The impact of early AI systems is already being felt, bringing with it challenges and opportunities, and laying the foundation on which future advances in AI will be integrated into social and political domains. The potential wide-ranging impact makes it necessary to look carefully at the ways in which these technologies are being applied now, whom they’re benefiting, and how they’re structuring our social, economic, and interpersonal lives.

Kate Crawford is the co-founder (with Meredith Whittaker) of the AI Now Initiative, a New York-based research center working across disciplines to understand the social and economic implications of artificial intelligence. She is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York City, a Visiting Professor at MIT’s Center for Civic Media, and a Senior Fellow at NYU’s Information Law Institute. Her research addresses the social implications of large scale data, machine learning and AI. Recent publications address the topics of data discrimination, social impacts of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and due process, ethical review for data science, and algorithmic accountability.