Kate Crawford

Kate Crawford is an Australian academic and researcher whose work has reframed how policymakers, journalists and technologists understand the material costs of artificial intelligence and the data infrastructures that power it. A principal researcher at Microsoft Research, she has spent over a decade examining how AI systems encode power, labour and environmental extraction, work that culminated in her widely acclaimed 2021 book 'Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence'.

The book traces the physical supply chain behind seemingly abstract data systems, from lithium mining and rare-earth extraction to the vast, energy-hungry data centres that train and run large-scale models, alongside the low-paid human labour required to label and moderate training data. It became one of the most influential works in AI policy circles for shifting debate away from purely abstract algorithmic ethics toward the concrete environmental and human costs of building AI at scale.

In 2017, Crawford co-founded the AI Now Institute at New York University with Meredith Whittaker, establishing one of the first dedicated academic centres researching the social implications of artificial intelligence, and helping to define the field of AI policy research that now informs regulation from Brussels to Washington. Her earlier collaborative project 'Anatomy of an AI System', created with Vladan Joler, mapped the full resource chain of an Amazon Echo device and won the Beazley Design of the Year award in 2019.

Crawford holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and has held visiting and advisory positions including the inaugural AI and Justice Visiting Chair at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her more recent project 'Calculating Empires', a large-scale visual history of AI and power created with Vladan Joler, won the European Commission's Grand Prize in Artistic Exploration in 2024 and a Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2025.

Through both scholarly research and public-facing art and advocacy, Crawford has become one of the most cited voices arguing that data and AI systems must be understood as extractive industries with real environmental and human costs, influencing how governments and companies now approach AI governance and sustainability reporting.