Laine McCrory

Current:

I am a doctoral student in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. My research combines science and technology studies, feminism, and critical AI/tech governance to look at what we really mean when talking about (or building) public-interest technology. When I’m not researching, I am passionate about teaching and pedagogical approaches that help students engage critically with the technologies of their everyday lives. My work here is funded by NYU Steinhardt and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Past:

I recieved a Master’s degree in the joint program in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University. My Master’s thesis examined the ways we conceptualize and address AI harm in public policy, and how a feminist understanding of harm as collective, embodied and systemic can provide a more holistic representation of how to meaningfully address the real harms of AI development. I was previously a Digital Policy Hub Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. I also worked for TMU and York as a research assistant on projects looking at emerging policy issues in the creator economy and how to develop participation-centered and justice-focussed approaches to explainable AI.

I received a BA from McGill University in Political Science and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Justice Studies, where my honour’s thesis examined activist pushback against technosolutionism in the proposed Quayside project in Toronto. (Here I am presenting this research – article coming soon!). While at McGill, I worked on projects looking at an alternative history of Montreal’s AI boom that locates AI development within histories of colonialism, extraction, gentrification, and weak policy, as well as joining the team who developed the Montreal Queer Women and Lesbian Oral History Project. I