Kate Crawford
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katecrawford.bsky.social
Kate Crawford
@katecrawford.bsky.social

Professor, researcher, maker of things
~Book: Atlas of AI
~Installation: Calculating Empires
~NYT video: AI's Real Environmental Impact https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/opinion/ai-quartz-mining-hurricane-helene.html

Kate Crawford is a researcher, writer, composer, producer and academic, who studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is based in New York and works as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, the co-founder and former director of research at the AI Now Institute at NYU, a visiting professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media, a senior fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU, and an associate professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is also a member of the WEF's Global Agenda Council on Data-Driven Development. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 21%
Computer science 20%

Reposted by Kate Crawford

Join us on Wednesday, October 8, for SciCafe: Mapping the Costs of AI. Kate Crawford (@katecrawford.bsky.social), research professor at the University of Southern California, will explore the environmental and human cost of AI systems.

SciCafe is 21+ and free with RSVP. Get tickets: bit.ly/4nB7w33
The Hidden Costs of AI: SciCafe October 8 | AMNH
Kate Crawford will explore the hidden costs of artificial intelligence and how its vast infrastructure reshapes our physical world.
bit.ly

Thanks Jer! 💚

Reposted by Kate Crawford

This video is really important.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/o...

It connects the dots between A.I. and climate disasters and is just a perfectly crafted piece of investigation and exposition.

@katecrawford.bsky.social
Opinion | A.I.’s Environmental Impact Will Threaten Its Own Supply Chain
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Kate Crawford

"Metabolic images are visual material made by consuming billions of other images to be broken down and absorbed by #AI models via a gargantuan infrastructure that absorbs energy and water, and excretes media, atmospheric carbon, and other pollutants." — @katecrawford.bsky.social
Intensification - Kate Crawford - Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop
AI slop isn’t invested in the order of events or even looking like reality. The slop is not the territory: it just smothers it in synthetic goop. It’s flooding the zone with AI shit.
www.e-flux.com

Reposted by Kate Crawford

If you're in Paris, don’t miss The world through AI at Jeu de Paume !

The exhibition is brillant and goes beyond generative AI hype.

Special mention to Calculating Empire by Crawford & Joler — a mind-blowing map of technological power.

#art #AI #Paris @katecrawford.bsky.social

Reposted by Kate Crawford

Reposted by Kate Crawford

"The current approach to AI cannot sustain itself indefinitely. The question becomes not whether current AI slop economies will destroy themselves, but when."

By @katecrawford.bsky.social

www.e-flux.com/architecture...
Intensification - Kate Crawford - Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop
AI slop isn’t invested in the order of events or even looking like reality. The slop is not the territory: it just smothers it in synthetic goop. It’s flooding the zone with AI shit.
www.e-flux.com

New essay now online: "EATING THE FUTURE: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop."
AI consumes planetary resources and excretes slop, polluting environmental & information ecologies. It's a new metabolic rift - disrupting the cycles that sustain both humans and AI alike.
www.e-flux.com/architecture...
Intensification - Kate Crawford - Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop
AI slop isn’t invested in the order of events or even looking like reality. The slop is not the territory: it just smothers it in synthetic goop. It’s flooding the zone with AI shit.
www.e-flux.com

💚

Reposted by Kate Crawford

Back in print in the latest @wired.it with an interview with the brilliant @katecrawford.bsky.social. At a time when the AI industry reveals its imperialist, extractivist drive, we need critical perspectives and counter-narratives more than ever.

Reposted by Kate Crawford

thanks for sharing it!

Hallucinations and vibe citing - a primer for public policy in 2025 🫠

Seems like a good time to re-up @katecrawford.bsky.social‬'s brilliant coining: "hallucitations".

Register to join this timely discussion on June 2, in person or on line, with @katecrawford.bsky.social @hofrench.bsky.social @tamigraph.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social, hosted by my Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study www.ias.edu/events/raree...

The EPA is being rolled back to the 1980s. Think big hair, WHAM, and Exxon hiding the fact that burning fossil fuels was driving climate change.
US EPA plans to reduce staff to 1980s levels, dissolve research office
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans on Friday to slash its budget by $300 million in fiscal year 2026, reduce staffing to 1980s levels and dissolve its research and development office as part of a sweeping overhaul of the agency.
www.reuters.com

perhaps...but the incontrovertible evidence is already out there, and these kinds of cases tie up and financially ruin organizations

We've gone from climate change denial to climate change criminalization. First they defund the science, now the FBI is prosecuting groups like Habitat for Humanity for fraud.
newrepublic.com/post/192660/...
Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups
The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant.
newrepublic.com

The ‘can machines do creative writing’ thing is mostly a distraction from the use of the machines to go through text and images to cancel grants and put people on deportation lists

Meta *removed* @gilduran.com's article because it was about "topics like the ‘Network State’ concept and critiques of tech industry figures..." 👀

Generated AI plants are thriving online, with fake "seeds" selling on Amazon - people gravitating to impossible flora while real plants vanish. We're enchanted with simulacra as actual biodiversity disappears.
@giovannialoi.bsky.social cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02...
Fighting a new invasive species: AI's impossible flora | Center for the Study of World Religions
cswr.hds.harvard.edu

Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world’s most repressive regimes. It’s genuinely shocking that this appears to be what’s going on right here. 1/

Rare earths are central to the US administration's capture strategy: from Ukraine to Greenland. When people exclude the mineral dependencies of AI (as with most everything else) they're missing the story www.ft.com/content/65ee...
Why rare earths matter to Donald Trump and the west
China dominates market in metals used in range of products, including those crucial for national security
www.ft.com