In this grounding conversation, the first of two parts on “What is AI?” we go on a deep dive with Meredith Whittaker on the history of artificial intelligence (AI), from hype to current day-to-day impacts. Meredith has had a front seat to some of the most important developments and growth in so-called AI over the past 15 years. Here, she dives into the historical context that gave rise to AI, emphasizing how its emergence was bound together with the privatization of the internet and with the expansion of the surveillance advertising business model currently at the core of the tech industry. But facts alone won’t counter narratives meant to either disillusion us or desensitize us to rampant data collection, surveillance, and the automation of incredibly important, life-altering decisions and resource allocation by companies and governments the world over. We need new strategies and responses to address the prevailing myths and misperceptions surrounding AI.

Biography

Meredith Whittaker is the President of Signal. She is the current Chief Advisor, and the former Faculty Director and Co-Founder of the AI Now Institute. Her research and advocacy focus on the social implications of artificial intelligence and the tech industry responsible for it, with a particular emphasis on power and the political economy driving the commercialization of computational technology. Prior to founding AI Now, she worked at Google for over a decade, where she led product and engineering teams, founded Google’s Open Research Group, and co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement platform that now provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. She has advised the White House, the FCC, FTC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security.