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Dr. Rumman Chowdhury’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge socio-technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI. She is an active contributor to discourse around responsible technology with bylines in The Atlantic, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIT Technology Review and VentureBeat.

Her current endeavor is the nonprofit Humane Intelligence, which brings hands-on critical tech education to a broad community via red-teaming exercises and bias bounty challenges. She co-organized Hack the Future (www.airedteam.org) - the largest ever Generative AI red teaming collaboration with eight major tech companies sharing LLMs for 4,000 people to hack.

Dr. Chowdhury currently runs Parity Consulting, Parity Responsible Innovation Fund, and is an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She is also a Research Affiliate at the Minderoo Center for Democracy and Technology at Cambridge University.

Previously, Dr. Chowdhury was the Director of META (ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability) team at Twitter, leading a team of applied researchers and engineers to identify and mitigate algorithmic harms on the platform. Prior to Twitter, she was CEO and founder of Parity, an enterprise algorithmic audit platform company. She formerly served as Global Lead for Responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence. In her work as Accenture’s Responsible AI lead, she led the design of the Fairness Tool, a first-in-industry algorithmic tool to identify and mitigate bias in AI systems.

Dr. Chowdhury is dedicated to cultivating and growing the next wave of technology-forward companies enabling the responsible use of emerging technologies. She is a General Partner (and founder) of the Parity Responsible Innovation venture capital fund. She also serves as a mentor for the Creative Destruction Lab and as a board member of Startups and Society.

Dr. Chowdhury is deeply engaged in AI global policy, serving as a board member of the UK Center for Data Ethics and Innovation, and on UNESCO’s Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. She has helped shape policy - as advisor to the UK House of Lords Parliamentary group on AI, in her testimony to the Congress, the FTC, New York City Algorithmic Commission, as well as her engagement with the UN, OECD, Partnership on AI, and other global AI and ethics organizations.

She serves on multiple boards, including Oxford University’s Commission on AI and Governance, the UK’s Center for Data Ethics and Governance, AI4All, a group dedicated to drawing underrepresented groups into STEM, the SSRC’s Just Tech Advisory Group, the University of Virginia’s Data Science Program, and Patterns, a data science journal by the publishers of Cell.

Rumman has been featured in international media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, CNN, Harvard Business Review, NPR, MIT Sloan Magazine, MIT Technology Review, BBC, Axios, Cheddar TV, CRN, The Verge, Fast Company, Quartz, Corrierre Della Serra, Optio, Australian Broadcasting Channel and Nikkei Business Times.

She was named one of BBC’s 100 Women, Time's 100 in AI, Fortune's 13 building AI, Forbes Five Who are Shaping AI, recognized as one of the Bay Area’s top 40 under 40, and a member of the British Royal Society of the Arts (RSA).

Dr. Chowdhury holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT, a master's degree in Quantitative Methods of the Social Sciences from Columbia University, and a doctorate in political science from the University of California, San Diego.


Projects & Tools

Responsible Generative AI: Accountable Technical Oversight

Generative AI is at a tipping point of adoption and impact, much like that of machine learning and AI years ago. But this time the stakes, regulatory environment, potential social…


Community

Foreign Policy Magazine

What the Global AI Governance Conversation Misses

The perspectives and needs of global majority countries have not been fully accommodated.

"As developers and stewards of AI technology, we have a critical responsibility. We must advance AI capabilities and simultaneously develop robust safeguards to protect users,…

Sep 19, 2024
ABC AU

Developing a responsible use of AI policy

BKC Affiliate Rumman Chowdhury emphasizes the importance of community engagement while engaging a conversation on responsible integration of AI.

Mar 25, 2024
Foreign Policy

What AI Will Do to Elections

“It just makes the generation and dissemination of very realistic deepfakes and realistic-seeming deepfakes much, much easier,” Rumman Chowdhury told Foreign Policy when…

Jan 3, 2024
Techtonic

Techtonic: AI’s inequality problem

Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury discusses the worry that we are giving the keys to our society to a small group of companies that have shown they cannot be fully trusted.

Dec 11, 2023
UNESCO

Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence in an Era of Generative AI

Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury explores technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in an era of generative AI.

Nov 16, 2023
Harvard Business Review

Azeem's Picks: How to Practice Responsible AI with Dr. Rumman Chowdhurry

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury discusses how to act responsibly with AI development.

Nov 1, 2023

Threats like AI-aided bioweapons confound policymakers

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury comments on the EU’s Digital Services Act.

Sep 12, 2023
The Washington Post

Meet the hackers who are trying to make AI go rogue

BKC Affiliate Rumman Chowdhury explains how embedded harms and biases complicate AI system red teaming efforts.

Aug 8, 2023
POLITICO

Bias in AI is real. But it doesn’t have to exist.

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury shares thoughts about her hopes and fears for AI.

Jul 14, 2023
POLITICO

5 questions for Rumman Chowdhury

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury answers questions about technology and the future.

Jul 7, 2023
CNBC

A.I. has a discrimination problem. In banking, the consequences can be severe

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury comments on how the AI systems in banking are biased against marginalized communities.

Jun 23, 2023
The Hill

Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to be inhumane

Sue Hendrickson and BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury write about the role of global governance alongside the development of AI.

Jun 14, 2023
The Guardian

‘I do not think ethical surveillance can exist’: Rumman Chowdhury on accountability in AI

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury is interviewed about bridging the gap between people and technology.

May 29, 2023
KQED

Artificial Intelligence is Booming, How Should it Be Regulated?

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury discusses ideas for regulating AI with KQED. 

May 8, 2023
WIRED

AI Desperately Needs Global Oversight

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury advocates for global oversight of AI. 

Apr 11, 2023
WIRED

Platforms Are Fighting Online Abuse—but Not the Right Kind

BKC Responsible AI Fellow Rumman Chowdhury co-writes a piece on the shortfalls of platforms fighting online abuse.

Feb 28, 2023
The Atlantic

I Watched Elon Musk Kill Twitter’s Culture From the Inside

Rumman Chowdhury writes about her time at Twitter as the engineering director of the META team...

Feb 17, 2023
Wired

The Scramble to Save Twitter’s Research From Elon Musk

"We were rightfully worried about what this leadership change would entail...There's a lot of ideology and misunderstanding about the kind of work ethics teams do as being part of…

Feb 15, 2023
Science Friday

ChatGPT And Beyond: What’s Behind The AI Boom?

"...what are the kinds of harms and stereotypes that exist in society that these machines can pick up on? These models are simply reflecting the data that is being put into them,…

Feb 10, 2023

Events

Event
May 22, 2023 @ 12:45 PM

Enabling Accountable Technical Oversight of Generative AI

JOIN US FOR  A VIRTUAL CONVERSATION WITH JULIA ANGWIN, BRANDON SILVERMAN, AND RUMMAN CHOWDHURY FOR THE THIRD IN A SERIES ON ACCOUNTABLE TECHNICAL OVERSIGHT OF GENERATIVE AI

Join Julia Angwin, investigative journalist and New York Times contributing Opinion writer, and Brandon Silverman, policy expert on data sharing and transparency and founder of…

Event
May 8, 2023 @ 1:00 PM

How is Generative AI changing the landscape of AI harms?

Join us for  a virtual conversation with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury and Reva Schwartz for the first in a series on accountable technical oversight of generative AI

Join us for  the first in a series of virtual conversations on accountable technical oversight of generative AI. On Monday, May 8 from 1-1:30 ET, Dr. Rumman Chowdhury and Reva…