NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, the 370 Jay Project, and the NYU Tandon Department of Technology, Culture and Society invite you to a new discussion in the series “Co-Opting AI.”

This event will examine the relationship between AI, society, extraction, inequality, and the climate emergency.

Zane Griffin Talley Cooper is a researcher and filmmaker who studies the social, political, and environmental relationships between data infrastructures, energy production, and resource extraction. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Research on Global Communication. His work has appeared in journals such as Big Data & Society, and his multimodal scholarship has been exhibited at various festivals and museums. He is currently a lead researcher on an international project investigating e-waste supply chains, funded by the Internet Society Foundation, for which he is conducting fieldwork on rare earth mining in South Greenland.

Victor Galaz is associate professor in political science, deputy director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre , and programme director of the Beijer Institute’s Governance, Technology and Complexity programme. He is also co-Editor-in-Chief for the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST), and Board Member of The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) since 2021. His research explores the political and governance challenges created by rapid global change, including globally networked risks, governance dimensions of “planetary boundaries”, the interplay between financial systems and Earth system dynamics, and the sustainability implications of novel technologies. Galaz’s work about societal challenges created by technological change includes governance dimensions of geo-engineering, early warning systems of epidemic outbreaks, uses of social media to detect ecological change, online mis- and disinformation on environmental issues, and sustainability risks embedded in early applications of artificial intelligence. He is currently working on the book “Dark Machines” (for Routledge) about the impacts of artificial intelligence, digitalization and automation for the Biosphere. Galaz has extensive experience as research leader in interdisciplinary projects exploring various dimensions of complex adaptive systems from his work as research theme leader (years 2006-2015) at the Stockholm Resilience Centre; deputy science director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre; acting executive director (2014-2015) at the Royal Swedish Academy; project leader for the project “Earth system finance” (2016-ongoing); co-lead of the Lancet Commission on Human Health and Climate Change (2013-2015), researcher and theme leader in the international research consortium Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa (DDDAC), together with STEPS Centre (UK), Institute for Development Studies (UK) and others (2012-2016); member of the Convention on Biological Diversity Liaison Expert group on geo-engineering (2011-2012); and advisor to the EU High-Level Group on Innovation Policy Management (2017). He is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability since 2021. He also coordinates the new initiative “AI, People & Planet” together with the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, and Princeton University’s research on Global Systemic Risks (PIIRS).

Jauna Vitale is the Assistant Director of Sustainability, supporting the team in achieving sustainability goals across NYU campuses. Before joining NYU, Jauna worked for the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation on multiple projects including leading project management for the PACT NYCHA renovation portfolio and developing food equity programming. She also worked on recycling and organics outreach programming for the NYC Department of Sanitation and developing green building operations and waste management training out of LaGuardia Community College for the Research Foundation at CUNY. Jauna earned an MS in Environmental Technology following a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies from the New York Institute of Technology.

Mona Sloane, Ph.D. is a sociologist working on design and inequality, specifically in the context of AI design and policy. She is a Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, Faculty at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, a Fellow with NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK) and The GovLab, and the Director of the *This Is Not A Drill* program on technology, inequality and the climate emergency at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is principal investigator on multiple research projects on AI and society, and holds an affiliation as postdoctoral scholar with the Tübingen AI Center at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Mona founded and runs the IPK Co-Opting AI series at NYU and currently serves as editor of the technology section at Public Books. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Follow her on Twitter @mona_sloane.