David Gray Widder (he/him) studies how people build and resist “Artificial Intelligence”—and the technical, political, and economic logics which shape their beliefs, practices, and power. He is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, and earned his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has previously conducted research at Intel Labs, Microsoft Research, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His recent research has been accepted to FAccT, Nature, CSCW, and Big Data & Society. His scholarly and activist work has appeared in Motherboard, Wired, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and on National Public Radio. David was born in Tillamook, Oregon, and raised in Berlin and Singapore. He maintains a conceptual-realist artistic practice, advocates against police terror and pervasive surveillance, and enjoys distance running. You can engage with him on Mastodon, Bluesky, or Twitter.

[Prospective PhD students:] Are you interested in building an inclusive vision for open AI ecosystems beyond corporate capture, including Local and Sovereign AI? Do you have technical and critical skills? Send me an email if you’re interested in doing a PhD in that area, detailing any related experience, with ``AI Openness’’ in the subject line.