February 12, 2021, 12 pm EST

Meredith Whittaker Keynote:
“AI and Social Control”

Moderator: David Pennock (Director, DIMACS)

Registration

Meredith Whittaker is the co-founder and co-director, AI Now Institute, Minderoo Research Professor at New York University, Founder of Google’s Open Research GroupThis talk examines the limits of AI technologies, and their insistence on enforcing normative categories that necessarily exclude “that which doesn’t fit.” It then goes on to review the political economy driving the AI industry, AI’s recent history and capacity for social control, and how movements for justice must go beyond corporate-sponsored “ethics” and a fascination with technical mechanisms and adopt more militant tactics that contend with concentrated power, and the capacity of AI to exacerbate inequality and facilitate minority rule.

Meredith Whittaker’s research and advocacy focuses on the social implications of artificial intelligence and the tech industry responsible for it. Prior to NYU, she worked at Google for over a decade, where she led product and engineering teams, and co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement platform that now provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. As a long-time tech worker, she helped lead labor organizing at Google, driven by the belief that worker power and collective action are necessary to ensure meaningful tech accountability in the context of concentrated industrial power. She has advised the White House, the FCC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security.

Optional Reading: AI Now Institute’s report “Disability, Bias, and AI“