Joy Buolamwini
Founder · Algorithmic Justice League
Showed that commercial face analysis failed more often on darker-skinned women, and built a public practice of auditing systems that claim to see us.
Voices
Who to read in each topic
Not a ranking. People and groups whose public work helps you go deeper. Save a piece to review later, or open it in a new tab.
Who is harmed, who is excluded, and whose dignity is diminished in outputs and decisions.What is known about people, who knows it, and what that knowledge is used for.Shared facts, persuasion, elections, and the conversations a public needs.Fraud, cybercrime, and the weaponization of capable systems.What happens between a person and a system: overreliance, loneliness, lost judgement.Care, clinics, and the people who depend on systems they did not choose.Work, wages, skill, and the meaning of contributing.What is learned, what is lost, and who gets to know.Who can use these systems, who is shut out, and who captures the gains.Language, culture, meaning, and the texture of a shared life.
Timnit Gebru
Founder · Distributed AI Research Institute
Named the labour, environmental, and stereotyping costs of large language models, and built an independent lab after leaving a major lab.
Tristan Harris
Co-founder · Center for Humane Technology
Named how attention systems shape minds at scale, then turned the same lens on generative models in The AI Dilemma.
Renée DiResta
Writer and researcher · Formerly Stanford Internet Observatory
Traces how influence operations, rumor, and now generative media move through networks. Useful when a group wants facts about manipulation, not vibes.
Bruce Schneier
Security technologist · Harvard Kennedy School
Writes about security as a social problem. A reliable first read when a group is mixing fear of hackers with fear of the model itself.
Meredith Whittaker
President · Signal
Connects concentration of compute, surveillance business models, and labour. A voice for groups asking who owns the stack.
Ruha Benjamin
Professor of African American studies · Princeton
Race After Technology is the book that lets a group see how ranking and scoring repeat older patterns of who is trusted.
Safiya Umoja Noble
Professor · UCLA
Algorithms of Oppression showed how search rankings can encode harm. A starting point for culture, identity, and what a system 'knows' about people.
Cathy O'Neil
Mathematician and writer
Weapons of Math Destruction is still the plainest account of scoring systems that punish the people least able to contest them.
Eric Topol
Cardiologist and writer · Scripps Research
Follows medical AI as a clinician who still holds the patient in view. Useful for groups in health systems who need neither hype nor refusal.
World Health Organization
Guidance on large multimodal models
Institutional guidance for health workers and ministries on generative models in care, written to be used rather than admired.
Daron Acemoglu
Economist · MIT
Power and Progress asks whether a technical gain becomes a shared one. A good first book for labour, inequality, and who captures the surplus.
Virginia Eubanks
Writer and teacher
Automating Inequality follows ranking systems in welfare, homelessness, and child protection. Read this before a civic group talks about 'efficiency.'
Nicholas Carlini
Research scientist · Anthropic
Shows, with working attacks, what models leak and how they fail. A technical voice that still reads in a mixed group if you pick one paper.
Inioluwa Deborah Raji
Researcher · UC Berkeley
Wrote the case for closing the AI accountability gap: documentation, audit, and the right to know what a system was tested on.
Sherry Turkle
Professor · MIT
Reclaiming Conversation is the book for groups, especially with youth, who want to talk about companionship, attention, and what a machine cannot hold.
Justin Reich
Director, Teaching Systems Lab · MIT
Failure to Disrupt is a sober history of education technology. A good companion when a school group is being sold a tutor.
International Committee of the Red Cross
Humanitarian policy on AI
Writes from international humanitarian law, not from product. Essential when a conversation touches conflict, weapons, or civilian protection.
Alondra Nelson
Former deputy director, White House OSTP · Institute for Advanced Study
Shepherded the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. A civic starting point for rights language without requiring a legal training.
Abeba Birhane
Cognitive scientist · Trinity College Dublin · Mozilla
Writes about relational ethics and the colonial patterns that hide in datasets. A voice for culture, identity, and who is made into data.
Emily M. Bender
Professor of linguistics · University of Washington
Insists that language models are not minds. A clarifying voice when a group is mixing 'the model said' with 'a person claims.'
Woodrow Hartzog
Professor of law · Boston University
Privacy's Blueprint argues that design, not only notice, is where privacy lives. Useful for groups writing a policy rather than a feeling.
Helen Nissenbaum
Professor · Cornell Tech
Contextual integrity: privacy is not secrecy, it is appropriate flow. The idea that lets a mixed group talk about data without collapsing into 'share nothing.'