Karrie Karahalios is a professor of Media Arts and Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she directs the Social Algorithms Lab. Karahalios’s award-winning research focuses on AI and community-centered computing, examining the ways in which people interact with one another through digital platforms and tools. She is particularly interested in how algorithmic systems shape communities, influence public discourse, and affect the social dynamics of everyday life. Her work sits at the intersection of computing, sociology, and the design & implementation of interactive systems.
She co-authored the original paper on “algorithm auditing” and was a plaintiff in Sandvig v. Barr, whose outcome acknowledged auditing for civil rights should not be criminal.
She completed an S.B. in Electrical Engineering, an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and an S.M. and Ph.D in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. Previously, she was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois where she founded the Center for Just Infrastructures.