A Public Talk by Alex Hanna

You're invited to a public talk by Alex Hanna. Dr. Alex Hanna is a writer and sociologist of technology, labor, and politics, and the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR).

This lecture is part of Unprompted: Generative Questions on AI, a new series jointly organized by the John Hope Franklin Humanities institute and the Schiff Family Dean of Humanities and the Arts. The series brings humanists, artists, interpretive social scientists to Duke for public lectures and student engagements, in order to prompt deeper questions on the rapid adoption of AI in higher ed and contemporary society. Dr. Hanna's visit is generously co-sponsored by the Sanford School of Public Policy and DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

Dr. Hanna's work centers on the data used in new computational technologies-such as AI and machine learning-and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. With Emily M. Bender, she also runs the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and her podcast. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Socius, Sociological Science, Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS.

Dr. Hanna has been a VCCA Fellow and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. She is also recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany's Queer 50 (2021, 2024) List and Business Insider's AI Power List, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.