Timnit Gebru Keynote Speaker

Recipient, NISO Miles Conrad Award (2025)
TIME100 Most Influential People (2022)
Named to Nature’s 10: People Who Shaped Science (2021)

Timnit Gebru's Biography

Timnit Gebru is a leading computer scientist and global voice on responsible AI, trusted by organisations navigating the risks and opportunities of today’s fast-moving technology landscape. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), launched in 2021 to advance independent, community-centred research on the real-world impacts of AI.

Gebru earned her PhD at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is known for combining deep technical rigour with a clear-eyed view of how AI systems shape power, opportunity, and inequality. Earlier in her career, she worked at Apple designing circuits and signal processing algorithms for products including the first iPad, bringing an engineer’s discipline to questions of reliability, standards, and accountability.

Her research has helped define the modern responsible AI agenda. She co-authored the landmark “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” (FAccT 2021), which scrutinises the environmental, social, and ethical costs of ever-larger language models, and co-authored “Gender Shades” (2018), exposing accuracy disparities in commercial facial analysis across skin type and gender.

Gebru’s impact has been recognised internationally, including the 2025 Miles Conrad Award (NISO), TIME100 (2022), Carnegie’s Great Immigrants (2023), and the BBC 100 Women list (2023). She also brings timely, practical insight to global stages, including sessions on responsible AI and separating hype from reality at major 2025 events.

Responsible AI: separating hype from reality

Algorithmic bias, fairness, and accountability

Generative AI risk: governance, safety, and trust

Data, documentation, and standards for reliable AI

Building inclusive, community-centred AI innovation

She leads the Distributed AI Research Institute, launched in 2021, bringing independent, community-rooted analysis that helps organisations assess AI impact beyond vendor claims.
She draws on landmark research including Gender Shades and the 2021 Stochastic Parrots paper, helping leaders spot where bias, opacity and scale create legal, operational and reputational risk.
She has worked at the centre of industry debate as technical co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team (2018–2020), giving executives a realistic view of governance pressures inside high-growth AI programmes.
She translates responsible AI principles into practical decisions on data, evaluation and accountability, so boards can set guardrails and deploy AI with trust.
She co-founded Black in AI in 2017, helping organisations build diverse technical cultures that strengthen product quality, innovation and credibility.