S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor and the Executive Director of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Craig is one of the Principal Investigators for UT Austin’s Good Systems Grand Challenge, a University funded initiative that supports multi-disciplinary explorations of the technical, social, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Craig’s team explores the societal implications of artificial intelligence, focusing on how implicit biases, for example, in datasets, model formulation, and deployment can lead to disparate impacts, especially in high stakes contexts like healthcare.
His collaborative research probes the many different dimensions of Health AI. For example, his research with Design and the School of Information examines how youth interact with consumer devices like digital assistants. Craig was also part of a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists who prototyped a chatbot to support parents dealing with postpartum depression. His work with researchers from UT Austin’s School of Information and Weill Cornell Medicine explores how artificial intelligence and machine learning can be designed to identify the social risk factors associated with youth suicides. His current research is developing both clinical, ethical, and technical insights related to the design and deployment of digital health solutions and AI to better understand the interactions between digital biomarkers and health outcomes This work also collaborates with Texas Health Catalyst , a program in the Dell Medical School and Office of Discovery to Impact at UT Austin that translates early stage ideas and discoveries into products that improve health. During his time at MIT as a Visiting Professor, Craig worked with teams to better understand how to build safe and responsible AI, with a particular emphasis on mitigating biases in AI systems. You can learn more about his research in these podcast conversations with Brené Brown and AI For the Rest of Us..
As the Director of the IC2 Institute, Craig leads a dynamic Health AI initiative that has: developed models to explore the impact of social determinants of health on mental health outcomes; surveyed safety-net healthcare providers to assess their views regarding the promises and perils of deploying AI in rural and other underserved populations; convened clinicians, researchers, government officials, and community leaders to address Health AI; and collaborated with the Dell Medical School to design more ethical and responsible AI systems in pediatric medicine, oncology, and rural healthcare. The goal of the initiative is to generate knowledge and insights regarding the challenges and opportunities of integrating AI into a high stakes environments while also engaging and empowering key stakeholders to develop a greater understanding of this transformational technology.
Craig serves on several advisories for organizations like Google, Google/DeepMind, Fathom, and Scratch. His advisory role with the Pew Research Center focuses on youth, social media, and mental health while his role with the American Psychological Association contributed to the development of the APA’s first ever Health Advisory on Artificial Intelligence and Adolescent Well-Being.
Craig is an internationally recognized expert in media and technology systems and the author of six books and numerous articles and book chapters. His research explores, among other things, how technological innovation built the hip hop economy (Hip Hop Matters), the social and behavioral implications of young people’s engagement with computer-mediated technologies (The Young and the Digital), the shifting contours of the digital divide (The Digital Edge), and the creative ways young people adopt technology to navigate a precarious society and economy (Don’t Knock the Hustle). Watkins' work has been profiled in places as varied as the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, TIME, ESPN, NPR, The New York Times, and featured at venues like SXSW, The Aspen Institute, The Boston Federal Reserve, New York Hall of Science, and MIT’s Media Lab..
Ph.D. University of Michigan