It was a move that capped off a dramatic period in his career. Her manager, Timnit Gebru, was fired in late 2020 after she wrote a paper questioning the ethics of large language models. Meg Mitchell was also shown the door soon after.
DAIR, which was founded by Gebru in late 2021, aims to challenge the existing understanding of artificial intelligence through a community focused, bottom up approach to research. Teams in Berlin and South Africa are part of the group.
The group wanted to find a different way of artificial intelligence that didn't have the same constraints as corporate research. She says that these types of investigations allow for research for community members that is different kinds of knowledge that is respected and compensated.
DAIR is still trying to figure out its approach. Research is going on. The institute has three full-time employees and five fellows who come in with their own research agendas but also help in developing the institute's programs. Satellite imagery and computer vision technology are being used by DAIR fellow Raesetje Sefala to focus on neighborhood change in South Africa. She is analyzing the impact of desegregated areas. The power asymmetries in outsourcing data work is being worked on by another DAIR fellow. Data laborers living in the Global South are usually paid a pittance.
DAIR is a good fit for Hanna. She started her path to tech with a PhD in sociology and work on labor justice. She used machine- learning to study how activists connected during the 2008 revolution in Egypt, where her family is from. You can't just pull a movement out of thin air and say that the revolution happened on social media. I started interviewing activists to understand what they are doing on the ground.
DAIR aims for big structural change by using research to shed light on issues that might not otherwise be explored and to spread knowledge that might not be valued. A lot of white supremacist values and practices are embodied in tech organizations. Interrogating what those perspectives are is one way to unsettling that. She says that DAIR is a champion.
Anmol Irfan is a freelance journalist and founder of Perspective Magazine, based in Lahore, Pakistan.
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