Karen Y. Huang is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Ethics Lab at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Program for Technology, Ethics and Society. Her current research draws primarily from science and technology studies (STS) and political theory, and builds upon her prior technical expertise in the cognitive and behavioral sciences. Professor Huang's first area of research seeks to interrogate—and reimagine—governance of digital technologies such as social media platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). In a second line of research, she brings together scholarship from STS, critical data studies, and normative ethics to develop conceptual frameworks for digital ethics. A third line of research seeks to surface the normative stakes that go along with modes of knowledge production in public policy. At the McCourt School, Professor Huang teaches core courses in data ethics, ethics and public policy, and ethics in international development.
Professor Huang’s research has been published in leading academic venues such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Artificial Intelligence, Science and Engineering Ethics, and Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society, and has been covered in media outlets such as The New York Times, National Public Ratio (NPR), VICE, Freakonomics Radio, The Atlantic, and The BBC. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation.
Professor Huang earned her B.A. in Ethics, Politics & Economics from Yale University, M.A. in Psychology from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior (Science, Technology & Society) from Harvard University. She was previously a Research Fellow at the Program for Science, Technology & Society (STS) and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.