Whittaker joined Google in 2006. She founded Google Open Research which looks to solve global problems in collaboration with academics. According to Google, her "official role at the company was related to open source work." Whittaker was a speaker at the 2018 World Summit on AI. She has written for the American Civil Liberties Union. Whittaker co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement system that provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. She has also worked extensively on issues of data validation and privacy. She has advised the White House, the FCC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security.
She is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the AI Now Institute at NYU, which is a leading university institute dedicated to researching the social implications of artificial intelligence and related technologies. She started AI Now Institute with Kate Crawford in 2017 after a symposium hosted by the White House. AI Now is partners with the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, New York University Center for Data Science and Partnership on AI. They produce annual reports that examine the social implications of artificial intelligence, including bias, rights and liberties.
Congressional Testimony
She testified before Congress on "Artificial Intelligence: Societal and Ethical Implications" in June 2019. Whittaker pointed to research and cases showing that AI systems can entrench bias and replicate harmful patterns.
Activism
In 2018, Whittaker was one of the core organizers of the Google Walkouts, with over 20,000 Google employees walking out internationally to shed light on Google's dismissive culture when it comes to claims of sexual misconduct and citizen surveillance. The organizers issued their demands publicly. The walkout was prompted by Google's reported $90 million pay out to Andy Rubin, who had been accused of sexual misconduct, and involvement with Project Maven. More than 3,000 Google employees signed a petition against Project Maven, and Google did not renew their contract for 2019. She was part of the movement that called for Google to rethink their AI ethics council after the appointment of Kay Coles James, the President of The Heritage Foundation who has fought against LGBT protections. Whittaker attempted to move from the Cloud to machine intelligence group in 2019, but her transfer was not successful. Whittaker claimed that she faced retaliation from Google, and wrote in an open letter that she had been told to "abandon her work" on enforcing ethics in technology at the AI Now Institute. She organised a town hall meeting with Claire Stapleton, marketing manager at YouTube, to strategise the responses of Google employees who faced retaliation in April 2019. In a note shared internally following her resignation, Whittaker called for tech workers to "unionize in a way that works, protect conscientious objectors and whistleblowers, demand to know what you’re working on and how it’s used, and to build solidarity with other tech workers beyond your company." Whittaker promotes activism within Silicon Valley and tackling sexual harassment, gender inequality and racism in tech.
