Meredith Whittaker

Meredith Whittaker is a Distinguished Research Scientist at New York University, co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Institute, and a member of the Signal Foundation's Board of Directors.[1] Whittaker was formerly employed at Google for 13 years, where she founded Google’s Open Research group[2][3][4][5][6] and co-founded the M-Lab.[7] In 2018, she was a core organizer of the Google Walkouts and resigned from the company in July 2019.[8][9]

Meredith Whittaker
Whittaker testifies before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee in 2019
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
EmployerNew York University AI Now Institute
Websitehttps://ainowinstitute.org/

Early Life and Education

Whittaker completed her bachelor's degree in Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley.[10][11]

Research and Career

Whittaker joined Google in 2006.[10] She founded Google Open Research[2] which looks to solve global problems in collaboration with academics. According to Google, her "official role at the company was related to open source work."[12] Whittaker was a speaker at the 2018 World Summit on AI.[13] She has written for the American Civil Liberties Union.[14]

Whittaker co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement system that provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. She has also worked extensively on issues of data validation and privacy. She has advised the White House, the FCC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security.[15]

AI Now

She is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the AI Now Institute at NYU, which is a leading university institute dedicated to researching the social implications of artificial intelligence and related technologies. She started AI Now Institute with Kate Crawford in 2017 after a symposium hosted by the White House.[16][17][18] AI Now is partners with the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, New York University Center for Data Science and Partnership on AI.[19] They produce annual reports that examine the social implications of artificial intelligence, including bias, rights and liberties.[20][21]

Congressional Testimony

She testified before Congress on "Artificial Intelligence: Societal and Ethical Implications" in June 2019.[22] Whittaker pointed to research and cases showing that AI systems can entrench bias and replicate harmful patterns.[23]

Activism

In 2018, Whittaker was one of the core organizers of the Google Walkouts, with over 20,000 Google employees walking out internationally to shed light on Google's dismissive culture when it comes to claims of sexual misconduct and citizen surveillance.[24] The organizers issued their demands publicly.[25]

The walkout was prompted by Google's reported $90 million pay out to Andy Rubin, who had been accused of sexual misconduct, and involvement with Project Maven.[24][26] More than 3,000 Google employees signed a petition against Project Maven, and Google did not renew their contract for 2019.[27] She was part of the movement that called for Google to rethink their AI ethics council after the appointment of Kay Coles James, the President of The Heritage Foundation who has fought against LGBT protections.[28] Whittaker attempted to move from the Cloud to machine intelligence group in 2019, but her transfer was not successful. Whittaker claimed that she faced retaliation from Google, and wrote in an open letter that she had been told to "abandon her work" on enforcing ethics in technology at the AI Now Institute.[24][29][30] She organised a town hall meeting with Claire Stapleton, marketing manager at YouTube, to strategise the responses of Google employees who faced retaliation in April 2019.[31]

In a note shared internally following her resignation, Whittaker called for tech workers to "unionize in a way that works, protect conscientious objectors and whistleblowers, demand to know what you’re working on and how it’s used, and to build solidarity with other tech workers beyond your company."[32]

Whittaker promotes activism within Silicon Valley and tackling sexual harassment, gender inequality and racism in tech.[33]

References
  1. Signal Foundation [@signalapp] (20 October 2020). "We are very excited to welcome Meredith Whittaker (@mer__edith) as the newest board member to the Signal Foundation. Read more on the newly updated foundation site!" (Tweet). Retrieved 28 November 2020 – via Twitter.
  2. Gershgorn, Dave. "The field of AI research is about to get way bigger than code". Quartz. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  3. "Google Walkout Is Just the Latest Sign of Tech Worker Unrest". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  4. "A Googler who brought down Google's AI ethics board says she's now facing retaliation". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  5. "Meredith Whittaker, AI researcher and an organizer of last year's Google walkout, is leaving the company". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  6. "Google Might Be Ready to Play By China's Censorship Rules". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  7. "Who we are - M-Lab". www.measurementlab.net. Retrieved 2019-12-17.
  8. "Google Protest Leader Leaves, Warns of Company's Unchecked Power". 2019-07-18. Retrieved 2019-07-18.
  9. Change, Google Walkout For Real (2019-07-16). "Onward! Another #GoogleWalkout Goodbye". Medium. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  10. "Scientifically Verifiable Broadband Policy | Berkman Klein Center". cyber.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  11. "Meredith Whittaker". opentech. Retrieved 2019-07-18.
  12. "Most Google Walkout Organizers Left Company". WIRED.
  13. "World Summit AI | Meet 140 of the world's brightest AI brains". World Summit AI Amsterdam. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  14. "Algorithms Are Making Government Decisions. The Public Needs to Have a Say". American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  15. "Co-founder, Co-director". ainowinstitute.org. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  16. "Biased AI Is A Threat To Civil Liberties. The ACLU Has A Plan To Fix It". Fast Company. 2017-07-25. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  17. "The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near-Term - Future of Life Institute". Future of Life Institute. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  18. "About". ainowinstitute.org. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  19. "Apply - Interfolio". apply.interfolio.com. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  20. "Research". ainowinstitute.org. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  21. "Research". ainowinstitute.org. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  22. "Artificial Intelligence: Societal and Ethical Implications | House Committee on Science, Space and Technology". science.house.gov. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  23. "Congressional Testimony on Societal Impact of AI". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  24. "How Google treats Meredith Whittaker is important to potential AI whistleblowers". VentureBeat. 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  25. Gaber, Claire Stapleton, Tanuja Gupta, Meredith Whittaker, Celie O'Neil-Hart, Stephanie Parker, Erica Anderson, Amr (2018-11-01). "We're the Organizers of the Google Walkout. Here Are Our Demands". The Cut. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  26. Bird, Interviews by Cameron; Captain, Sean; Craig, Elise; Gilliland, Haley Cohen; Shan, Joy (2019-03-29). "Silicon Valley revolt: meet the tech workers fighting their bosses over Ice, censorship and racism". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  27. R, Bhagyashree (2018-10-09). "Google opts out of Pentagon's $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract, as it doesn't align with its ethical use of AI principles". Packt Hub. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  28. Levin, Sam (2019-04-01). "Google employees call for removal of rightwing thinktank leader from AI council". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  29. Wong, Julia Carrie (2019-04-22). "Demoted and sidelined: Google walkout organizers say company retaliated". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  30. Wong, Julia Carrie (2019-04-27). "Google worker activists accuse company of retaliation at 'town hall'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  31. Sugandha Lahoti (2019-04-27). "#NotOkGoogle: Employee-led town hall reveals hundreds of stories of retaliation at Google". Packt Hub. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
  32. Change, Google Walkout For Real (2019-07-16). "Onward! Another #GoogleWalkout Goodbye". Medium. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  33. "Claire Stapleton & Meredith Whittaker on the Google Walkout". Amanpour & Company. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
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