This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Meredith Whittaker , the president of Signal, based in New York and Paris. It's been edited for length and clarity. In July 2006, I accepted a job offer at Google that brought me into tech after an arts and humanities education. I climbed the ladder at Google to found Google's Open Research Group, working on issues related to measurement, privacy, and AI. In 2016, I cofounded the AI Now Research Institute at NYU, the first university-based