literally for me to comb my hair and not do anything else and for it to grow out of my head the way it is and have an afro, because that's literally how my hair grows out of my head.

People think is some people. Some people say that's radical because I'm not straightening my hair. I'm not doing you know, there's because there's been politics around black women's hate her for ever.

Right.

And like so it's supposed to be unkempt if it's not an effort supposed to be like this, but just just me wearing my hair as is.

People you know, some people would consider radical or breeding or whatever, that bamming, but that's that's only the case because we've been in the past X number of years kind of brainwashed into thinking for some reason.

For me, it's crazy that people think, you know, that that like that. Me having just my hair is like growing out of my head is the thing that's radical. Right. So that's what I mean.

Sometimes it's, you know, something that is that we consider radical or transformative or different or an idea that, you know, is just so different or out of the ordinary is something that's just so ordinary for us. Some groups of people or has been so ordinary for a very long time.

So so for me, honestly, like many times, radical does not mean lank different, you know, so different or or extra ordinary. It just means bringing back like ideas is that, you know, things that are that are actually very ordinary. And for some reason, we have been brainwashed to think that they're not.

So so maybe maybe that's kind of that's what I would say about that.

So as we as we close, normally we ask our guests if they have a piece of advice for students who are beginning. There were four PHC work or working in this field. And I actually want to want to bring a twist to that question. So we started out this interview with you talking about how much you've changed and grown in the last, you know, since 2012. In your journey and thinking about where you might be, you know, in in eight years or in six years. And I'm wondering if there's one piece of wisdom that you're sitting with right now that you want yourself to remember in eight years.

I think one is to allow people to evolve. Sometimes we mean some peoples in the era of Twitter and software too harsh. You know, as someone says something. Ten years late. Ten years ago. And we don't forget like we don't forgive them. We don't know. Human beings have to be allowed to evolve. Right. I, I get new information. I should change my ideas. Otherwise, you know, I shouldn't be like sometimes people say, you know, someone flip flops or something.

But, I mean, it depends. Right. But if if I have new information and I talk to new people somehow I should update my belief about the world. Right.

So one example is that, for example, I remember in 2012, I thought drones were fine. Like, I really thought I would argue with my friends and stuff. I'm like, so what else are you going to do? And all that. And right now, I think drones are like some of the worst things that have happened. Right. I mean, and I don't know what I'll think, you know, 10 years later, after talking to more people and more, you know, reading more or whatever.

And so we have to allow people to know or sometimes we say, oh, so and so. You don't campaign for this person, you know, 50 years ago or something.

I mean, we have to to a certain extent mean we have to allow people to evolve like we do, you know, otherwise we can't we can't go get anywhere. And I think this I love you know, Sabelo just had this some this interview that I that I shared on Twitter about, you know, restorative justice and wound to and like different kind of ways of having justice. Right. For example, how people approached it and the Grundon genocide for an apartheid versus, you know, the Holocaust, for example. He was talking about that. Right. So so that's that's what I say. We just have to allow people to evolve and have different ideas and different interests and different beliefs about the world.

And for our listeners who want to find out more about you and your work and your research. Is there a place that you would like to direct them?

Let's see. I haven't been keeping everything up to date.

So we can go to and to a black eye dot org for people who want to or request to join as allies or as members of the black man community that we can follow me on Twitter. I just write all sorts of stuff and she things her interest in it and the ethical team. Meg Mitchell is my colleague for the Ethical Team. Also follow her on Twitter. We don't know if we have. We aren't. You know, we're trying to have like a public facing Web site for our ethical team. And so we're we're going to work on that soon. I bet. And also, you know, my my friend, Jillani Nelson runs a nonprofit called Ivey's Koetter. With that, I'm involved in, too. And so check that out. And support like people can also always donate to, like Vaknin at DeCota and things like that. So, yeah, it's a multimedia.

Thank you so much for joining us today and for a wonderful conversation.

Thank you for having me.

We again want to thank Dr. Timna Gebril for a wonderful conversation today and again, especially as we're releasing this episode right now with so much going on in our world. That is directly tied into. Everything that Tim Knapp brought up. All right.

The anger, the fear, the unfairness, the issues of representation. It's.

I've been thinking a lot about this conversation actually in the past few weeks since we recorded it. And what my role is as a white person, specifically a white person who is cohosting a podcast about. Radical issues, including, you know, race and and gender and trying to, you know, lift up. Folks, and what what that means. Like, what does it really mean to be radical while still. Controlling.

The means of privilege and controlling the conversation and just you and I have talked about this a little bit, like it's it's there's a certain level of power, right, in us being able to figure out what questions to ask. And we're grateful to be doing this work because, you know, it's better than the alternative, which might just be, you know, to go back to the well of lifting up the status quo of the same in a straight white men who are, you know, on most panels right now. And so we like to think that we're a good alternative. But issues of representation play out in media all the time. And to a certain degree, we are part of that media.

So this is all to say that Timbits reflections make me really. Sit back and ask some hard questions about, you know, what?

What are we doing here in this project?

Yeah, I think there's definitely an elephant in the room and the elephant is privilege, especially for our podcast. Like you said, were too well-meaning white folks who talk about a lot of things that we have never personally experienced, at least probably.

I'm assuming that you've never experienced issues of racism and maybe even issues of sexism.

And these are things that we unpack quite a bit in our conversations. And something that Timna said that really stuck with me quite a bit was this idea of reality and that we all live a different reality, even if we are experiencing the same thing on the outside or inside. Reality is quite a bit different. And it's especially different for people who are marginalized. And that's something that maybe I've experienced to a certain extent in some circles. But more commonly, I probably have not experienced and most definitely haven't experienced at the levels that many people have in this country. And so this conversation is so fitting for right now when people need to come together who have these different lived experiences and who are living in these different realities, to be there for each other and to empathize with each other, even though there is no way that we can know what each other has been through.

And you you know, you know, I thought Castile, I I'm all about appropriate vulnerability and and like, pull it pulling back the curtain, Rick, because I think it's I think it's important to to model that as anyone who's in public as it should, I think should model it that appropriate vulnerability. And this has been one of the most we've we've had so many different takes of our intro and outro of this particular particular episode, because it there is no there's no perfect thing to say. Right. There's no perfect thing that we can say or that we can do. Like, we can try to do the work. We can try to be part of the people doing the work. We can try to be allies. We can try to be more than allies. We can lose track of what language to even use about allies ship. And, you know, we could we can create a podcast in which we talk about these issues. But, you know, we don't have we don't have any solutions, although we would want we so badly want to have solutions to these kind of things. And, you know, we were even talking as we were doing the intro, like I came up with the idea to do like a moment of silence. But then, like, it's just feels like such bullshit to have a moment of silence. Well, like, you know, last night I stood, you know, outside just as part of a crowd rioting. And it's like. Silence doesn't seem to be the answer, and at the same time, there needs to be so much time for mourning and for grief and then also time for anger and for noise. And how do you make.

How do you make room for all of that? And how do you make room for all of that? During an hourlong podcast. And the answer is probably over an hour at probably. And he is you can't you can't do it.

And so it's just like this this perfect imperfection of trying your best to make sense of it all. And to like name what name, what, where you're coming from. And just trying to be intentional at the very least of of what we're doing. And so I think that that's kind of my hope for for this episode, is that we do center our voices a little bit in our experiences. And this can be a space and part of the overall movement out in the world right now to, at the very least, talk about some really difficult things to talk about and have some really difficult conversations about racism, about violence, about systematic oppression.

Yeah.

And that was one of the main reasons why we made this podcast in the first place, was because we wanted to bring up those radical and difficult conversations that people are just too scared to talk about. And even Timna, it brought up at one point in this interview that people tell her she has hashtag communication difficulties, but really she's just communicating difficult things that people aren't ready or don't want to hear. And maybe that's all we're doing right now. We're not necessarily offering solutions to or we're not necessarily offering solutions or answers to problems that we don't know enough about. But we're bringing them up and hopefully starting a better dialogue between ourselves, people in industry, people in the academy.

And honestly, everyone and, you know, to a certain degree, that's where that's where change happens, is through awareness, through education and then through.

Conversation.

So, you know, for for listeners out there, thank you for being part of this journey with us. We want to state clearly that we stand with Black Lives Matter. We stand with data for black lives.

We stand with black and I and similar groups.

And we are here both to create space and then also to listen. So.

I guess. It feels weird to do a standard exit and outro for this episode, but we have to altro at some point.

So for more information on today's show, please visit the episode page at Radical A.I., Dawg.

If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to subscribe, write and review the show on iTunes or your favorite pod catcher. Join our conversation on Twitter at radical iPod.

And as always, stay radical.

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