Join the ARLIS/NA Diversity & Inclusion Committee for
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, a presentation by Dr. Alex Hanna.
Dr. Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals
Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and
Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the Scholars Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
She is a recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on
FastCompany's Queer 50 and
Go Magazine's Women We Love lists, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences
New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.
With Dr. Emily M. Bender, Alex is working on
The AI Con (Forthcoming Spring 2025, Harper Books), a book about AI and the hype around it. The two also run the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and on their
podcast.
