With a durag tying down a ‘fro reminiscent of Angela Davis, tattoos on her hands and arms, and grills that would impress any hip hop impresario, X. Eyee isn’t who you might first imagine as your guide to understanding Artificial Intelligence and blockchain technology. Born the sixth of eight children in Richmond, CA to parents who struggled with addiction, Eye has always been a fighter. She’s now a Product Manager and part of the Google Research Data and Media Understanding Team for Responsible AI.

Eyee’s path to Microsoft, the US military and Google wasn’t traditional. “I ended up in [juvenile detention] and had a mentor bribe me to learn how to code. He sat one of the biggest books I’ve ever seen- probably 1,000 pages- in front of me. He gave me $100 and said ‘If you do every exercise in this book and it doesn’t change your life, I’ll give you $1,000.”

Undaunted, she worked her way through the book and turned what she learned into a webmaster business. Soon after, she joined the National Guard and was deployed to Afghanistan. “I got to work with top level generals,” she explained. “I had the tech skills to build networks and then to secure those networks and I worked and learned everything I could. When I left the service I didn't go back to school but I kept learning and moving.”

Her work for the government and for Microsoft got her noticed. That’s when a recruiter for Google made an intriguing inquiry. He asked, “Do you care about how AI is affecting our world? How can AI be fair, not biased and not bad for society?”

And that is the question that set Eyee off on a path to make certain that would make her work meaningful to people who she says are too often overlooked. “I started a curriculum. I speak in terms people understand!’”

Her work, she says, is all for a greater cause. She says her Black and Cuban ancestors had to fear the KKK and other discrimination. “To see where I am... they were never able to see the inside of where I’ve been! So my course is how we can build better. Let's all sit at the table and talk and I’ll bring as many of my people as I can with me. And I want people to not comprise or change who they are to the world.”

Check out X. Eyee’s free course at twx.ai.