3:50pm

Sam: Hi everyone I am on the line with Abeba Birhane. Abeba is PhD student at
Univerisity College Dublin. Abeba welcome to the TWIML AI podcast.

Abeba: Thank you so much for having me Sam.

Sam: I am really excited about this conversation. We had an opportunity to meet in

person, after a long while interacting on twitter at the most recent NeurlPs
conference in particular the Black in AI workshop where you not only presented your
paper Algorithmic injustices toward of relational ethics. But you won best paper
there. And so I'm looking forward to digging into that and to some other topics.
But before we do that, I would love to hear you kind of share a little bit about
your background then I will mention for folks to the hearing the sirens in the
background. While I mention that you are from University College Dublin. You
happened to be in New York now at the AIES conference in association with triple AI
and as folks might know its hard to avoid sirens and construction in New Yor City,
so just consider that background or mood; mood ambiance, background sounds.

Abeba: Okay

Sam: So, your background.

Abeba: Yes. Yes.

Sam: How did you get started working in AI ethics

Abeba: So, my background is a an cognitive science and particularly and a part of

cognitive science called embodied cognitive science which is.. which has roots
signal at in cybernitcs in systems thinking the idea is to focus on the social, on
the cultural, on the historical, and kind to view congnition in continuity in the
world with historical background, and all that as opposed to your your traditional
approach to cognition which just creates cognition as something located in the
brain or something formalizable something that can be computed.
So yes so that's my background. Even during my masters, I, I lean towards you knwo,
the AI sides and congnitive science. The more I delve into it, the more I much more
I attracted to the (AI) ethics side and just you know injustices to social issues
and the more the PhD goes on, the more I find myself in the ethics side.

Sam: Was there a particular point that you realize that your really excited about
ethics part in particular, or did it just evolve for you.

Abeba: I think, it just evolve. So when I started out, I attend the four masters
and I started out the PhD, my idea is that you know we have this new, relatively
new school while thinking which is embodied cognitive science which I quite like
very much because it emphasizes you know embiguity and massiveness and contingency
as to supposed to