VDC Keynote: Kate Crawford

Vienna Digital Cultures 2025 contributes to discourse around machine learning, culture and politics through a programme of talks. The festival kicks off with a keynote by Kate Crawford – author of the international bestseller ‘Atlas of AI’ – exploring the multiple collapses driven by planetary-scale AI. The mass production of synthetic data is destabilizing AI models, creating a world of distorted outputs. Meanwhile, the infrastructure supporting the demands of generative AI is polluting our ecosystems and threatening economies – ushering in the era of AI slop.

Crawford is a leading scholar of AI and its impacts. A professor at USC, Senior Principal Researcher at MSR, and the director of the interdisciplinary lab ‘Knowing Machines’. Her work is focused on understanding large scale data systems, machine learning and AI in the wider contexts of history, politics, labour, and the environment. She’s also an artist whose works are in the permanent collections of in MoMA, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Design Museum in London.

Her work ‘Calculating Empires’ (2024) with Vladan Joler will be part of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz.

The mass production of synthetic data is destabilizing AI models, creating a world of distorted outputs. Meanwhile, the infrastructure supporting the demands of generative AI is polluting our ecosystems and threatening economies—ushering in the era of AI slop. In this talk, we will explore the multiple collapses driven by planetary-scale AI.

Kate Crawford
born in Sydney, Australia, is a leading scholar of AI and its impacts. Her work is focused on understanding large scale data systems, machine learning and AI in the wider contexts of history, politics, labour, and the environment. She is a Professor at the University of Southern California in LA, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR New York, and the inaugural visiting chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She founded multiple research centers around the world, and leads the interdisciplinary lab called Knowing Machines. Her book, Atlas of AI, has been translated into twelve languages, won three international prizes, and was named a best book of the year by The Financial Times and New Scientist. In addition to her scholarly work, Crawford is an artist whose works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), and the Design Museum in London. Her most recent work, Vienna Digital Cultures 3 Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Power and Technology Since 1500 will be shown at the 2025 Venice Biennale. Kate Crawford lives and works in New York.