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
~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
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
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
October 3, 2025 at 4:04 PM
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
SciCafe is 21+ and free with RSVP. Get tickets: bit.ly/4nB7w33
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
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
September 26, 2025 at 11:37 AM
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
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
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
September 15, 2025 at 2:00 AM
"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
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
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
September 12, 2025 at 2:27 PM
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
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
"Multiple studies have shown that AI systems degenerate when they are fed on too much of their own outputs—a phenomenon researchers call MAD (Model Autophagy Disease) [...] AI will eat itself, then gradually collapse into nonsense and noise [...] The researchers compare it to mad cow disease."
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...
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
September 9, 2025 at 6:59 AM
"Multiple studies have shown that AI systems degenerate when they are fed on too much of their own outputs—a phenomenon researchers call MAD (Model Autophagy Disease) [...] AI will eat itself, then gradually collapse into nonsense and noise [...] The researchers compare it to mad cow disease."
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...
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
September 9, 2025 at 5:57 AM
"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...
By @katecrawford.bsky.social
www.e-flux.com/architecture...
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...
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
September 8, 2025 at 7:09 PM
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...
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...
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.
July 4, 2025 at 8:44 AM
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
Seems like a good time to re-up @katecrawford.bsky.social's brilliant coining: "hallucitations".
May 30, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Seems like a good time to re-up @katecrawford.bsky.social's brilliant coining: "hallucitations".
Reposted by Kate Crawford
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...
May 14, 2025 at 3:06 PM
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
May 2, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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.
Reposted by Kate Crawford
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
March 13, 2025 at 10:34 AM
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
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/...
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
March 13, 2025 at 9:59 PM
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/...
newrepublic.com/post/192660/...
Meta *removed* @gilduran.com's article because it was about "topics like the ‘Network State’ concept and critiques of tech industry figures..." 👀
Meta rep flagged "critiques of tech industry figures" as "sensitive or controversial content." I spoke to @gilduran.com about concerns over how free Meta's new "free speech" policies really are
Meta rep flagged 'critiques of tech industry figures' as 'sensitive or controversial content'
Meta said that the journalist "should never have received this response," but the incident set off a wave of concern over censorship online.
www.usermag.co
March 12, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Meta *removed* @gilduran.com's article because it was about "topics like the ‘Network State’ concept and critiques of tech industry figures..." 👀
And now for the latest in fresh hell...
Yale Scholar Banned After A.I. News Site Accuses Her of Terrorist Link
The deputy director of a liberal project at Yale Law School was put on leave over allegations that she is linked to Samidoun, a group the U.S. government has said funds terrorists.
www.nytimes.com
March 12, 2025 at 4:58 PM
And now for the latest in fresh hell...
Reposted by Kate Crawford
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/
March 9, 2025 at 11:55 PM
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/
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...
@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
March 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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...
@giovannialoi.bsky.social cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02...
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
March 5, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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...
Reposted by Kate Crawford
Next up in our Institute’s Colloquium Series “History of Science in Public”: Kate Crawford @katecrawford.bsky.social will talk on "Mapping #AI: How to See Planetary-Scale #ArtificialIntelligence.”
🗓️ Mar 25, 2025 (14:00 CET)
🔗 bitly.cx/m0KeS
📍 relocated: MPIWG Main conference room
#HistSci #SciComm
🗓️ Mar 25, 2025 (14:00 CET)
🔗 bitly.cx/m0KeS
📍 relocated: MPIWG Main conference room
#HistSci #SciComm
February 26, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Next up in our Institute’s Colloquium Series “History of Science in Public”: Kate Crawford @katecrawford.bsky.social will talk on "Mapping #AI: How to See Planetary-Scale #ArtificialIntelligence.”
🗓️ Mar 25, 2025 (14:00 CET)
🔗 bitly.cx/m0KeS
📍 relocated: MPIWG Main conference room
#HistSci #SciComm
🗓️ Mar 25, 2025 (14:00 CET)
🔗 bitly.cx/m0KeS
📍 relocated: MPIWG Main conference room
#HistSci #SciComm
Reposted by Kate Crawford
The more vexing ai alignment problem as stated by @katecrawford.bsky.social "What we saw at the summit was a different type of alignment problem, which was a misalignment from very concentrated corporate power and the interests of civil society in general.”
JD Vance is proclaiming to the world that the US's AI industry will dominate, Elon Musk and DOGE are hollowing out the government with an AI-first strategy, and Silicon Valley's is stuck on a growth-at-all-costs AI approach.
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
'AI is in its empire era'
JD Vance's AI saber-rattling, DOGE's gutting of the government, and Silicon Valley's thirst for growth show how AI has become a tool for consolidating power.
www.bloodinthemachine.com
February 21, 2025 at 12:41 AM
The more vexing ai alignment problem as stated by @katecrawford.bsky.social "What we saw at the summit was a different type of alignment problem, which was a misalignment from very concentrated corporate power and the interests of civil society in general.”
Reposted by Kate Crawford
JD Vance is proclaiming to the world that the US's AI industry will dominate, Elon Musk and DOGE are hollowing out the government with an AI-first strategy, and Silicon Valley's is stuck on a growth-at-all-costs AI approach.
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
'AI is in its empire era'
JD Vance's AI saber-rattling, DOGE's gutting of the government, and Silicon Valley's thirst for growth show how AI has become a tool for consolidating power.
www.bloodinthemachine.com
February 20, 2025 at 10:54 PM
JD Vance is proclaiming to the world that the US's AI industry will dominate, Elon Musk and DOGE are hollowing out the government with an AI-first strategy, and Silicon Valley's is stuck on a growth-at-all-costs AI approach.
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
As @katecrawford.bsky.social put it: 'AI is in its empire era'
The International Energy Agency just increased its prior growth predictions for energy demand. Data centers are one of the major drivers. Here's why that's significant: www.theverge.com/news/614356/...
February 19, 2025 at 2:00 AM
The International Energy Agency just increased its prior growth predictions for energy demand. Data centers are one of the major drivers. Here's why that's significant: www.theverge.com/news/614356/...
The AI Summit ends in rupture. AI accelerationists want pure expansion—more capital, energy, private infrastructure, no guard rails. Public interest camp supports labor, sustainability, shared data. safety, and oversight. The gap never looked wider. AI is in its empire era.
February 11, 2025 at 4:22 PM
The AI Summit ends in rupture. AI accelerationists want pure expansion—more capital, energy, private infrastructure, no guard rails. Public interest camp supports labor, sustainability, shared data. safety, and oversight. The gap never looked wider. AI is in its empire era.
Whoa! Calculating Empires made the front cover of Saturday's El PAIS newspaper. Far-ranging interview on the interconnections of politics, theory, and technology in our work and personal lives: from the Serbian protests to the AI Summit. @elpais.com @minipetite.bsky.social elpais.com/babelia/2025...
February 8, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Whoa! Calculating Empires made the front cover of Saturday's El PAIS newspaper. Far-ranging interview on the interconnections of politics, theory, and technology in our work and personal lives: from the Serbian protests to the AI Summit. @elpais.com @minipetite.bsky.social elpais.com/babelia/2025...
This week the first provisions of the AI Act take effect. Prohibited AI systems include: emotion recognition in schools & work (a victory there), social rating systems, predictive policing for individuals & real-time facial recognition in public spaces. www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ar...
First measures of European AI Act regulation take effect
One part of the European text comes into force on February 2, just a few days before the Summit for Action on AI in Paris, but its full implementation will be gradual and could be contested.
www.lemonde.fr
February 3, 2025 at 3:12 PM
This week the first provisions of the AI Act take effect. Prohibited AI systems include: emotion recognition in schools & work (a victory there), social rating systems, predictive policing for individuals & real-time facial recognition in public spaces. www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ar...