20 Women in AI That Girls Should Know
Did you see the New York Times list of leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) that featured twelve men…and zero women? We did too.
What’s more, girls heard about it and immediately raised their hands with questions:
Um, where are the women?
No way only men are running the show in AI.
So…did AI actually make this list?
Because while other lists have been more comprehensive, the lack of women’s names on the NYT list was stunning. And potentially career-stunting for women and girls.
According to Deloitte’s Women in AI Report, “[e]arly STEM education shows young women and girls how AI roles can impact their life trajectory.” The report underscores:
“It takes real, active mentorship that’s organic and promotes curiosity. And it’s crucial that women help trailblaze the pathways for girls, build relationships with them early, and help them become AI leaders that organizations can then champion, retain, and promote.”
Give us numbers, girls might demand as they rise out of their chairs.
AI Magazine notes that “a staggering 71% of Deloitte report respondents asserted that adding women to AI and machine learning will bring unique perspectives to high tech that are needed in the industry. What’s more, 66% believe that AI and ML solutions would benefit from having more diverse employees in designer and developer positions.”
Then give us AI role models, girls are saying – now standing on their desks.
We hear you.
With tomorrow’s workforce top of mind - and recognizing that this list is an Être curated sampling and by no means definitive - here are 20 women in AI that girls should know today:
In order corresponding to headline photo:
1. Shivon Zilis – Having worked on AI teams at OpenAI, Bloomberg Beta and Neuralink, where she is Director of Operations & Special Projects, Zilis is the youngest person ever to serve as a Board member at both OpenAI and Neuralink.
2. Timnit Gebru - Founder & Executive Director at The Distributed AI Research Institute and the former co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI research team, Gebru also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit increasing the presence, inclusion and visibility of Black people in AI.
3. Fei-Fei Li – Known as the Godmother of AI, Dr. Li co-directs the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. Dr. Li is also the author of The Worlds I See and co-founder & Chair of AI4ALL, a nonprofit opening doors in AI for historically excluded talent through education and mentorship.
4. Mira Murati – Open AI’s CTO and former interim CEO, Murati is a mechanical engineer, researcher and tech leader leading the charge on AI products like ChatGPT, Codex and Dall-E. Follow her here for the latest happenings at OpenAI.
5. Joy Buolamwini – AI researcher, advocate, and author of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines, Dr. Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League whose TED Talk on algorithmic bias has garnered 1.5+ million views.
6. Shama Hyder - Founder & CEO of Zen Media, Hyder leverages AI for the public relations space. The author of two books and an active keynote speaker, Hyder is helping companies market, sell, lead and grow in the AI age.
7. Allie Miller – AI leader, angel investor, and author of 8 guidebooks, Miller was Global Head of Machine Learning Business Development at Amazon, as well as Lead Product Manager at IBM Watson. In fact, she is the youngest-ever woman to build an AI product at IBM.
8. Alessya Visnjic - CEO & Co-founder of WhyLabs, Visnjic is “is on a mission to enable every enterprise to run AI with certainty.” Described as an observability platform to prevent AI failures, Visnjic's company strives to help teams operate AI tech “responsibly and robustly.”
9. Cynthia Breazeal – Inventor of the Kismet robot and founder of companion robot JIBO, MIT's Dean for Digital Learning and Director of MIT’s Personal Robots group also directs MIT’s RAISE initiative, bringing K-12 AI literacy to students and educators worldwide.
10. Kate Crawford – Senior Principal Researcher at MSR-NYC, Research Professor at USC, and author of Atlas of AI, this role model is known as “a leading scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence.”
11. Regina Barzilay – MIT professor and member of MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab, Barzilay centers her attention on natural language processing and developing machine learning methods for drug discovery. Her award-winning work using AI to diagnose breast cancer years before symptoms may change the game for women everywhere.
12. Latanya Sweeney - Holding 3 patents and authoring 100+ publications, Dr. Sweeney’s work is breaking new ground in the field of algorithmic fairness. The first Black woman to earn a PhD in computer science from MIT, Dr. Sweeney, now at Harvard, “creates and uses technology to assess and solve societal, political and governance problems.”
13. Manuela Veloso – Head of AI Research at JPMorgan Chase and Professor Emerita at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Veloso’s interests are in symbiotic human-robot autonomy, continuous learning systems, and leveraging AI in finance.
14. Raina el Kaliouby – Author of Girl Decoded, Founder of Affectiva, and Deputy CEO at Smart Eye, Dr. Kaliouby is an AI thought leader “on a mission to bring emotional intelligence to our digital world” by “applying Emotion AI to mental health, autism, conversational interfaces, robotics, and education.”
15. Daniela Braga - Founder and CEO of Defined.ai, a platform empowering AI creators to develop and scale responsible AI solutions, Braga is a member of the World Economic Forum member, YPO, and an appointee to the US National AI Research Resource Task Force.
16. Cynthia Rudin - Professor of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke, Rudin earned the “Nobel Prize of AI” for her game-changing achievements in socially responsible AI. Focused on machine learning and causal inference, Rudin has also served on faculty at Columbia, NYU, and MIT.
17. Yejin Choi - Professor at University of Washington and Senior Research Director at AI2, Dr. Choi's work resides at the intersection of natural language processing and common sense learning. Her TED Talk entitled Why AI is Incredibly Smart and Shockingly Stupid is not to be missed.
18. Joelle Pineau - Meta’s VP for Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) and a McGill professor, Pineau has been the AI lead for teams powering noteworthy translation projects like No Language Left Behind and the award-winning SeamlessM4T.
19. Anima Anandkumar - Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA and Bren Professor at Caltech, Dr. Anandkumar develops AI algorithms for scientific applications, including weather forecasting, autonomous drone flights, and drug design.
20. Hanan Salam – Co-founder of and Head of Education & Research at Women in AI, Dr. Salam is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at NYU in Abu Dhabi, where she directs their SMART Lab.
Who else do we not want girls to miss? Think Caroline Lair, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Interstellar Lab and co-founder of Women in AI, a nonprofit closing the gender gap in AI; Chelsea Finn, whose lab at Stanford, IRIS, studies intelligence through robotic interaction at scale (oh, and she’s part of the Google Brain team); Kieran Snyder, CEO and Co-Founder of Textio and a Board member at Atlas AI; and Francesca Rossi, IBM’s AI Ethics global lead. Like I said, hardly an exhaustive list.
But that’s part of what is so exciting about AI – it’s growing at a rate that’s important for girls to watch. With platforms they use and role models to follow, AI is fast becoming a field where girls can see themselves joining, contributing, and ultimately leading.
What do the women in AI want today’s girls to know? That advice is coming in at lightning speed as Être girls raise their hands and the female intelligentsia responds. We can’t wait to share it.
For now, let’s keep pointing tomorrow’s workforce to AI lists that reflect their classrooms, lecture halls, and labs – diverse, inclusive, and welcoming. Because that's what the future of AI holds.
Looking forward,
Illana
ÊXTRAS: Three more ways girls can find early role models in AI you won't want to miss: Check out Girls Who Code, Rebel Girls, and this list from Common Sense. Want more? Être is working on it.
