Timnit Gebru

@timnitgebru

Personal Account Founder: The Distributed AI Research Institute @dairinstitute.bsky.social. Author: The View from Somewhere, a memoir & manifesto arguing for a technological future that serves our communities (to be published by One Signal / Atria

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· May 21

Folks, according to the effective altruists, it's not just the impending machine god that will bring us utopia. No no, it's also all their newly rich dudes from Anthropic & OpenAI IPOs who will save the world. Yes. We have so much to look forward to.

Nan Ransohoff
@nanransohoff

New blog post: The third wave of American philanthropy

Hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital will soon become liquid. The OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of OpenAI, worth about $220B at today’s valuation. Anthropic’s seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth and have instituted the most aggressive donor matching program for employees in tech history.

How much does this all add up to? And how meaningful is that in the context of philanthropy today?

I was doing some simple napkin math to wrap my head around the scale of what’s coming, and radicalized myself in the process. I had dramatically underappreciated the scale of the philanthropic capital that’s about to become available and the corresponding gap in talent and organizations that will be needed to make the most of it.

This piece aims to directionally sketch the scale of what’s coming, the gap in operational capacity needed to absorb it, and what we can do to fill it.

(Link to full post in reply)

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· May 12

Here's who Bernie seems to be taking "AI Safety" advice from, having become fully captured by the TESCREAL bundle and going full on doomer. Do you recognize the dudes that Max Tegmark is with in this so-called "AI Safety" summit? I'll help, it's Muskrat and Netanyahu.

Elon Musk, Benjamin Netayahu, Max Tegmark and another white guy I can't recognize.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· May 1

I really haven't kept it up besides buying the domain and doing that quick thing. This is it

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Apr 29

Is this REALLY for real? What kind of an embarrassment is this government if so? Lol and they just announce it without even telling the organizers? Like you can just "postpone" a conference. I've honestly never seen this level of ridiculousness and I've seen a lot.

Rights
Con 26
Zambia
The leading summit on human rights in the digital age
Important update from the RightsCon team
We are aware of a media announcement indicating
RightsCon has been postponed by the
Government of Zambia and understand the panic it must be causing for our participants, especially those traveling to Lusaka. We have not yet received formal communication from the government and have requested an urgent meeting with the involved Ministries. We are on the ground coordinating with our partners and hope to have more information today (Wednesday, April

Republic of Zambia
PRESS STATEMENT BY MR. THABO KAWANA, PERMANENT SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND MEDIA ON THE POSTPONEMENT OF THE RIGHTSCON
2026 SUMMIT
29" April 2026, Lusaka- Following the announcement by Honourable Felix Mutati, Minister of Technology and Science on 28" April 2026, regarding the postponement of the RightsCon Summit 2026, which was scheduled to take place in Lusaka from 5th to 8th May 2026, the Government of the Republic of Zambia wishes to provide further clarification on this decision.
The postponement was necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit. Such disclosure is essential to ensure full alignment with Zambia's national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations.
Therefore, the Summit has been rescheduled to a later date, to be communicated, to allow for further consultations with all stakeholders.
Notwithstanding this

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Apr 9

🔇🔇🔇 Are you in the Portland area? Looking to exercise your imaginative muscles and take a break from doom scrolling? Join our in person Possible Futures workshop with Data & Society Research Institute. ⏰ This Saturday April 11, 1pm-3pm. ☘️ Register at www.eventbrite.com/e/dair-data-...

Imagining Possible Futures.

Portland.

Saturday April 11, 1pm--3pm.

3639 N Mississippi Ave
Portland, OR

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 16

Its one thing to have one triggered white dude who jumped at the opportunity to play victim after quote tweeting this comment of hers and attempting to frame her as the person instigating and driving harassment towards him, rather than the things he posted himself. Vile.

Alexander Kustov @akoustov.bsky.social

Prof. @emilymbender.bsky.social, I appreciate you sharing your opinion on my integrity, which you're free to do even if it's not informed. But you're tenured too, so it's ok to admit you weren't right. You can say LLMs were trash before but now they can actually be useful to folks who use them.

Quote tweeting Emily M. Bender saying "Prof. @akoustov.bsky.social, the point of tenure is academic freedom, but you seem to be either announcing to the world that you aren't interested in doing research, that you have no respect for the work (or time) of other scholars, or both.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 16

Here's the snitch tagging I'm responding to. No need to engage with this audacity on my end. The nerve to come for THIS group of Black women with this shit.

$Bryan (they/them) ‪@chaosgreml.in‬ Listen y’all, when you have a person this out of control on your list of “affiliates,” and one of your core team wrote a book with her, I start to question your values, @dairinstitute.bsky.social ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, ZERO dark-skinned Black folk on the core team. Hm. ‪Alexander Kustov‬ ‪@akoustov.bsky.social‬ · 8h Quote tweeting Alexander Kustov: Your periodic reminder this all started when Dr. Bender, unprompted, decided to single me out as someone didn't deserve tenure for using LLMs. Her followers tagged my employer with calls to fire me and sent threats to me and my family. Everything since has been a response to that.$

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 4

Check out this interactive website by Nana Mgbechikwere, showing BigTech and "AI" companies' media capture. No wonder the public is getting misinformed. They say it is inspired by @surveillancewatch.bsky.social, which ❤️ nananwachukwu.github.io

Flow chart showing OpenAI, Google Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Perplexity, ProRate.ai, IBM, Mistral, Anthropic, Nvidia, in that order with the biggest deals, with OpenAI having 21 deals, Google 17, Meta 8, Microsoft 4, Amazon 3.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 4

Everyone wants to sign letters The Future of Life Institute puts out every few years, it seems. Take a look at this manel which happened around their first letter 🙄 The billionaires and eugenicists on this manel are the actual existential risks to humanity we should worry about.

Nine, mostly white dudes on stage in a manel.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 3

And everyone is running around praising them for being "ethical" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

SCOOP: Anthropic was among the AI companies that submitted a proposal earlier this year to compete in a $100 million Pentagon prize challenge to produce technology for voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming, acc to people familiar w/ matter.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Mar 1

There is a region in a country that these people don't care about, where Iranian and Israeli drones fly side by side, killing people they don't care about. Their binary thinking only makes them see whoever is being killed by the wrong group, the one that's not in their camp, as a victim.

There's a war where Israeli and Iranian drones fly side by side
Deadly enemies are both supplying Ethiopia’s military – and civilians are in the firing line

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 24

What made my day here is that they got no sympathy even on Muskrat's platform lol. And unlike Anthropic, deepseek is paying for model use when they do this, to create models that are open weight. They're showing how this entire bubble is being propped up by the equivalent of a toothpick.

We’ve identified industrial-scale distillation attacks on our models by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax.

These labs created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated over 16 million exchanges with Claude, extracting its capabilities to train and improve their own models.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 19

Dude who wrote about how "the left is missing out on AI" is on here. Do you see who they are funded by? The biggest EA funders, the longtermist institutes we've been writing about and documenting, including FLI where Muskrat is still an advisor.

Supporters
Our work is supported by a variety of foundations, charities, and individuals who share our commitment to high-quality journalism about AI (grouped by lifetime giving):

$1M+
Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) (2023, 2024, 2025)
Survival and Flourishing Fund (2024, 2025)
$100k – $1M
The Casey & Family Foundation (2025)
EA Infrastructure Fund (2023)
Future of Life Institute (2024)
$10k – $100k
ACX Grants (2024)
AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund (2024)
Cullen O'Keefe (2025)
Hazel Browne (2024)
Newman Family Charitable Fund (2025)
Robert and Virginia Shiller Foundation (2023, 2024)

We have also received donations of less than $10,000 from a variety of generous individual donors.

Our donors have no editorial control over the work of Tarbell, our fellows, or our grantees. Tarbell does not accept anonymous donations greater than $10,000. For details, see the Donor relations section of our ethics and standards policies.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 17

This "terrible scholarship" is our widely shared ESCREAL work exposing eugenicists. As @sifill.bsky.social wrote, we were incessantly attacked for doing this work. But of course many people see the tech eugenicists center stage in the orange man's current presidency. And others continue to do this👇

Oh dear. Well I am familiar with it and consider it to be terrible scholarship I'm afraid Emile. But yes, it's hyperbolic, and demonstrates—in my view!—a very poor grasp of liberal political philosophy. But, as with Holly on another thread, I doubt I'll convince you of much on here

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 17

I helped build the FAccT academic conference, and white men like Seth have to come along and make sure that the people we tried to get away from, the TESCREAL eugenicist ghouls, have every academic space in addition to the billions they're drowning in.

I'm not sure if it's worth adding this, but in case anyone's wondering,
@AmandaAskell
is a brilliant philosopher doing by far the most important philosophical research anyone in the world is doing right now (in terms of both impact and philosophical interest). I've had the privilege of seeing her at many stages along this journey, from a chance meeting in the hallways of Coombs (the building where ANU Philosophy used to be) back in about maybe 2015, to a visit with her at OpenAI's offices on the day, more or less, that she and others decided to leave OpenAI to form Anthropic, to a number of workshops and other things since, where she showed an incredible generosity of spirit to the folks both in philosophy and in the FAccT community who most needed to learn from her work.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 13

Transcript:

(0:00) There's a particular reference Epstein makes to Africa, and he says, (0:04) I do a lot of work in Africa, and he refers to Africa as fertile ground for experimentation. (0:11) And so it turns out that Epstein was a major funder of this weird artificial intelligence (0:17) lab being created in Ethiopia that's tied to the scientist who's overtly transhumanist (0:24) that he funded extensively named Benjamin Goertzel. Goertzel is, for example, (0:29) head of Humanity Plus, formerly the World Transhumanist Association, (0:34) which is an entity that Epstein funded in addition to funding Goertzel's own work.
(0:38) And Goertzel is also the chief scientist at Hanson Robotics, which has produced (0:43) these human-like robots, the best well-known probably being Sophia, the robot that was, (0:49) for example, granted citizenship by Mohammed bin Salman at a time when one of his close advisors (0:53) was Jeffrey Epstein. Again, very odd activity there. (0:58) So as far as what was going on in Ethiopia, at the time that Epstein was investing in this AI lab (1:06) and backing Goertzel, Goertzel was teaming up with this blockchain company called Cardano (1:13) that's pretty well-known in the cryptocurrency space, and they were specifically seeking to (1:20) offer digital ID—well, it's already happened.
They gave a digital ID essentially to 5 million (1:27) Ethiopian schoolchildren with the intention of expanding that, and the whole intention of this (1:32) is to harvest data from these children. They explicitly say that. And even in other documents, (1:39) Goertzel essentially says that this data is being used to feed the AI that powers robots like Sophia (1:47) at Hanson Robotics and stuff.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Feb 13

The TESCREALists I wrote about (Goertzel), teaming up with pedophiles (Epstein), experimenting on five million Ethiopian children through "digital IDs" which they want for harvesting data to train "AI." My worlds colliding in the worst way.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Dec 27

Our paper: firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

In this way, TESCREALists have been able to divert resources toward trying to build AGI and stopping their version of an apocalypse in the far future, while dissuading the public from scrutinizing the actual harms that they cause in their attempts to build AGI. As another example, Max Tegmark, cofounder of the Future of Life Institute along with Jaan Tallinn, delivered a talk at the 2017 Effective Altruism conference (EA Global) in which he argued that “if we don’t improve our technology, we are doomed ... but with tech, life can flourish for billions of years” [122]. But in 2023 the Future of Life Institute circulated a widely publicized petition signed by Tegmark and many of those responsible for the AGI race, including Musk and Altman, to “pause giant AI experiments” to stop “nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us” [123]. Appearing on Democracy Now!, when asked about the present day dangers like biometric surveillance warned by researchers and activists like Tawnana Petty, Tegmark stated: “Extinction is not something in the very distant future ... And once we’re all extinct, you know, all these other issues cease to even matter” (Bengio, et al., 2023). Similarly, when Geoffery Hinton, who also signed the petition, was asked by Rolling Stone about the issues raised by Timnit Gebru who was fired by Google after writing a paper on the dangers of large language models, he answered: “I believe that the possibility that digital intelligence will become much smarter than humans and will replace us as the apex intelligence is a more serious threat to humanity than bias and discrimination” (O’Neil, 2023).

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Dec 3

This talking about has gone viral with dude who is "director" of the effective altruism cult in DC writing blogposts that magically have been making the rounds. I've said a ton about that cult. And of course this is a board member of the org. I'm sure they are objective and only seeking "the truth."

Board of directors "Virginia Blanton" Director of Operations at Anthropic.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Dec 3

This will end well 😩 New report from @ainowinstitute.bsky.social, written by Dr. Sofia Guerra @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social. Link: ainowinstitute.org/publications...

This report taxonomizes and assesses these nuclear “fast-tracking” initiatives. We examine their feasibility and their impact on nuclear safety, security, and safeguards3—and more largely society’s potential exposure to radiation levels—across three primary categories:
Policy initiatives seeking to lower regulatory practices including long-established nuclear-safety and risk-analysis approaches, safety culture, acceptable risks, and thresholds in order to reduce timescales for the construction of civil and defense nuclear facilities
The use of generative AI to expedite regulatory processes such as nuclear licensing and commissioning for both civil and defense nuclear facilities
The promotion of advanced and new nuclear technologies that are contingent on novel or unmaterialized approaches and infeasible timescales

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Dec 2

We have a small but mighty team. Each of these projects could be institutes of their own. I've been working at DAIR twice as long as I was as the two long years at Google, and it flew by because that's what happens when you love your work and are surrounded by great people 🥰A

A screenshot of the "Data for Change" section of the DAIR website (i.e. air-institute.org/projects and Data for Change, showing the Data Workers' Inquiry Project, Surveillance Watch and Impacts of Spatial Apartheid. The website is colorful, with orange and cream backgrounds.

Screenshot of project showing "The Real Harms of AI Systems' section, with Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Social Media Harms and The TESCREAL Bundle.

Screenshot of our website projects showing "Governance Frameworks for AI Systems" with Need-based Design of AI Systems, Guidelines for Documentation & Accountability, Luddite Lab Worker Resource Hub.

Screenshot of projects showing "Alternative Tech Futures" showing The Hunk Federation: Many Models for Many People, Sovereign Language Technologies, and Possible Futures Blog Series.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Oct 27

I'm going to be hosting part of this in person event in San Francisco along with @alexhanna.bsky.social. The event is organized by an organization near and dear to both of us, called Respond Crisis Translation, doing front line work which is even more important right now. RSVP at bit.ly/rct-rsvp

From ICE Abductions to Genocide in Gaza, Languge Workers Resist.

A Language Justice Forum with Respond Crisis Translatin.

bit.ly/rct-rsvp.

Oct 30, 2025. 5:30pm --SF Bay Area, CA

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Oct 20

Translation: After we built an addictive tool based on stolen data, exploited labor and plundering the environment, which pushes kids to commit suicides, we were like, why not cash in on "erotica"? After all, this is what building so-called AGI that "benefits humanity" looks like.

Sam Altman (@sama) We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Oct 10

What's the latest excuse for bothsidesing colonization and apartheid culminating in a livestreamed genocide?

@BarackObama After two years of unimaginable loss and suffering for Israeli families and the people of Gaza, we should all be encouraged and relieved that an end to the conflict is within sight; that those hostages still being held will be reunited with their families; and that vital aid can start reaching those inside Gaza whose lives have been shattered. More than that, though, it now falls on Israelis and Palestinians, with the support of the U.S. and the entire world community, to begin the hard task of rebuilding Gaza – and to commit to a process that, by recognizing the common humanity and basic rights of both peoples, can achieve a lasting peace.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Oct 7

A someone who has written extensively about the eugenic roots that permeates those who claim to be building so-called artificial general intelligence, I'm here to tell you to please NOT compare criticism against corporations claiming to build a machine god, with eugenics. The audacity.

if you're writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go "oh that's fine to say because it's not a real person" (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Sep 7

Bonus: Woman on the flyer you see there was harassing journalists saying anything on #TigrayGenocide, & even added me in the mix. I sent some of those references to Maxine Waters in a letter after she had the audacity to be hired as her comms lead.

This broad (@timnitGebru) is so bad for black women, women in general & women from Tigray she claims to speak for. She's always lying, playing victim (while she is engaged in a narrative that *creates* victims) - & often does it citing ethnicity, gender or race. (throwing up emoji) #nomore

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Sep 7

The People's Forum (TPF), along with BreakThrough News, which I was also told was the streaming partner of this conference, co-organized an event with this flyer, cosponsored by ANSWER coalition, another genocidal org that gives on giving, and the fake, New Africa Institute.

Report from Ethiopia, The Untold Story with Eugene Puryear & Hermela Aregawi, organized by The People's Forum an dBreakthrough News. Co-Sponsored by New Africa Institute and ANSWER coalition.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Sep 7

So, to recap, a few days ago, I saw someone I respect heavily promoting this conference, "The People's Conference for Palestine" and someone else I respect sending me a screenshot of a number of genocidal being listed as co-organizers & collaborators. Lets learn more about them🧵

The following organizations are convening the confernece:

Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)

US Palestinian Community Network

The People's Forum (TPF)

Al-Adwa The Palestinian Right to Return Coaltion.

The People's Forum is circle.d

Collaborators

Party for Socialism and Liberation (pslnational)
Palestinian Youth Movement
ANSWER coalition
People's conference for Palestine

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Aug 28

As an aside, y’all don’t wanna look at some of the other names on the list, we’re not celebrating that. But we’re also celebrating our dear friends @karenhao.bsky.social and @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social for being recognized for their tireless works. Congratulations to all.

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru· Aug 28

Mila’s work embodies what I hoped DAIR would be, that we wouldn’t only complain about what's wrong but also do things we think should be done. Mila doesn’t like attention 😊 But she deserves every ounce of recognition because she has spent years ensuring that others are recognized rather than her.