From automated decision systems in healthcare, policing, education and more, technologies have the potential to deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to harmful practices of a previous era.

In this AISSR Lecture, Ruha Benjamin took us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provided conceptual tools to decode tech predictions with historical and sociological insight. 

When it comes to AI, Ruha shifted our focus from the dystopian and utopian narratives we are sold, to a sober reckoning with the way these tools are already a part of our lives. Whereas dystopias are the stuff of nightmares, and utopias the stuff of dreams… ustopias are what we create together when we are wide awake.

Aftertalk

This lecture was followed by a conversation between Ruha Benjamin and Amade M'charek, Professor Anthropology of Science at the University of Amsterdam.

About Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, specializing in the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.

She is the founding director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab, and author of four books, Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019).

Benjamin's work is widely recognized in academic and activist circles for its critical insights into tech-driven discrimination, biopolitics, and the future of social equity.