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In The Baird Lecture on March 12, 2026, the techno-sociologist spoke to the threats posed by artificial intelligence and how college students can be at the forefront of a solution.
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Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci says artificial intelligence is one of the “big transitions” in society, akin to the development of writing or the printing press, that will have widespread effects. And if history is to be learned from, Tufekci notes, it can’t just be viewed as a “tool” only to be used for good.
“These things can be extremely destabilizing and very complicated and very painful, regardless of whether the technology is good or bad, and it’s simply because it just doesn’t even apply (…) to ‘put it in good hands, put it in bad hands,’” said Tufecki. “We have regulated, assimilated, grappled with very complex technologies and problems, on a global scale, that people thought were like, ‘Oh, this cannot be fixed.’”
Tufekci, a New York Times opinion columnist and the Henry G. Bryan Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, offered her insight on the growing challenges of AI in The Baird Lecture on March 12, part of the Elon University Speaker Series. The Baird Lecture series was endowed in 2002 by James H. Baird and his late wife, Jane M. Baird of Burlington, North Carolina. The Bairds were the first presidents of the Elon Parents Council, and their family’s involvement with the university has spanned more than 40 years.
Haya Ajjan, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, introduced the lecture in McCrary Theatre, followed by Amanda Sturgill, associate professor of journalism, who welcomed Tufekci to the stage.
“Dr. Tufekci has what the New York Times called, ‘a habit of being right on the big things.’ So, in an age where everyone has an opinion about technology, she offers something more valuable…insight,” Sturgill said. “She sees patterns where others see chaos, asks hard questions when everyone else is celebrating the latest thing, and reminds us that we should really look at the human consequences of the tools that we’re building.”
Tufecki’s work on the social and moral implications of machine learning, big data and algorithmic decision making argues that the true threat of artificial intelligence is rooted in privacy and human rights violations. In The Baird Lecture, titled “Power, Protest and Algorithms: How Technology Shapes Society and Democracy,” Tufekci argued that AI will bring about destabilizing change, and there are many things, three she highlighted, that society is not prepared to handle:
- Machines that can speak like humans, with no way to discern what is human and what is not: “The idea that millions of people are going to be speaking to a machine that speaks like a human, talks with them, we don’t even have language of concepts to understand,” she said. “This is one of the biggest historic deals ever in human history.”
- AI photos and videos blur the line between what is real and what is not: “There are ways we could think about it that would involve verifying videos and photos as real, in a way that would be compatible with democracy, privacy, but it would involve all sorts of technologies that are just barely developed to get way better,” she said.
- AI can imitate human speech: “Imagine using AI to scan all of Instagram to find all the kids, college students who are in Cancun or somewhere, parents are worrying. You find their phone numbers, it’s very easy to spoof,” said Toufekci. “You just call them all, leave a (scam) voicemail, (asking for) $800 a pop. Nobody’s investigating this.”
“These are already huge things. We need to get on this very quickly,” she said. “It’s going to be the young generation, who’s in college right now, who are going to be at the forefront of this.”
Before opening the floor to a Q&A from both Elon and high school students, Tufecki encouraged them to begin to ask tough questions about AI, research past technologies that have had large impacts on society and find solutions that wouldn’t sacrifice the freedoms of society.
“Don’t let anybody tell you this is so big that we can’t do anything, because we have always done this,” she said. “We just can do it better. We should do it better.”
