Courtney (Hooker) Heldreth, of Cal women’s soccer, with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, is one of Google’s top artificial intelligence User Experience Researchers (UXR), on its Artificial Intelligence User Experience (AIUX) Team. Courtney’s work attempts to understand the risks and opportunities in AI for underserved, historically marginalized users. Courtney investigates alternative, more inclusive ways to classify skin tone, which is currently inadequate and biased against people of color. She also co-leads research to understand racial disparities in automated speech recognition (ASR), the technology that powers voice assistants, enables digital dictation platforms, and allows for hand-free computing. In our conversation, Courtney discusses her own experiences with racial bias, her interest in the intersection between psychology and biology, her pathway to big tech, and how her experience as a Cal student-athlete prepared her for leadership as an AI ethicist and user experience researcher.

To learn more about Courtney’s research, see the following articles:

• Racial equity: https://design.google/library/racial-equity-everyday-products/

• Farming + AI: https://medium.com/people-ai-research/q-a-ground-truth-supporting-farmers-with-machine-learning-b95796d5196b

• Skin tone: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exclusive-google-searches-new-measure-skin-tones-curb-bias-products-2021-06-18/

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