Nvidia Staffers Warned CEO of Threat AI Would Pose to Minorities

Masheika Allgood and Alexander Tsado left their 2020 meeting with Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang feeling frustrated. The pair had spent a year working with colleagues from across the company on a presentation meant to warn Huang of the potential dangers that artificial intelligence technology posed, especially to minorities. The 22-slide deck and other documents pointed to Nvidia’s growing role in shaping the future of AI and warned that increased regulatory scrutiny was inevitable. The discussion included instances of bias in facial-recognition technologies used by the industry to power self-driving cars. Their aim was to find a way to confront the potentially perilous unintended consequences of AI head-on — ramifications that would likely be first felt by marginalized communities. Both employees left the company shortly after the meeting, with Allgood referring to the meeting as “the single most devastating 45 minutes of my professional life” in a LinkedIn post. While Allgood and Tsado have departed, the concerns they raised about making AI safe and inclusive still hang over the company, and the AI industry at large. Nvidia has one of the poorest records among big tech companies when it comes to Black and Hispanic representation in its workforce, and one of its generative AI products came under criticism for its failure to account for people of color.