About
REAL ML is a non-profit organization building a global movement for AI accountability.
We connect, resource and empower people working to hold the development and use of AI and related technology to account. We believe that technology needs to work for the most marginalized people in our societies, and that accountability is more impactful and achievable as a collective.
Our People
We are a small non-profit organization with a core staff, Advisory Committee, and global membership.
We are a fiscally sponsored project hosted by Code for Science and Society and funded by grants from philanthropic foundations.
Core Staff
Anna is Executive Director of REAL ML, where she leads on strategy, programming and fundraising.
Anna is also Senior AI Researcher at Human Rights Watch, and has previously led AI and human rights programs at Open Society Foundations and Amnesty International.
Anna’s work focuses on documenting the impact of technologies on societies and individuals, and advocating for robust policies, laws and standards, to ensure that AI doesn’t undermine human rights. She scoped and established Amnesty’s AI program in 2016, and since then has worked to advance a global algorithmic accountability movement, in a time of vast technological change.
Anna co-founded REAL ML in 2019, and co-chaired the flagship workshop in 2019 and 2022.
Aoise leads on all things operations and project management for REAL ML.
Aoise is also the Co-founder and COO of Supply Change, a tech-for-good social enterprise helping organizations buy from social and environmental suppliers of goods and services. She also works with nonprofits and social enterprises in the areas of strategy, operations and partnerships such as Marie Stopes International, the Digital Opportunity Trust and The Collective Foundation.
Aoise has served on the Digital Opportunity Trust Youth Leadership Advisory Board and is a Catalyst 2030 Founding Member.
Aoise project managed the REAL ML workshop in 2022, and officially joined the core team in early 2024.
Vidushi is a Senior Advisor to REAL ML. She co-led the organization from 2022 until 2024.
Vidushi is also Head of Ecosystem Building at the AI Collaborative, where she establishes and sustains relationships and partnerships with key stakeholders who share a common goal of regulating AI in the public interest.
A human rights lawyer with more than a decade of experience working on technology policy, law, and infrastructure across multiple jurisdictions, Vidushi established and led Article 19’s AI portfolio and later co-founded REAL ML.
She is a prolific author and guest lecturer and has consulted for numerous organizations across governments, industry, civil society and academia. Her academic work appears in top peer reviewed journals and her thought leadership has been featured by The Financial Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, among others.
Advisory Committee
Alix chairs REAL ML’s Advisory Committee.
Alix is a podcast host, facilitator and advisor on technology and society issues. She founded Computer Says Maybe, a public interest agency serving organizations working on issues of technology and justice, and home of the New Protagonist Network.
Previously, she co-founded and directed The Engine Room, a global non-profit supporting activist organizations to incorporate technology into their work. She serves on the advisory board of Foxglove and is a trustee of the Ada Lovelace Institute for AI & Society.
Alix works closely with global human rights organizations, largely foundations, to grapple with technology. She has worked as an advisory board member for: Open Society Foundations Human Rights Program, Luminate, and Open Technology Fund, and as a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court, alongside a few formative years at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights.
Alix was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Digital Impact Lab at the Stanford Philanthropy and Civil Society Center. Fifteen years ago, she did graduate work in media studies at the University of Oslo, researching the role that Facebook played in Egyptian political organizing. Alix holds a BA from Colorado College.
Facilitator for REAL ML’s flagship workshop in 2020, Alix has advised REAL ML ever since.
William is a Staff Research Scientist on DeepMind’s Ethics and Society Team and Research Affiliate at Oxford University Centre’s for the Governance of AI. His research focuses on fairness and governance of AI systems.
Prior to DeepMind, William served as an Open Society Foundations Fellow and Research Advisor for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. His research has been featured in publications such as Science, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
William co-founded REAL ML in 2019, co-chaired our REAL ML flagship workshops in 2019 and 2020, and is a close advisor to the organization.
Deborah is a Mozilla fellow and computer science PhD student at University of California, Berkeley, who is interested in questions on algorithmic auditing and evaluation.
She has worked closely with the Algorithmic Justice League initiative to highlight bias in deployed AI products. She has also worked with Googleʼs Ethical AI team, and was a research fellow at the Partnership on AI and AI Now Institute at New York University, where she worked on various projects to operationalize ethical considerations in ML engineering practice.
Deborah has been named in MIT Tech Review 35 Under 35 Innovators (2020), Forbes’ 30 Under 30 (2021), and Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in AI (2023).
A co-chair of REAL ML’s flagship workshop in 2020, Deborah has been closely involved in REAL ML since its inception in 2019.
Brittany is the Head of UK Policy and Partnerships at OpenAI.
Brittany has worked at the intersection of AI and equity in industry, civil society, and philanthropy. Prior to OpenAI, Brittany was a Program Officer on AI2050, a philanthropic initiative within Schmidt Futures designed to support multi-disciplinary research on beneficial AI. Before that, Brittany was the Policy Director at Data & Society Research Institute, a nonprofit research institute challenging the power and purpose of technology in society.
Brittany previously worked at Alphabet in policy and government affairs roles in London and San Francisco. At DeepMind, she helped build the company’s first policy and ethics research team, led partnerships and public engagement on AI policy, and created and led programs on human rights and racial justice.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of Partnership on AI, and graduated from Northwestern University and the London School of Economics.
Fiscal sponsor
REAL ML is hosted by Code for Science & Society, a nonprofit organization based in Oregon, USA.
Code for Science & Society envisions a future where research, data, and tech initiatives shift power to communities. They work for this future through programs centered on social infrastructure in research and technology.
Funding
REAL ML is funded through generous support from grants from philanthropic foundations. Through 2022-2024, we have received grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and Mozilla Foundation.
