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The Obert C. Tanner Lecture on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values - Professor Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab and author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.

Black Mirror: Race, AI and Inequity in the 21st Century
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, technology has the potential to hide, speed, and deepen discrimination, while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to racist practices of a previous era. In this talk, Ruha Benjamin examines biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech promises with historical and sociological insight. She also considers how race itself is a tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice and challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold, but also the ones we manufacture ourselves.

This lecture was the opening event of Critical Borders: Radical (Re)visions of AI, a conference which took place at the University of Cambridge and online from 18-21 October, 2021 and was hosted by Leverhulme CFI and Clare Hall.

This conference was convened by Leverhulme CFI  and the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. It was generously funded by the Obert C. Tanner Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values; The conference conveners were also generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Templeton World charity Foundation, DeepMind and Christina Gaw.

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