Science & Society: AI and Us
Join us for a very special conversation with two of the world’s leading voices on AI: Professor Ruha Benjamin and Professor Kate Crawford. Benjamin is a sociologist and scholar of race, technology, and justice, while Crawford is an AI researcher and expert on the social and political impacts of artificial intelligence. Hosted by our Director of Publishing Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, they will discuss the growing prevalence of AI, and its impact, for the next session of Science & Society.
In an age of rampant techno-optimism (and growing techno-anxiety), AI is playing an ever-more central role in how we live, work, think and play: in the conduct of government, in the futures we imagine for ourselves and our species. How should we understand the biases baked into “large language models,” and other large data sets? How can we best demystify and account for the real and human costs of new technologies and the infrastructures they need? Who controls our data, and governs its use? What potentials exist for using AI, and other technologies, as tools not for bolstering extant iniquities but advancing justice?
After the conversation, join us in the garden for stargazing with the Amateur Astronomers Association. Eritrean-Ethiopian food will be available for purchase throughout the evening by Makina Cafe. Please note that seating is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
About the speakers
Ruha Benjamin is a distinguished sociologist and transdisciplinary scholar at the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and society, with a particular focus on how innovation can perpetuate or mitigate social inequities. She holds the position of Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, an initiative that seeks to harness data as a tool for justice. Her postdoctoral work includes fellowships at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics and Harvard University's Science, Technology, and Society Program. Throughout her career, Benjamin has authored several impactful books that explore the complex relationships between race, technology, and justice, including People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013), Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024). Benjamin was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2024.
Kate Crawford is an internationally leading scholar of AI and its impacts. She is a Professor at the University of Southern California in LA, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York, and the inaugural visiting chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She founded multiple research centers around the world, and leads the interdisciplinary lab called Knowing Machines. Her book Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence won three major prizes, was named a best book of the year by The Financial Times and New Scientist, and has been translated into twelve languages. Her artworks include Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler, which won the Design of the Year Award and is in the permanent collections of MoMA and the V&A. Their latest installation, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500, won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art, science, and technology and will be shown in the Venice Biennale in 2025. Kate was named on the TIME100 list as one of the most influential people in AI.
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer, and he is Director of Publishing at Pioneer Works and the Executive Editor of Pioneer Works Broadcast. His books include Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names and Island People: The Caribbean and the World.
Our signature series Science & Society grapples with our relationships with nature and each other. Each leads us deep into humanity’s timely and intersectional challenges, from biodiversity, to plastics, public knowledge, the high seas, farming, climate, and love.
This event is supported by the Simons Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.