Margaret Mitchell is a researcher focused on machine learning (ML) and ethics-informed AI development in tech.
She has published over 100 papers on natural language generation, assistive technology, computer vision, and AI ethics, and holds multiple patents in the areas of AI conversation generation and sentiment classification. In 2023, she was recognized as one of TIME's Most Influential People. She currently works at Hugging Face as a researcher and Chief Ethics Scientist, driving forward work on ML data processing, responsible AI development, and AI ethics. She previously worked at Google AI as a Staff Research Scientist, where she founded and co-led Google's Ethical AI group to advance foundational AI ethics research and operationalize AI ethics Google-internally.
Before joining Google, she was a researcher at Microsoft Research, focused on computer vision-to-language generation; and was a postdoc at Johns Hopkins, focused on Bayesian modeling and information extraction in natural language processing (NLP). She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Aberdeen and a Master's in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington. While earning her degrees, she also worked from 2005-2012 at Oregon Health and Science University to improve natural language processing for neurological disorders, and assistive & augmentative technology for non-verbal individuals. She has spearheaded a number of workshops and initiatives at the intersections of diversity, inclusion, computer science, and ethics.
Her work has received awards from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the American Foundation for the Blind, and has been implemented by multiple technology companies. She is most known for her work pioneering "Model Cards" for ML model reporting; developing "Seeing AI" to assist blind and low-vision individuals; and developing methods to mitigate unwanted AI biases. She likes gardening, dogs, and cats.