Kate Crawford | Costs of Scale: Mapping the Challenges of AI

As AI systems grow in scale, their costs are growing with them, often hidden from view. In this talk, Kate Crawford maps three interlocking challenges of generative AI. First, control failures: as models become more complex and opaque, the ability to predict and audit their activity is lagging dangerously behind. Second, climate risks: the vast energy, water, and mineral demands of data centers are placing growing pressure on planetary systems. Third, cognitive offloading: as we delegate thinking to machines, we risk eroding the human capacities of reflection, memory, discernment and creativity. Together, these costs demand a rethinking of AI’s trajectory.

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of artificial intelligence. She is a Professor at USC, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR, and founder of the Knowing Machines Group. Her award-winning book Atlas of AI was named a best book of the year by The Financial Times, won three international prizes, and has been translated into fourteen languages. Beyond her scholarly work, she is an award-winning artist whose work explores the themes of technology, history, and power. She has had exhibitions in over 100 museums worldwide and has works in the permanent collections of MoMA, the V&A, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, and the Design Museum. Her latest work with Vladan Joler, Calculating Empires, won the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 and the European Commission's grand prize for art and technology. TIME 100 named Crawford as one of the world’s most influential people in AI.

Cosponsored by the University Core Curriculum, the Boston College Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics, and the Gerson Family Lecture Fund.

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The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.