Common Sense AI Review Team
Our reviews are not conducted individually, but by a team (learn more about how we review and rate AI products here). This matters because no single person, type of background or specific expertise can single handedly recognize ethical blind spots, technical limitations, or opportunities a given product represents. It also matters because it helps to ensure that personal beliefs are not driving review outcomes; we are all actively holding each other accountable to the process itself, not any specific outcome.
This also speaks to the importance of a repeatable process for any AI governance work. Any Responsible AI evaluation deals with highly complex technologies that can have significant impact on people. Evaluating those impacts means the topics that need to be discussed, while critical, can be difficult. Having a repeated, dependable process with a team of people who all feel psychologically safe to discuss these topics allows us to repeatedly surface the right information to share in our final reviews in a way you can trust.
Read more about our reviewers below. Not every reviewer participated in every review, and all reviewers recused themselves for any cases of conflict of interest.
Tracy Pizzo Frey
Tracy Pizzo Frey is leading the Common Sense AI ratings and reviews program. She has extensive background in applied use of advanced technologies in both public and private sector organizations across the globe. Tracy was the Managing Director for Outbound Product Management and Responsible AI at Google Cloud. In 2017 Tracy founded, created and led all of Google Cloud’s Responsible AI work, which served as a model for how other business lines in Google could create alignment with Google’s AI Principles. Tracy is the Founder and CEO of Restorative AI, a services-based company that helps organizations ensure their creation, use and adoption of AI tools, systems and products contribute to the future we all deserve. She is also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Uncommon Impact Studio. Tracy has been a product manager, product marketer, environmental science educator, business development leader, sales ops optimizer, teacher, researcher, and professional hip-hop dancer. She has worked across laboratories, classrooms, deep in the woods, academic research institutions, high-tech startups, and eventually at Google where she spent 11 years before leaving in 2022 to bring Restorative AI and Uncommon Impact Studio to life.
Tracy graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with joint degrees in Studies of Women, Gender & Sexuality and Educational Psychology and received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her most important and treasured job is being a mother to two extraordinary humans.
Jason Mills
Jason Mills is the Vice President of Engineering at Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW), an innovative SaaS based Enterprise DataWarehouse company in Cloud Computing. He currently serves on the board of Applause, the world's largest software and technology testing platform and a Vista Equity Partners (PE) owned company.
Jason has held a series of technology executive jobs with increasing responsibility and scope and has managed P&L’s from startup to multi-billions at some of the most iconic companies in the financial services and technology industries: Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Google, Snowflake. He has over 30 years of global technology and operations leadership experience across the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Jason is a technologist and engineer by education and experience. He has unique knowledge and skills across many facets of both legal on premise technology as well as leading edge cloud technology. He has expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, SaaS, Cloud Infrastructure and, The Data Cloud, and services.
Jason has received numerous awards for his groundbreaking work, including 2x Patents in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, 2017 BEYA (Black Engineer of the Year Award) Tech Leader.
Jason has served on the Syracuse University iSchool Board of Advisors and earned his Bachelor of Science andMaster of Science degree in information science from Syracuse University.
Jason is a formula one enthusiast and enjoys travel, billiards, driving, volunteering, and tennis.
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell is a researcher focused on the ins and outs of machine learning and ethics-informed AI development in tech. She has published around 100 papers on natural language generation, assistive technology, computer vision, and AI ethics, and holds multiple patents in the areas of conversation generation and sentiment classification. She has recently received recognition as one of Time's Most Influential People of 2023. She currently works at Hugging Face as Chief Ethics Scientist, driving forward work in the ML development ecosystem, ML data governance, AI evaluation, and AI ethics. She previously worked at Google AI as a Staff Research Scientist, where she founded and co-led Google's Ethical AI group, focused on foundational AI ethics research and operationalizing AI ethics Google-internally. Before joining Google, she was a researcher at Microsoft Research, focused on computer vision-to-language generation; and was a postdoc at Johns Hopkins, focused on Bayesian modeling and information extraction. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Aberdeen and a Master's in computational linguistics from the University of Washington. While earning her degrees, she also worked from 2005-2012 on machine learning, neurological disorders, and assistive technology at Oregon Health and Science University. She has spearheaded a number of workshops and initiatives at the intersections of diversity, inclusion, computer science, and ethics. Her work has received awards from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the American Foundation for the Blind, and has been implemented by multiple technology companies. She likes gardening, dogs, and cats.
Michael Preston
Michael Preston is the Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an independent research and innovation lab within Sesame Workshop that advances positive futures for kids in the digital world. The Center conducts research on emerging technologies and collaborates with technologists, digital media producers, and educators to support young people’s learning and well-being. Michael has 25 years of experience leading educational innovation and technology programs in K-12, university, and informal learning contexts. His work focuses on child-centered approaches to design, new models for teaching and learning, and systemic change at local and national levels. He co-founded CSforALL, the hub for the national Computer Science for All movement, and led digital learning initiatives at the NYC Department of Education, Columbia University, and New Visions for Public Schools. He earned a PhD in Cognitive Science in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Medha Tare
Medha Tare is an experienced researcher in the learning sciences and technology area. Her work centers on addressing the needs of the whole child, including considering individual differences among learners, their environments, and the media through which they learn. Prior to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, she was the Director of Research for the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise, where she developed public resources on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and background factors that impact children and adults’ learning. This work involved research translation, science communication, and studies of educational efficacy with school districts and edtech product developers. She has also served as a Learning Sciences Exchange Fellow through New America, working across sectors to promote early learning and help young children and their families thrive. Medha earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and her BA in Cognitive Science and English at Rutgers University. She has served as an advisor on national and international educational initiatives and has numerous peer-reviewed publications including in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Language Learning and Technology, and Journal of Cognition and Development.
Robbie Torney
Robbie Torney is Chief of Staff, Office of the CEO at Common Sense. At Common Sense, he has led early AI initiatives, Common Sense’s national Youth Mental Health campaign, and advocacy work focused on kids and family rights.
Prior to this, Robbie spent over a decade working in East Oakland, CA as a teacher, Principal, and Chief of Staff. He led through the COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent reopening and is proud of building strong, functional teams. Areas of expertise include: charter authorization/renewal; school funding; special education programming; English learner programming; lawful disciplinary practices; charter school compliance; enrollment/registration practices; and data-driven decision making.
Robbie is a New Leaders Principal Alum (Bay Area Cohort 17). He graduated from Stanford in 2009 with a BA in Political Theory and in 2010 with a MA in Elementary Education. He is a passionate advocate for students and families.
Shannon Vallor
Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. She is Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and co-Director of the BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme, funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council. Professor Vallor's research explores how AI, robotics, and data science reshape human moral character, habits, and practices. Her work includes advising policymakers and industry on the ethical design and use of AI. She is a standing member of the One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence (AI100) and a member of the Oversight Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute. Professor Vallor received the 2015 World Technology Award in Ethics from the World Technology Network and the 2022 Covey Award from the International Association of Computing and Philosophy. She is a former Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google. Her published works include Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016) and the forthcoming The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Julia Wasserman
Julia is a product strategy and operations leader with a particular expertise in and passion for aligning organizational values and principles to business practice. Since 2021, Julia has applied her experience toward accelerating implementation of Web3 coordination technologies across core business challenges via Rigor, a startup she co-manages with her business partner.
Previously, Julia led the Ethics and Responsible AI efforts for Google Cloud’s AI and Industry Solutions team, where she worked to drive the strategy that would lead to success in aligning product development and business decisions with Google’s AI Principles. Outside of the programmatic work required to develop ethical products, responsible product development demanded a deep study, understanding and respect for the societal context into which novel AI technologies are integrated. Julia’s work centered on translating this ethical diligence into product development strategies for AI solutions at a global scale. During her early tenure at Google, while part of the Google for Education team, Julia focused on synthesizing the customer voice and driving internal alignment around Google's educational offerings. She also served as the team's authority on competitive intelligence and developed programming to support ed-tech companies who sought to partner with Google.
Julia was born and raised in Miami, Fl, earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Berkeley Haas School of Business. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA with her loving husband, Gautam, and believes in the restorative power of meditation, dance, and surfing.