By: Protocol
June 23, 2021
Machine learning engineer Ari Font was worried about the future of Twitter’s algorithms. It was mid-2020, and the leader of the team researching ethics and accountability for the company’s ML had just left Twitter. For Font, the future of the ethics research was unclear.
Font was the manager of Twitter’s machine learning platforms teams — part of Twitter Cortex, the company’s central ML organization — at the time, but she believed that ethics research could transform the way Twitter relies on machine learning. She’d always felt that algorithmic accountability and ethics should shape not just how Twitter used algorithms, but all practical AI applications.
So she volunteered to help rebuild Twitter’s META team (META stands for Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability), embarking on what she called a roadshow to persuade Jack Dorsey and his team that ML ethics didn’t only belong in research. Over the course of a few months, after a litany of conversations with Dorsey and other senior leaders, Font hadn’t secured just a more powerful, operationalized place for the once-small team. Alongside the budget for increased headcount and a new director, she eventually persuaded Dorsey and Twitter’s board of directors to make Responsible ML one of Twitter’s main 2021 priorities, which came with the power to scale META’s work inside of Twitter’s products.
“I wanted to ensure that the very important research was having an impact on product, and was scaling. It was a very strategic next step for META that would allow us to take it to the next level,” Font said. “We had strategy talks with Twitter staff, including Jack, and ultimately with the board. It was a very intense and fast process.”