Professor Kate Crawford: Mapping Planetary AI

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems pull data from across the internet, library databases and our online presence, it generates a significant change in our relationship with knowledge.

But what do we really know about this pervasive technology? Do our societies have robust guardrails in place to protect people and democracies, and have we reckoned with AI’s environmental impact?

Join award-winning Professor Kate Crawford, one of the world’s foremost scholars on the social and political implications of AI, as she explores how AI is reshaping our societies, ecosystems and power structures with host Natasha Mitchell in our 2024 For Future Reference lecture.

There will be an opportunity to view rare books acquired through the Library’s Women Writers Fund initiative.

This event will also be livestreamed.

Doors will open from 7pm. Drinks will be available to purchase on the night.

Book your tickets now.

Mapping Planetary AI

Professor Kate Crawford

Generative Artifical Intelligence (AI) systems are at the heart of a profound shift in how we create, access, and even define knowledge. The mass extraction of data across the internet, as well as from libraries and archives, raises important questions for who gets to build private AI models on public data.

At the same time, AI systems are reshaping the planet in lasting, often hidden ways. AI is now one of the largest planetary architectures built by our species, requiring vast amounts of energy, water, data and labour to function.

The 2024 For Future Reference lecture will explore the dual nature of generative AI as a cultural transformation and a material force. The lecture will examine these systems amongst the historical lineage of empires that used new technologies to centralise power and reshape societies and ecosystems on a global scale.

About Kate Crawford

Professor Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of artificial intelligence. She is a Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York, and was the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Her book Atlas of AI won multiple awards and was named one of the best books of 2021 by New Scientist and The Financial Times. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler won the Design of the Year Award in 2019 and is on show at MoMA from 2022-2024.

Their latest work, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power, won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology. She was named on the TIME100 list as one of the most influential people in AI.

About the For Future Reference lecture series

Endowed by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, For Future Reference is an annual lecture series that shines a light on women’s influence on society via the mediums of literature, storytelling and authorship, both historically and into the future, with a focus on the future archives to be held in the State Collection.

This series is supported by the Library’s Women Writers Fund initiative, which seeks to redress the historical gender imbalance in our collection by acquiring works and presenting public programs that highlight work by under-represented women writers, artists and thinkers.