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 talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the world of biased bots, altruistic algorithms, and their many entanglements, and provides conceptual tools to decode tech predictions with historical and sociological insight.
When it comes to AI, Ruha shifts 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.
Meet our speaker and chair
Ruha Benjamin (@ruha9.bsky.social) is Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of 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). Ruha is the recipient fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and most recently the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship.
Seeta Peña Gangadharan is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she also serves as Deputy Head of Department (Research) and Programme Director for the MSc Media and Communications (Governance).
More about this event
This event is part of the LSE Festival: Visions for the Future running from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 June 2025, with a series of events exploring the threats and opportunities of the near and distant future, and what a better world could look like. Booking for all Festival events will open on Monday 19 May.
The Department of Media and Communications (@MediaLSE, @lsemedia.bsky.social) is a world-leading centre for education and research in communication and media studies at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London.
At LSE our researchers are using technology’s revolutionary power to understand our world better, looking at AI and technology’s potential to do good, and limiting its potential to do harm. Browse other upcoming events, short films, articles and blogs on AI, technology and society on our dedicated hub.
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