The character arc of Timnit Gebru
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in Addis Ababa in 1982 or 1983 and raised there by her mother after her father died when she was five. Between then and now sit a flight from Ethiopia at fifteen during a war, a refused visa and a period in Ireland, asylum in the United States, a high school where she says teachers refused to let her take certain courses, an internship at a computer company, three degrees at Stanford ending with a doctorate in computer vision in 2017, a tally she kept at a conference, a group for Black researchers in her field, a study that measured whose faces the software got wrong, a departure from a very large company that the two sides describe differently, and an institute of her own founded in 2021. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Timnit Gebru?
She counted the room. Then she changed who was in it.
Her father, an electrical engineer with a doctorate, died when she was five, and she was raised in Addis Ababa by her mother, an economist. Both her parents were from Eritrea. When she was fifteen, during a war between the two countries, some of her family were deported to Eritrea and compelled to fight, and she fled Ethiopia. She was refused a visa to the United States and lived briefly in Ireland before being granted political asylum, an experience she has described as miserable.
She settled in Somerville, Massachusetts, to attend high school, where she says she immediately began to experience racial discrimination, with some teachers refusing to allow her to take certain advanced courses despite her being a high achiever. She went to Stanford, took a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering, and interned at a computer company, working in its hardware division on circuits. There her interest turned towards software, and specifically to computer vision.
In 2015 she attended the field's largest conference in Montreal, and noticed she was one of very few Black researchers among three thousand seven hundred people. The following year she went back and kept a tally. Out of eight thousand five hundred delegates there were five Black men, and she was the only Black woman. Rather than leave it as an observation, she co-founded a community of Black researchers in the field, which grew into a group with its own gatherings and standing.
She took her doctorate in computer vision in 2017 and joined a research laboratory working on fairness and accountability in the same field. In 2018 she co-authored a study that measured how accurately commercial facial analysis systems classified different faces, and found the error rates were far higher for darker skinned women than for lighter skinned men. That year she joined a very large technology company as co-lead of a team on the ethics of artificial intelligence.
In 2020 she co-authored a paper on the risks of very large language models. Her employment ended in December of that year, and the two accounts of how differ. The company said the paper had been submitted without waiting for internal review and that it was accepting her resignation. She said she had asked for the identity and feedback of every reviewer, that she had only raised the possibility of a last date rather than resigning, and that she was terminated. More than a thousand of the company's own workers signed a letter about it. In December 2021 she launched her own research institute, to study the effect of artificial intelligence on people at the margins, with a focus on Africa and African immigrants in the United States.
The moments
Timnit Gebru's timeline.
The 1980s
Her father dies
Setback, and it changed everything. Five years old, in Addis Ababa, raised from there by her mother.
The 1990s
She flees at fifteen
Setback, and it changed everything. A child leaving the only country she had lived in.
A visa refused
Setback, and it changed her direction. Turned away first, and living somewhere else while it was decided.
Doors closed at school
Setback, and it changed her direction. A high achiever told which classes were not for her.
The 2000s
Stanford, and a hardware bench
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Circuits first, and then the thing that looks at pictures.
The 2010s
She notices the room
Everyday, and it changed her direction. Three thousand seven hundred people, and almost nobody like her.
She keeps a tally
Milestone, and it changed everything. A number nobody could argue with, written down by hand.
She co-founds Black in AI
Milestone, and it changed everything. The answer to her own tally, built rather than requested.
A doctorate in computer vision
Milestone, and it changed everything. The qualification and the subject she would spend the next decade on.
Gender Shades measures the gap
Milestone, and it changed everything. The study that put a number on whose face the software gets wrong.
Co-leading an ethics team
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Inside the company, asking the question from the inside.
The 2020s
Withdraw the paper, or ask who objected
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: ask who objected, and why, taken, or withdraw it and stay. Her employment ended in December 2020, with the company saying it was accepting a resignation and her saying she had not resigned. One year later to the day she launched her own research institute.
Two accounts of one departure
Setback, and it changed everything. The record holds both accounts and settles neither.
The lists come
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Three lists in two years, after the year she had.
An institute of her own
Milestone, and it changed everything. One year to the day, and she had built her own place to ask.
A great immigrants award
Milestone. The refused visa, twenty five years on.
She kept a tally in a room of eight thousand five hundred people and then built the thing the tally said was missing. What she set moving is a field that now has to say who its systems get wrong, and an institute that asks the question from where the answers actually land.
In her words
Quotes by Timnit Gebru
It’s humans who decide whether all this should be done or not.
We should remember that we have the agency to do that.
You don’t want someone like me who’s going to get in your way.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
Hers is a count kept in a conference hall, and everything that came of refusing to leave it as a private observation. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Timnit Gebru: frequently asked questions
What people ask about her line.
What is Timnit Gebru's character arc?
Why did Timnit Gebru leave Google?
What is Timnit Gebru's Gender Shades study?
What did Timnit Gebru found?
What did Timnit Gebru count at a conference?
Where is Timnit Gebru from?
Where does this timeline of Timnit Gebru's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with her.
Sources
- Timnit Gebru, English Wikipedia biography.
- Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification, Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, volume 81, 2018.
- Contemporary news reporting of December 2020 on the two accounts of her departure from Google, including the open letter signed by more than one thousand two hundred of the company's workers.
- Announcement of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, 2 December 2021.
- Wikiquote, Timnit Gebru, for the quotations below.
- Gebru, interview, 2023.