According to new research by the World Economic Forum, only 22% of artificial intelligence (AI) professionals globally are women. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t women in AI who are making a splash. Below are just a few:
Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li is the co-director of the Stanford University Human-Centered AI Institute (HAI). A professor at Stanford University for almost a decade, her research includes computer vision, machine learning, AI, computational neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience. During a recent two-year sabbatical, she was the vice president and chief scientist of AI and machine learning at Google Cloud, the company’s enterprise cloud computing division. You may have heard her name come up in Google’s ethics controversy over its Project Maven contract with the defense department earlier this year as some of the leaked emails were hers. Despite that, she’s continuing to lead the way in developing AI responsibly, stating at a Capitol Hill hearing titled “Artificial Intelligence – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” that “With proper guidance, AI will make life better. But without it, the technology stands to widen the wealth divide even further, make tech even more exclusive, and reinforce biases we’ve spent generations trying to overcome.” Check out her non-profit AI4ALL, which is an organization working to increase diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence. Li received a BS in physics from Princeton University and a PhD in computer science from Caltech.
Cynthia Breazeal
Cynthia Breazeal is the founder and chief scientist of Jibo, a company that creates social robots for the home. She is also an associate professional of media arts and sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs a personal robots group at the Media Lab. Her studies focus on social robotics and human-robot interaction, with the goal of contributing to the quality of life through education, health, wellbeing and emotive connection and engagement. Breazeal received her PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. You can check out her TED Talk, “The Rise of Personal Robots,” here.
Daphne Koller
Daphne Koller is the founder and CEO of Insitro, a company pairing machine learning techniques with groundbreaking innovations in life sciences to enable large, high-quality datasets. In other words, Insitro is solving drug development problems with the hopes of helping cure more people of diseases at a lower cost. She made a name for herself as the co-founder of Coursera, an online education platform, in 2012. Koller continues her involvement in the company as co-chairman. She also did a short stint at Alphabet Inc.’s Calico, the company’s research and development arm focused on aging, as its first chief computing officer. She earned a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and was a professor there for 18 years. Her expertise is in the areas of machine learning, statistical modeling, computational biology and computational medicine.
Kate Crawford
Kate Crawford is a distinguished research professor at New York University, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New York and a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab. Her focus is on studying the social implications of data systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence and her recent writings address data bias and fairness, predictive analytics and due process, and algorithmic accountability and transparency. Crawford is also the co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Research Institute, which is dedicated to studying the social impacts of AI. You can follow her and any news on AI and bias via Twitter. A compilation of her publications can be found here.
