About the IAPP

Madeleine Clare Elish is a cultural anthropologist focusing on the social impact of artificial intelligence and automation. Her research investigates how new technologies reshape understandings of values, reliability, and ethical norms, and how this may advantage or disadvantage different populations. As a researcher at Data & Society in New York, she has published ethnographic and historical research aimed at grounding and reframing policy debates around the rise of machine intelligence, including the publication of An AI Pattern Language, which presents a taxonomy of current social challenges and responses drawn from interviews with AI industry practitioners. She will receive her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2017, and previously earned an S.M. in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.