Future Congress 2024: Who is Kate Crawford and her criticism of the global impact of Artificial Intelligence
Kate Crawford. She is a prominent academic who has studied the social implications of artificial intelligence and was one of the most influential people of 2023 according to Time magazine. A professor at New York University and researcher at the School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, she is 50 years old and has dedicated herself to understanding large-scale data systems, machine learning and their global impact.
On November 15, 2017 she, along with Meredith Whittaker, launched the first women-led research center AI Now Institute, which brings together computing, economics and law experts to explore the responsible use of technologies.
He joined the Microsoft Research team in 2005, where he brings together an interesting repertoire of research on various topics, such as the media debate on music downloading, internet censorship, the first website dedicated to emojis and the personalization of news with X ( ex Twitter), among other things.
She currently holds the inaugural visiting professorship in AI and justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
She has advised politicians at the UN, the Federal Trade Commission, the European Parliament, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the White House. In addition, she has collaborated for media such as The New York Times, The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine.
Her work also brings together collaborative projects and visual investigations. The “Anatomy of an AI System” project with Vladan Joler, which looks at the life cycle of the Amazon Echo, received the Beazley Award for “Design of the Year” (2019) and is in MoMA’s permanent collection.
Criticism of AI models. In an interview with the British media The Guardian in June 2021, she noted that “ethics in [AI] is necessary, but not sufficient. More useful are questions like: Who benefits and who is harmed by AI? What we see again and again, from facial recognition, to tracking and surveillance in work systems, is that these systems are empowering already powerful institutions: corporations, military and police.
Her time in Chile. With her presentation How to deal with the AI that human beings have created?, Crawford was in charge of opening the call that brings together Congress Future 2024, under the motto “Now what do we do”, which winks at how artificial intelligence is changing life on the planet.
“When something proves not to be what it claims, democracy itself presents an epistemological collapse. The concentration of decisions in so few hands [mainly in China and the United States], and on platforms that prove to be essential for public communication and elections, goes beyond disinformation, because these platforms regulate all information. Many [entrepreneurs] benefit from promoting their own artificial intelligence chats, and their interests are not with those of the public,” she stated in her presentation at the Future Congress.
It turns out that many governments do not feel capable of regulating the transfers of power, where the impact of international alliances is very relevant. “We need a regulatory strategy that monitors all levels of artificial intelligence, between work, information, natural resources and many other aspects,” added Crawford.
In 2022, Chile was one of the main countries to regulate the operation of digital platforms, through law 21,431, to provide social security to application workers, covering delivery people and drivers.
Your AI Atlas. Through her book AI Atlas: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (2021), she explores what the effects of artificial intelligence will be on the planet, and how it ended up shaping how we perceive ourselves and our environment.
Among her discoveries are that AI is ultimately an extraction technology, which is driving undemocratic governance, increasing inequality. Crawford concludes that the idea that AI is merely an accumulation of ethereal mathematical algorithms in the cloud is completely wrong. In fact, she explains that it works by extracting large amounts of data, human labor and factors including energy, water and minerals.
This is an investigation lasting more than 10 years that has provoked several positive reviews:
“This study argues that [artificial intelligence] is neither artificial nor particularly intelligent… a fascinating story of the data with which learning systems are trained.” — New Yorker.
“A valuable corrective to much of the hype surrounding AI and a playbook for the future.” –John Thornhill, Financial Times.
