Hello! I’m a researcher and a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and the Department of Art and Art History. I bring an expertise in the history and philosophy of AI to bear on contemporary issues around AI safety, values alignment, and human-computer interaction. My peer-reviewed writing has been published by MIT Press, University of Indiana Press, and University of California Press. As a former fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Technology, Policy, and Society, I presented to the California State Legislature in 2023 as a subject-matter expert on responsible uses of AI technology in the public sector.

My research has been funded by competitive fellowships and grants from the Phi Beta Kappa Alpha Chapter of California, the Stanford Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and the Mellon Foundation, among others.

My first book project, “Patterning Recognition,” contextualizes current debates about AI interpretability and the question of meaningful human control in semi-autonomous systems through an intellectual history of the interchanges between computer vision models and theories of human perception in the lead-up to contemporary deep learning and proliferating AI.

I began working with AI and specifically computer vision over a decade ago, as an interaction designer and creative technologist. I was fascinated by the idea of how to teach a computer to see, because the exercise forced me to think about how we see - as both biological and social beings. My art and design work has been commissioned by the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA), the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Print Screen Festival, the Magnum Foundation, The New York Times Op-Docs, and the National Film Board of Canada, among others.

I believe the arts can play an important role in expanding community awareness and engagement with the social and political issues raised by AI. From 2020–2022 I served on the executive committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media and co-organized an ongoing arts and technology event series. I co-curated the 2022 art and technology exhibition Refamiliarization, at the Worth Rider Gallery and Platform Art Space, and the 2023 screening series The Screen and the Scroll at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). In Spring 2025 I will co-teach a course at Stanford on art and generative AI.

I hold a PhD from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

Stanford HAI Profile

Contact: jairwin [at] stanford.edu