Leading scholar of the social and political implications of AI, with a career spanning over 20 years, Kate Crawford is a research professor of communication and STS at USC Annenberg, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research New York, and the inaugural visiting chair for AI and justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
In 2017, Crawford co-founded the AI Now Institute at New York University with Meredith Whittaker, one of the first organisations dedicated to studying the social implications of AI.
Crawford's work focuses on understanding large-scale data systems, machine learning, and AI within broader contexts of history, politics, labour, and the environment. She argues that AI systems are not neutral but reflect and reinforce existing systems of power and inequality.
Her latest book, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, published by Yale University Press in 2021, provides a comprehensive analysis of the material, human, and ecological costs of AI. The book has received critical acclaim and has been described as "timely and urgent" by Science.
She has advised policymakers in various institutions, including the United Nations, the White House, and the European Parliament, on the social implications of AI.