Professor Sandra Wachter
About
Professor Sandra Wachter is Professor of Technology and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford where she researches the legal and ethical implications of AI, big data, and robotics as well as Internet and platform regulation.
Her current research focuses on profiling, inferential analytics, explainable AI, algorithmic bias, diversity, and fairness, as well as governmental surveillance, predictive policing, human rights online, and health tech and medical law. At the OII, Professor Wachter leads and coordinates the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) Research Programme that investigates legal, ethical, and technical aspects of AI, machine learning, and other emerging technologies.
Professor Wachter is also an affiliate and member at numerous institutions, such as the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Values, Ethics and Innovation, the European Commission’s Expert Group on Autonomous Cars, the Law Committee of the IEEE, the World Bank’s Task Force on Access to Justice and Technology, the United Kingdom Police Ethics Guidance Group, the British Standards Institution, the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford’s Law Faculty and the Oxford Martin School.
Expertise
- Ethics of AI and big data
- Legal implications of AI and generative AI
- Governance of emerging technologies and robotics
- Algorithms and social media, fake news, and deep fakes
- Platform regulation and content regulation and online harms
- Health tech and medical law
- Governmental Surveillance and predictive policing
- Human rights online
Selected publications
- The Unfairness of Fair Machine Learning: Levelling down and strict egalitarianism by default (2023)
- The Theory of Artificial Immutability: Protecting Algorithmic Groups under Anti-Discrimination Law (2022)
- Bias Preservation in Machine Learning: The Legality of Fairness Metrics Under EU Non-Discrimination Law (2021)
- Affinity Profiling and Discrimination by Association in Online Behavioural Advertising (2019)
- Data protection in the age of big data (2019)
- A Right to Reasonable Inferences: Re-Thinking Data Protection Law in the Age of Big Data and AI (2019)
- Counterfactual Explanations Without Opening The Black Box: Automated Decisions And The GPDR (2018)
- Why a Right to Explanation of Automated Decision-Making Does Not Exist in the General Data Protection Regulation (2017)
Media experience
Professor Sandra Wachter's work has received extensive media coverage (300+ pieces) in renowned outlets across print, radio, and video including The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, The Telegraph, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, WIRED, CBC, ABC, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Science, Nature, New Scientist, FAZ, Die Zeit, Le Monde, CNBC, NBC, HBO, Engadget, Gizmodo, El Mundo, The Sunday Times, The Verge, Vice Magazine, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Der Standard, and Reuters.
This has included:
- Op-eds in WIRED, The Telegraph, the BBC, the OECD and The Economist.
- Personal profiles in the Financial Times, WIRED, the MIT Technology Review, Business Insider, der Standard, der Spiegel, Republik, and SRF.
- Documentaries by WIRED, ZDF, WDR and BBC.
- High ranks on 'Most influential lists' in tech by UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group, Computer Weekly, KDNuggets, Bertelsmann Stiftung, 100 Brilliant Women in AI, Re.Work, and Business Insider.
Recent media work
- Health Care Bias Is Dangerous. But So Are ‘Fairness’ Algorithms (WIRED, 2023)
- Science journals ban listing of ChatGPT as co-author on papers (The Guardian, 2023)
- Art and artificial intelligence collide in landmark legal dispute (Financial Times, 2023)
- Abstracts written by ChatGPT fool scientists (Nature, 2023)
- They came to TikTok for fun. They got stuck with sexualized videos (Washington Post, 2022)
- How to Stop ChatGPT from Going Off the Rails (WIRED, 2022)
- Wrenching open the black box (ABC News, 2022)