Author: Tensorial Professor: Anima on AI

I want to wholeheartedly apologize to everyone hurt by my words. I want to assure you that I bear no animosity. I want to be part of an inclusive community where all voices are heard.  I am sorry if my actions/words have ever created a threatening environment. My intention was only to change hearts and…

Many of you are very concerned about why my Twitter account is no longer active. I have voluntarily decided to de-activate my account in the interest of my safety and to reduce anxiety for my loved ones. I want to focus on my research and my team where my attention and energy are badly needed.…

These are unprecedented times. So far, I have managed to avoid watching movies that involved pandemics or germs; paranoia and panic was not a source of entertainment for me. But now we see one play out in real life at a global scale. This affects us all. There is no escape. Maya Angelou said it…

Got a faculty position at UC Irvine during the recession. Attended N(eur)IPS conference for the first time. Discovered the power of tensors for machine learning and it became my core research focus. Received many awards such as Sloan fellowship, Microsoft faculty fellowship and NSF Career Award. Moved to AWS as principal scientist to build some…

2019 was an interesting year in so many ways. I was able to build and solidify research programs, both at NVIDIA and at Caltech. I was able to continue working towards diversity and inclusion in AI, and saw a lot of visible improvements (recent incident I wrote in my previous blog post is a notable…

Can a name change provide a quantum leap in diversity and inclusion? I didn’t expect to be writing this blog post. I had hoped for an internet-free week of vacation with my family in India. I had hoped to disconnect and rejuvenate. I had hoped to write a year-end message with positive changes I saw…

The Thanksgiving weekend has been a much needed staycation. Given how much I travel rest of the year, I feel lucky to avoid all the weather-related chaos this weekend. I got to even see the rare views of snow-capped mountains juxtaposed with palm trees as I worked from my office at Caltech. I got the…

Trigger Warning. Description of sexual harassment, physical intimidation and misogynistic comments below. You will find below a small subset of my nightmarish experiences in the hands of an abusive manager at a previous organization. By no means was my experience isolated. In fact, that was the norm. Every senior woman on my team has since…

Edit: I want to clarify during my tenure at AWS, I did not work on face recognition or was involved in any of the decisions to sell it to law enforcement. I added this after a journalist asked me about this.  About two weeks ago, Timnit Gebru and Margaret (Meg) Mitchell approached me with a…

The views expressed here are solely my own and do not in any way reflect those of my employers. This blog post is meant to clarify my position on the recent OpenAI controversy. A few days ago, I engaged with Jack Clark, who manages communications and policy for OpenAI, on Twitter. It is hard to…