This Tech Ethicist Wants More Women's Voices to Diversify AI

The first time Sasha Luccioni applied for a position at Hugging Face—the AI startup now valued at $4.5 billion—she was rejected. “I wasn't what they were looking for,” she recalled. This was nearly three years ago. Shaking off that initial rejection, she went to work at BigScience, a yearlong volunteer research workshop funded by Hugging Face to train the first open source, large language model. Luccioni directly reached out to Thomas Wolf, the startup's co-founder, during the project and "proved my worth," convincing him to offer her a job. For two years now, Luccioni has worked as the climate lead and AI researcher for Hugging Face, the machine learning platform and community that helps people deploy AI in open source applications, such as Meta's Llama 2. If those two years haven't exactly been smooth sailing, that's because the male presence looms large over the field of AI, Luccioni noted, from cinematic portrayals of futuristic tech workers like Ex Machina to the "Godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton. In 2020, a report by the World Economic Forum revealed that women accounted for just 26% of the workforce in data and AI positions. “It’s super alienating,” she acknowledged. What working motherhood looks like While Luccioni was pursuing her Ph.D. at L'Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada, she also became a mother. (Her children are now 8 and 6.) Pursuing a Ph.D. carries certain expectations that don't make an exception for motherhood: attending conferences to present research, publishing papers, and the constant need to network and establish a presence in the academic community. When Luccioni presented at a conference in Italy during her studies, her sister-in-law stepped in as a sitter for her then-4-month-old baby. “She would bring [my baby] into the conference venue during breaks so I could breastfeed,” said Luccioni. “I felt out of place. But you need to publish to stay relevant.” Diversifying AI In the male-dominated AI tech space, Hugging Face is an exception. The company's founders have consciously hired more women among its 160 employees (although, since it's illegal in some countries to gather employee gender information, Luccioni couldn't share the breakdown). Still, it's a stark contrast to the rest of the world, where AI and tech conferences are heavily populated with men. “Diversity is not just a catchphrase, especially in the case of AI,” she said. “It's really important to make the technology better, because the different experiences you have within the technology, the more robust it will be.” The AI landscape is set to become more competitive. And for Luccioni, asserting herself as an expert—particularly considering her research and professional contributions—becomes critical. “I find myself telling women a lot lately that just because there's so much noise, that doesn't mean you have to shut yourself off,” she said. “You have your place. And you should take your place in AI. We need diversity in AI.” Work HistorySasha Luccioni's professional journey reflects a deep commitment to ethical and sustainable AI research. She's currently the climate lead and AI researcher at Hugging Face. She is also a founding member of the nonprofit Climate Change AI and serves as a board member of Women in Machine Learning. Previously, Luccioni worked at several organizations including Nuance Communications and the Canadian Commission for Unesco. Notably, she was featured in MIT's Technology Review in September for her research on estimating the carbon footprint of AI.

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This Tech Ethicist Wants More Women's Voices to Diversify AI

Sasha Luccioni on the need for representation in artificial intelligence

Trishla Ostwal

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Trishla Ostwal