Events
March 18, 2026
Algorithmic Agnotology: On AI, Ignorance, and Power
This keynote, delivered to the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI at UNESCO headquarters, traces how the strategic production of ignorance, what historian Robert Proctor terms "agnotology," has evolved from twentieth-century industrial contexts into contemporary algorithmic systems. Big Tech and AI companies have refined these prior industrial tactics into what I call "algorithmic agnotology": the exploitation of technical complexity to obscure accountability and naturalize inscrutability as inherent to digital systems. Based on analysis of firm statements, media, and scholarly literature, I examine how AI companies blur the distinction between epistemic uncertainty (what could be known with more research) and stochastic uncertainty (what is inherently unknowable)—a conflation that presents strategic opacity as technical inevitability. This framework shows how algorithmic agnotology obscures what could be known from what is claimed to be unknowable—a dynamic accelerated by the "AI race" with consequences that reach beyond technical domains to fundamental questions of democratic governance and digital rights.
March 9, 2026
Chris Hayes Discusses The Siren's Call with Alondra Nelson
Journalist, author, and Emmy Award–winning MSNBC host Chris Hayes joins sociologist and Institute for Advanced Study scholar Alondra Nelson for a timely conversation about Hayes’s latest book, The Sirens’ Call, an urgent examination of how the attention economy has reshaped our inner lives, our politics, and the fabric of democracy itself. Hayes argues that we are living through a transformation as consequential as the Industrial Revolution, one driven by platforms and corporations whose power rests on capturing and monetizing human attention. In an era of endless scrolls, constant alerts, and algorithmic incentives, our natural curiosity is relentlessly exploited, distorting how we think, what we value, and how we engage with one another. The result, Hayes contends, is not simply distraction, but a profound erosion of our capacity for sustained thought, deep debate, and democratic deliberation. In conversation with Nelson, whose work has long examined science, technology, inequality, and power, Hayes explores what it means to live in the distraction age, how attention capitalism has reordered our social and political worlds, and what is at stake if we fail to reckon with it.
November 6, 2025
AI and the State: Governing Technology, Governing with Technology
As governments worldwide deployed artificial intelligence across public services — from benefits administration to infrastructure planning and climate response — they faced a defining challenge: how to regulate AI effectively while relying on these same systems to deliver essential services. This dual role blurred the boundary between regulator and user, raising urgent questions about accountability, transparency, and democratic oversight. This event, organized by the AI Policy and Governance Working Group, brought together policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to examine comparative experiences, assess implementation challenges, and identify principles for accountable AI governance in the public sector. Professor Alondra Nelson, Inaugural Fellow in the Accelerator Programme at the Institute for Ethics in AI and Harold F. Linder Chair at the Institute for Advanced Study, moderated a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of government AI deployment, following an introduction from Dr. Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Director of Research and Head of Public Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI. She was joined by Cassandra Madison, Executive Director of the Center for Civic Futures; Dr. James Phillips, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London and former Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister; Andrew Strait, Head of Societal Resilience at the UK AI Security Institute; and Elham Tabassi, Director of the AI and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and former Chief AI Advisor at NIST. Together, the panel examined how governments could balance technology uptake and accountability as AI reshaped the relationship between states and citizens.
June 2, 2025
RARE/EARTH: The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chain
Leading AI and international studies researchers Kate Crawford, Howard W. French, Thea Riofrancos, and Tamara Kneese joined IAS Professor Alondra Nelson in a discussion of how the dependence of the expanding global AI ecosystem on critical minerals from the Global South has reshaped geopolitics and intensified international tensions. This panel explored the intersections between AI development and extractive economies, analyzing how the competition for essential resources like cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements—particularly between China and the United States—has transformed technology governance and global power relations.
December 18, 2024
Shaping Viable Futures: Human Agency and Artificial Intelligence
From social media to chatbots, today’s technologies already test the boundaries of social trust and accountability, and these new AI products may create new risks while intensifying existing concerns and harms. The introduction of “AI agents” and “AI assistants”—systems that pursue goals with limited supervision on behalf of users and organizations—are a reminder of the profound questions about humanity and technology. How can we ensure that increasingly autonomous AI systems, operating with reduced transparency and oversight, don't further erode these foundations of trust and accountability? Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at IAS led a discussion with an expert panel of leaders from policy, research, industry, and creative sectors: The Honourable Chi Onwurah, MP and Chair of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee (UK); Dorothy Chou, head of the Public Engagement Lab at Google DeepMind; John Tasioulas, Director of the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford; and Julian Bleecker, founder of the Near Future Laboratory.
November 6, 2024
Morals and Machines Prize: A Conversation with Alondra Nelson
This on-stage conversation from the Ada Lovelace Festival with Alondra Nelson, the renowned technology policy expert, former science advisor to Joe Biden, and recipient of the 2024 Morals and Machines Prize gets to the bottom of current questions on topics such as responsible technologies, AI regulation, and US politics.
April 9, 2024
IAS Public Policy Lecture: Margrethe Vestager, Three Things Oppenheimer Tells us About Tech
Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age and a leading global voice on technology policy and equitable innovation, delivered the 2024 IAS Public Policy Lecture, followed by a Q&A led by Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Chair in the School of Social Science.
January 24, 2024
Exploring AI Threats to Electoral Integrity
AI Democracy Projects founders—award-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Honorable Francisco V. Aguilar, Nevada Secretary of State, in conversation with SIPA Lecturer Camille François about the potential risks and benefits to the US election ecosystem presented by AI, and how policymakers, AI experts, and journalists can begin to test AI tools for electoral-information integrity in a way that provides education, information, and accountability to the public.
October 19, 2023
Thick Alignment, Ethics in AI Annual Lecture, University of Oxford
What is thick alignment? Nelson draws on the notion of “thick descriptions” as taken by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who himself drew inspiration from Gilbert Ryle’s work. In Geertz’s view, thin descriptions of cultures merely observe the actions of these individuals, whereas thick descriptions go beyond the surface and attempt to capture the deeper layers of meaning embedded in a culture. Translating that to her topic, what we might call “thin alignment” focuses on technically encoding values into AI. We must pay closer attention to the social contexts in which we deploy AI technologies and reject the idea that there are value-neutral uses of these technologies. (summary by Kyle Van Oosterum)
September 20, 2023
Building the World We Want: Artificial Intelligence and Global Governance
IAS scholar and writer Alondra Nelson led a discussion on the transnational impacts of artificial intelligence and the need for global collaboration with Karen Kornbluh, Distinguished Fellow for Technology and Competitiveness at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. and former U.S. Ambassador to the OECD; Maria Ressa, CEO and President of Rappler and Nobel laureate; Olatunbosun Tijani, the Honorable Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy for the Republic of Nigeria; and Tim Wu, Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia University, and an introduction from Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg.
June 12, 2023
Thick Alignment, Keynote Address, ACM FAccT Conference
In this keynote lecture, IAS Professor Alondra Nelson distinguishes between surface-level and deeper approaches to understanding AI alignment. Just as IAS anthropologist Clifford Geertz argued that thin descriptions of cultures merely observe actions while thick descriptions capture deeper layers of meaning embedded in culture, Nelson contends that thin alignment focuses narrowly on technically encoding values into AI systems. Defining thick alignment as "sociotechnical approaches to the analysis of AI systems, models, and tools that employ description & contextual analysis and in so doing both reflect and constitute human values," she argues for an approach that attends to the social contexts in which AI technologies are deployed and rejects the notion that there are value-neutral uses of them.
June 6, 2023
Steering AI for the Public Good
A panel of computer scientists, social scientists, technology developers, and policy advisors from the AI Policy and Governance Working Group discussed how the research community, industry, government, civil society, and the public can work collaboratively on strategies for the development of AI systems that embed a diverse and representative range of humanity’s priorities and advance democratic values. With Miranda Bogen, Brian Christian, Sorelle Friedler and William Isaac, in conversation with Harold F. Linder Professor Alondra Nelson, with an introduction from Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg.
November 6, 2019
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society
A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with Pedro Domingos, University of Washington, and Mary Gray, Microsoft and Harvard University; moderated by Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science.