AI, Civil Rights, and the Fight for a Just Future

From hiring to housing, policing to sentencing, artificial intelligence and data-driven systems are increasingly shaping our civil rights—often in invisible ways. Far from being neutral, these technologies are amplifying bias, and the Big Tech companies that build them are impacting, and often harming, democracy, equity, and the environment. In this talk, technologist and writer Shankar Narayan explores how AI and Big Tech are reshaping our rights today—including historical and current risks to equity and justice, and opportunities for communities to build a more just technological future.

Shankar Narayan is an advocate, attorney, writer, and teacher. As a technologist, he seeks to bring values of fairness, transparency, and accountability to surveillance and artificial intelligence technologies. As a poet and teacher, he explores identity, power, mythology, and technology. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. An immigrant, Shankar grew up in the Soviet Union, USA, the Maldives, India, Yugoslavia, and Thailand. Shankar lives in Seattle. This program is in partnership with Humanities Washington's Speakers Bureau.