Get the latest tech news
Women in AI: Dr. Rebecca Portnoff is protecting children from harmful deepfakes
This is part of TechCrunch’s ongoing Women in AI series, which seeks to give AI-focused women academics and others their time in the spotlight.
She started as a volunteer research scientist and now, eight years later, leads a team that is probably one of the only in the world dedicated to building machine learning and artificial intelligence to stop, prevent, and defend children from sexual abuse. “During my senior year at Princeton, as I was contemplating what to do after graduation, my sister recommended I read ‘Half the Sky’ by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, which introduced me to the topic of child sexual abuse,” she told TechCrunch, saying the book inspired her to study how to make a difference in this space. Thorn, for example, is advocating that tech companies adopt their safety-by-design principles and mitigations, and publicly share how they are preventing the misuse of their generative AI technologies and products in furthering child sexual abuse, collaborating with professional organizations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to support setting standards for companies that can be used to audit progress, as well as engaging with policymakers to inform them of how important this is.
Or read this on TechCrunch