Who gets to be an AI expert? Part 2

Do I look like an expert to you?

“I’m thinking of going back to school for Data Science. I’m curious about AI,” the woman said to my husband. We were at a writing meetup at a local coffee shop. The woman was new to the group, and my husband and I wanted to get to know her.

“Me, too!” I jump in. “I’m writing my thesis on it right now.”

The woman stared at me for a full three seconds. “I thought you were a literature person,” she finally said.

“I like tech, too,” I said, fidgeting with my coffee mug. She kept staring at me like I’d told her I could talk to dead people.

After an awkward silence, she turned her back to me and kept talking to my husband. “So, anyways, what kind of research do you do?” she asked him. It was like I didn’t exist.

My husband and I were too stunned to react. We were both AI researchers, but my husband, wearing glasses and generating AI images on his phone, looked the part. I, in my tie-dyed skirt, writing by hand in a leatherbound journal, looked like a “literature person.”

I wish I could say this only happened once, but the truth is, it happens all the time. Most people aren’t as rude as this woman, but they often don’t know what to make of me. I dread meeting new people and trying to explain what I do for work.

“You don’t look like someone who works in tech,” they say. “No offense!”

At this point, I’m not offended anymore. I’m just tired.

I recently wrote an article questioning the countless “AI experts” popping up around us. I talked about my own experience as an AI researcher and how I feel shut out of the conversation because I didn’t brand myself as an authority when I had the chance. I questioned whose voices we listen to and why it matters.

The response to that article was incredible. (If you’re one of the people who subscribed after reading it, thank you!) After keeping my thoughts to myself for so long, it was validating to see that my experience resonated with other people. I realized I had more to share.

My last article was about how people choose to position themselves as experts. This article is about people who don’t get to choose.

What does an expert look like?

When I say “AI expert,” what image pops into your head? If you’re like most people, you probably picture a Silicon Valley tech bro, a Millennial or Gen-X man with a Yeti thermos and a hoodie. Someone who looks like Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg.

This is the “Tech Genius” archetype, enshrined in our cultural consciousness over the past twenty years. You know exactly the kind of person I’m talking about. Tony Stark. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk and his fans. Your cousin who works at Google.

The Tech Genius is about vibes as much as skill.

My younger brother briefly considered pursuing a Computer Science degree but switched majors after just one coding class. A big reason for the switch was his classmates.

“They all think they’re Tony F*ing Stark,” he told me. They’d grown up seeing tech geniuses in movies and on the news and wanted to be a part of that world. So, they showed up for class with gaming laptops, hoodies, and MCU levels of snark.

“I don’t get it,” my brother said. “We’re all in intro programming. None of us know what we’re doing.” The sheer amount of posturing in the class made my brother uncomfortable. He stayed long enough to learn basic Python, then changed his major to Statistics, where “no one cares about being cool.”

Who cares if you’re cool?

Tech bro culture is a kind of shorthand. Liking craft beer and Makerspaces doesn’t make someone a genius, but it’s a way to signal belonging. To say, “I’m smart. I can hold my own. I know what I’m talking about.”

The broader culture recognizes these signals for what they are. If a man wearing a Google Fiber t-shirt at the Barcade gives an opinion about AI, we listen. He bears the trappings of authority like an MD in a lab coat.

But if you’re a girl in a tie-dyed skirt? People stare. Disbelieve. Your vibe is off. You don’t belong.

Looking the part

I want to pause here to say this phenomenon isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m not trying to say that all tech people are tech bros or all tech bros are guilty of posturing.

But the fact is, genius doesn’t look like Einstein anymore. In 2024, genius looks like Mark Zuckerberg. And the more you look like Mark Zuckerberg, the more you look like you know what you’re talking about.

I think lots of people understand this, whether consciously or not. It’s a powerful narrative shorthand, and mastering it can be the difference between success and failure. Elizabeth Holmes wore black turtlenecks so people would look at her and see Steve Jobs, not a blonde woman.

Not looking the part

I could wear black turtlenecks, too, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to play a part just so people will listen to me. I don’t want to reshape my identity around a need for validation.

Even if I wanted to, I could only do so much. I’m still a woman, and I’m still too young.

When I graduated in August 2022, I sent out over 120 applications before finally getting a job. I knew the job market was competitive, but I was still surprised. I’d graduated from a top program with GPT research under my belt. I figured someone would be interested.

Even companies that were interested in AI didn’t want to hire someone in their twenties. It didn’t matter that the current technology was brand new and that I was among the first in my field to publish research about it. They wanted someone with more work experience, someone older, even if they’d never worked with AI tools before.

I finally got a job in product development at a data company. By that point, I’d given up on doing anything AI-related. I was just grateful to have a job.

“Can you understand that?” my cousin asked me when I told him what my new job was. I just smiled and said, “Yes. Yes, I can.”

Look twice

Expertise isn’t what you look like. It isn’t an archetype, and it isn’t a vibe. At least, it shouldn’t be.

I’m not sharing this story because I want to blame anyone. This is a larger cultural issue. We’re inundated with images of expertise, genius, and skill, and most of us have no reason to question what we’re shown. If someone looks like an authority, we trust them; if they don’t, we don’t.

There’s a price to pay for this. How many people are silenced because they don’t look the part? Because they refuse to conform to a stereotype? Even worse, I wonder about all the people who are too discouraged to even try.

At the end of my last article, I said I’m not an AI expert because I didn’t position myself as an authority in time. The truth is, I tried. I quickly realized that if I built a career around AI, I would spend the rest of my life trying to convince people to take me seriously. That wasn’t how I wanted to live.

This is the third article I’ve written about AI, and I’m still nervous about it. I keep waiting for someone to look at my author photo and call me an imposter. For someone to demand I prove myself.

Despite my anxieties, it’s important for me to share my experiences because I think we need to start talking about this. As AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, we need to look twice at the people who are shaping our future. For every real expert you see, there’s another who might not be as qualified as they look. And there’s yet another you’re not seeing at all.

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Read the whole series - “Who gets to be an AI expert?”

Part 1: Who do we listen to, and why does it matter?

Part 3: Who are the real AI experts, and how do we identify them?