technology

https://www.wired.com/story/tech-bros-dating-palantir-tesla/

When 28-year-old Helen was an undergraduate at Stanford from 2016 to 2020, she viewed men in tech as guys who “stay up late and maybe have bad hygiene.” But her feelings toward them have gotten even worse over time as she’s questioned the industry’s overall impact.

Helen’s family is from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, whose population, beginning in 2020, was subjected to a prolonged period of human rights abuses. “When I started thinking about questions around genocide and the technology that kills or tracks or excludes,” Helen says, “I realized that the things these people are building are secretly, or under the surface, really nefarious, and I could not personally be with someone who is a puzzle piece in that tapestry.”

Helen herself has worked in tech. Soon after graduating from college, she accepted a job at Grammarly. But after about a year, she went to work for a mutual-aid platform and now is employed at an impact investing firm funding technology for underserved communities. Similarly, Sasha, a 31-year-old Oakland resident, had a brief stint working in AI before heading to a sustainability-focused tech company, where she is now chief of staff. In dating, when she meets someone who works or wants to work in AI, she wonders, “Does that mean that we have the same values in terms of climate and sustainability and thinking about human rights?”