'Alternative Nobel' for 2026 goes to AI critic Timnit Gebru, Pakistan's Jalila Haider and two rights movements
US AI researcher Timnit Gebru, Pakistani lawyer Jalila Haider, the Rural Women's Assembly and Georgia's GYLA named 2026 Right Livelihood laureates.
The Right Livelihood Foundation in Stockholm named its 2026 laureates on Wednesday, handing the prize dubbed an “alternative Nobel” to a US artificial intelligence researcher, a Pakistani human rights lawyer and two women-led rights organisations.
US AI researcher Timnit Gebru was chosen “for challenging concentrated power in artificial intelligence and pioneering digital technology rooted in justice, lived experience and human agency”, the foundation said. Gebru, who co-founded Black in AI in 2017, co-led Google’s Ethical AI team before being dismissed in 2020 after refusing to withdraw a pioneering paper on bias in large language models; she later founded the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR).
Pakistani lawyer Jalila Haider was honoured “for breaking barriers, as the first female lawyer from her Hazara community, to challenge ethnic, state and patriarchal persecution, guided by the conviction that no human being is illegal”.
The Rural Women’s Assembly, a movement of more than 178,000 small-scale farmers across 11 Southern African nations, was recognised for organising rural women “into a united force defending land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession”.
Georgia’s oldest human rights organisation, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association — founded in 1994 — was honoured “for building and safeguarding Georgian democracy and sustaining civic power in the face of an autocratic crackdown”.
Established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, the award was traditionally announced shortly before the Nobel Prizes. The 2026 laureates were chosen from 200 nominations across 72 countries.
Sources
- Geo TV: “Pakistani rights activist among others honoured with ‘alternative Nobel prize’” — https://www.geo.tv/latest/684335-pakistani-rights-activist-among-others-honoured-with-alternative-nobel-prize
- Right Livelihood (official): “2026 Right Livelihood Laureates challenge autocracy, patriarchy and AI bias” — https://rightlivelihood.org
- Associated Press: “Right Livelihood Award honors women taking on autocrats, discrimination and unchecked AI” — https://isp.netscape.com/tech/story/0001/20260930/1b50acb5a6a9ccb7c5f3a05758f5179b
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