Hi, my name is Meg Young. I am a Senior Researcher at Data & Society where I study how to make surveillance and AI more accountable to the public. I am also Project Director of our Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab, where we focus on how to support advocacy groups and the public to drive the terms of impact assessment and pilot proof-of-concept models for participatory governance. To this end, I often collaborate with public agencies, advocacy groups, and activists on capacity-building for data governance, technology oversight, and public engagement.
I am a nationally-recognized expert in public engagement methods and promoting digital rights in government uses of AI. I have worked closely with the City of New York, City of San Jose, and the City of Seattle on public engagement and digital rights work. Today, I work with GovAI Coalition to lead the creation of public resources for on residents AI education. In 2023, I was invited to co-design and teach a course on digital rights to city employees from half a dozen U.S. cities as part of Results for America’s What Works Cities program and Cornell Tech’s Urban Tech Hub. Prior to that, I was previously a fellow with the NYC Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the Office of the Public Advocate. I still closely collaborate with the City of New York via its Office of Technology Innovation.
I value opportunities to strengthen relationships between with academic researchers and advocates, especially from civil rights and environmental justice groups. As one of the organizers of the ACM Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) conference in 2023-2024, I worked to bring a the largest-ever number of advocacy groups and activists to present work through practitioner-oriented tracks. This work followed our call as the Critical Platform Studies Group for FAccT to do so, inspired by our collaboration with ACLU WA and the Tech Equity Coalition to create Algorithmic Equity Toolkit. I have also worked as an organizer as part of NYC Tech Action’s Internet for All campaign and with NYC OPA on #BantheScan.
I support related work in an advisory role. I have sat on the Executive Committee of ACM FAccT since 2023. I am currently on the Advisory Board of the Being Watched project of Good Systems at University of Texas at Austin. I was a coach for Georgetown University Beeck Center’s Policy2Code Challenge. I was also on the Advisory Panel for the Data Empowerment Fund.
I am passionate about participatory and rights-protecting models for data and AI governance. I am part of a team with Brown University and the University of Washington exploring the use of open source AI to co-create a journalist-owned LLM. I also spent years working in Seattle to create a data trust pilot called the UW Transportation Data Collaborative as a model to support research access to proprietary data. Our model is being used today in industry via the SAE Mobility Data Collaborative.
Previously I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell Tech Digital Life Initiative with Helen Nissenbaum, where I am now a Visiting Researcher. My PhD is in information science from the University of Washington in Seattle, where I was part of the UW Tech Policy Lab. My dissertation looked at how government use of proprietary systems impacts public access, accountability, and oversight. My MS in information and BA in cultural anthropology are from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which is also my hometown.
📄 My CV is here. My Google Scholar page is here.
📯 Get in touch on Twitter (still there even as it is horrible now) @megyoung0
📬 We can also get in touch on email: my personal email is meg at publictech.space ; my work email is meg at datasociety.net.
🪅 If you are doing work in participatory methods and AI and want to be in the loop for opportunities and events, email participation at datasociety.net
📅 Here is a link to come to my office hours: calendly.com slash meg_young
💬 I value candor and other perspectives on the work I do; I have set up an anonymous feedback inbox here.
Talks