The 2024 Spring Lecture will feature data scientist and artificial intelligence (AI) expert Rumman Chowdhury. She will discuss how AI will impact the lives of students, what policymakers have missed that will significantly affect students—both positively and negatively—and how AI will impact the upcoming U.S. election cycle.

Note: The event is free and open to the public, but a ticket will be required for entry. Additionally, the University’s clear bag policy will be enforced.

In additional to her remarks, Chowdhury will participate in a Q&A session with Jamie Winders, associate provost for faculty affairs, and Hamid Ekbia, University Professor and director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Chowdhury is a data scientist and social scientist. She is the CEO of the tech nonprofit Humane Intelligence, which builds a community of practice around evaluations of AI models. She is also the Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Previously, Chowdhury was the director of the Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team at Twitter (now X), as well as the as global lead for responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence. She was named one of Time’s 100 most Influential People in AI, BBC’s 100 Women, Worthy Magazine’s Top 100, recognized by San Francisco Business Times as one of the Bay Area’s top 40 under 40 and named by Forbes as one of Five Who are Shaping AI.

Chowdhury holds two undergraduate degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in quantitative methods of the social sciences from Columbia University and a doctorate in political science from the University of California San Diego.