Alex Hanna
Karan Singh for BI; Courtesy of Alex Hanna
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Alex Hanna

DAIR, Director of Research
Alex Hanna
Karan Singh for BI; Courtesy of Alex Hanna
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Hanna is a former Google AI ethicist who worked alongside Timnit Gebru, who was fired from the tech giant after voicing concerns about its natural language processing tools. Hanna now oversees research at Gebru's Distributed AI Research Institute. Her work centers on communities most affected by AI. "A near-term AI dystopia is one in which there's not a masterful AI that takes over the world — that's bullshit — it's a world in which there are AI tools which are promised to do XYZ and that many employers have effectively bought into only to lay off full-time workers and hire them back at a reduced rate," Hanna told Business Insider. "So it increases that gigification and casualization of work." She's writing a book, "The AI Con," with the University of Washington linguistics professor Emily M. Bender examining what they see as the harms posed by AI and the myths around what it can and cannot do.

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Monica Melton
Monica Melton was formerly a deputy tech editor at Business Insider. She previously served as the Managing Editor of The Plug Insights and covered innovation, technology, and venture capital at Forbes. She has also covered politics at POLITICO, entertainment for Time Out New York, but her most fascinating beat has been covering the intersection of technology, finance, race and entrepreneurship. She is an alumna of CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Washington.