The scientist Timnit Gebru won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel". The award recognized her work on digitally based justice technologies.
Former Google researcher Gebru was fired after refusing to remove conclusions from a study on biases in language models. The jury awarded her for questioning the concentration of power in technology.
Timnit Gebru's work highlights the biases present in AI systems and their effects on discriminated individuals. – Image: tadamichi/Shutterstock
Science against AI biases
Timnit Gebru's work for greater representation gained momentum in 2017, when she founded the NGO Black in AI. The initiative seeks to increase the presence and visibility of Black people in the field of artificial intelligence.
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Three years later, while serving on the leadership of Google's ethics team, Gebru was one of the authors of a research article on the risks of racist and sexist trends in language models. The company asked her to retract the results, according to the Right Livelihood jury.
Gebru refused and was eventually fired. After leaving Google, she deepened her work on the subject and created the DAIR, a reflection center dedicated to highlighting the prejudices that AI systems cause in the lives of people subjected to discrimination and exclusion.
When announcing the award, the jury justified the choice "for questioning the concentration of power" and "paving the way for digitally based justice technologies".
Other recognitions
Gebru was not the only one honored in this edition. The Right Livelihood also awarded three initiatives related to the defense of human rights, women, and democracy:
- Jalila Haider: Pakistani lawyer recognized for her fight against ethnic, state, and patriarchal persecutions;
- Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA): ecofeminist movement that brings together over 178,000 small-scale farmers from 11 countries in southern Africa;
- Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA): organization recognized for contributing to building and preserving Georgian democracy.
Among the works highlighted by the jury is the RWA's role in mobilizing women in defense of access to land and seeds against corporations and patriarchal systems.
The award brings to the center of the global debate the urgency of auditing algorithms and fighting biases in artificial intelligence. Image: Fractal Pictures/Shutterstock
Origin of the "Alternative Nobel"
The Right Livelihood was created in 1980 by the German-Swedish Jakob von Uexküll. The initiative arose after the Nobel Foundation rejected his proposal to create two new awards focused on the environment and development.
The recognition of Timnit Gebru highlights a central issue in the development of artificial intelligence: the biases present in these systems and their impacts on people affected by discrimination and exclusion.
Valdir Antonelli is a journalist with specialization in digital marketing and consumption.
