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 beingFei 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.Edelmanalso listed her among the key AI creators to know in 2025.
Gebru worked atApple, designing signal processing algorithms, including for the first iPad. She later joinedMicrosoftResearch 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 theDistributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute(DAIR), focusing on AI’s impact on marginalised communities. She has criticisedartificial 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.
