“Race to the Future? From Artificial Intelligence to Abundant Imagination”

From automated decision systems in healthcare, policing, education and more, this talk probes how the artificial intelligentsia is dragging us into an archaic future. At every turn, we hear echoes of a eugenic calculus: the weak must be sacrificed for the strong to survive. But it is not enough to refute the legacies of eugenics animating the faux futures of the artificial intelligentsia; we must inaugurate legacies of solidarity that reflect our inescapable interdependence as people and a planet. To that end, Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of imagination. Deadly systems shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world, often deadly impacts. To dismantle oppressive systems and create a world in which everyone can thrive, we will have to imagine things differently. Drawing on work that critically examines tech-mediated inequities, what she terms the New Jim Code, and her engagement with grassroots approaches to viral justice, she offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to worldbuilding that invites each of us to consider the role we play in maintaining or transforming the oppressive status quo.

Speaker Bio

Ruha Benjamin, Ph.D., is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Dr. Benjamin is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship.

Events details

September 29, 2025

3-4.30 p.m.

Never No Summer, Lory Student Center