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David Gray Widder is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned a PhD in Software Engineering from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2023 and a BS in Computer Science from the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. Prior to joining the University of Texas at Austin, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech from 2023 to 2025. He has also conducted research at Intel Labs, Microsoft Research, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
His research examines how people creating artificial intelligence systems consider downstream harms, along with the cultural, political, and economic logics that shape AI development and deployment. Key publications include “Why ‘open’ AI systems are actually closed, and why this matters,” a perspective in Nature (November 2024); “What is a ‘bug’? On subjectivity, epistemic power, and implications for software research” in Communications of the ACM (November 2024); “Power and Play: Investigating ‘License to Critique’ in Teams’ AI Ethics Discussions” in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW, 2024); and multiple papers accepted to the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT). His scholarly and activist work has also appeared in Motherboard, Wired, MIT Technology Review, the Associated Press, and The New York Times. He maintains a research affiliation with the Data & Society Research Institute and serves as Global AI & Market Power Fellow with the European AI & Society Fund.
The UT System's latest policy on controversial topics aims to ensure balanced teaching but raises academic freedom concerns. Explore details, reactions, and strategies.
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