Mary L. Gray

Mary L. Gray is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. She is also a Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society Faculty Associate at Harvard University. Mary maintains a faculty position in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering with affiliations in Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University. She trained in anthropology before earning her PhD in Communication from the University of California at San Diego in 2004, under the direction of sociologist Susan Leigh Star. In 2020, Mary was named a MacArthur Fellow for her contributions to anthropology and the study of technology, digital economies, and society. Mary, an anthropologist and media scholar by training, focuses on how everyday uses of technologies transform people’s lives. Her co-authored book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, explores the lives of people who are paid to train artificial intelligence and, increasingly, serve as “humans in the loop” delivering on-demand information services. Her other books and co-edited volumes include In Your Face: Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth, Queering the Countryside: New Directions in Rural Queer Studies, a Choice Academic Title for 2016, and the award-winning ethnography, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America, an exploration of how young people in the rural United States use the Internet to craft their identities, local belonging, and connections to broader queer communities. Mary is a leading expert in the emerging field of AI and ethics, particularly research methods at the intersections of computer and social sciences. She currently chairs the Microsoft Research Ethics Review Program—the only federally-registered institutional review board of its kind in the tech industry. Mary sits on the editorial boards of Cultural Anthropology, Television and New Media, the International Journal of Communication, and Social Media + Society. Her research has been covered by popular press venues, including The Guardian, El Pais, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Nature, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Forbes Magazine. She served on the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association and was the Association’s Section Assembly Convenor from 2006-2010 as well as the co-chair of the Association’s 113th Annual Meeting. Mary currently sits on several boards, including the California Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, the Executive Board of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) and Stanford University’s One-Hundred-Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) Standing Committee, commissioned to reflect on the future of AI and recommend directions for its policy implications.