Rashida Richardson
Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science
Education
Northeastern University School of Law, JD 2011
Bio
Professor Richardson is on leave serving as senior counsel, artificial intelligence, at Mastercard. She has previously served as attorney advisor to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and senior policy advisor for data and democracy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Rashida Richardson is as an assistant professor of law and political science within the School of Law and the Department of Political Science within the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She specializes in race, emerging technologies and the law and is a senior fellow in the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund. Richardson’s research focuses on the social and civil rights implications of data-driven technologies, including artificial intelligence, and develops policy interventions and regulatory strategies regarding data-driven technologies, government surveillance, racial discrimination and the technology sector.
Richardson previously served as a visiting scholar at Rutgers Law School and Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law and as director of policy research at New York University’s AI Now Institute, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of New York and staff attorney at the Center for HIV Law and Policy. She currently serves on the board of directors of Lacuna Technologies, board of trustees of Wesleyan University, the advisory board of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, the board of directors of the College & Community Fellowship, advisory council of Foxglove, advisory board for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, advisory board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and she is an affiliate and advisory board member of the Center for Critical Race + Digital Studies.
Fields of Expertise
- Civil Rights
- Data Governance
- Intellectual Property
- Law and Technology
- Public Interest Advocacy
- Privacy Law and Policy
- Race and Racism and the Law
- Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
- Social Justice
- Technology
- Technology and Society (STS)
- Technology Policy
Selected Works
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- Author, Criminal Law Chapter, in Aids and the Law (Skinner-Thompson ed., 5th ed. 2016) (supplemented annually).
- Editor, Criminal Law Chapter and Prisons and Jails Chapter, in Aids and the Law (Skinner-Thompson ed., 5th ed. 2015) (supplemented annually).
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- “Suspect Development Systems: Databasing Marginality and Enforcing Discipline,” 55 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 814 (2022) (co-author).
- “Racial Segregation and the Data-Driven Society: How Our Failure to Reckon with Root Causes Perpetuates Separate and Unequal Realities,” 36 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1051 (2022).
- “Defining and Demystifying Automated Decision Systems,” 81 Maryland Law Review 785 (2022).
- “Government Data Practices as Necropolitics and Racial Arithmetic,” Data and Pandemic Politics 1 (October 2020).
- “Dirty Data, Bad Predictions: How Civil Rights Violations Impact Police Data, Predictive Policing Systems, and Justice,” 94 New York University Law Review 192 (2019) (co-author).
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- “Women in AI: Rashida Richardson, Senior Counsel at Mastercard Focusing on AI and Privacy,” TechCrunch (February 20, 2024).
- Short Film: “How to Make Computers Less Biased,” The Economists's Here and Now (February 10, 2022).
- “After Backlash, Predictive Policing Adapts to a Changed World,” The Wall Street Journal (July 8, 2021).
- “Bias isn’t the only problem with credit scores—and no, AI can’t help,” MIT Technology Review (June 17, 2021).
- Podcast: “Biased Intelligence,” WHYY & Princeton University’s AI Nation (April, 22, 2021).
- Podcast: “Decrypting Big Tech’s Data Hoard,” Science Friday (March 19, 2021).
- “States are failing on big tech and privacy — Biden must take the lead,” The Hill (February 5, 2021).
- “The Higher Education Industry is Embracing Predatory and Discriminatory Student Data Practices,” Slate (January 13, 2021).
- “U.N. Panel: Technology in Policing Can Reinforce Racial Bias,” New York Times (November 26, 2020).
- Podcast: “What Algorithms Say About You,” Brave New Planet (November 2, 2020).
- “It’s Time for a Reckoning About This Foundational Piece of Police Technology,” Slate, (September 11, 2020).
- “The Social Dilemma,” Netflix & Exposure Labs (September 9, 2020).
- “Does Predictive Policing Enforce Racial Bias,” Thomas Reuters Foundation (August 27, 2020).
- “A new law seeks to expose the NYPD’s secret surveillance technology,” Document Journal (July 29, 2020).
- “Predictive Policing Algorithms are racist. They need to be dismantled,” MIT Technology Review (July 17, 2020).
- “Can Algorithms Select Students “Most Likely to Succeed”?,” Slate (July 10, 2020).
- Podcast: “Sipping on NYPD Tears: Public Oversight of Surveillance Technologies,” We Be Imagining Podcast (June 22, 2020).
- Podcast: “AI Now’s Rashida Richardson: Free-range Facial Recognition,” The Sunday Times’ Danny in the Valley (June 15, 2020).
- “Artificial Intelligence Policies Must Focus on Impact and Accountability,” Centre for International Governance Innovation (May 1, 2020).
- “State of Michigan’s mistake led to man filing bankruptcy,” Detroit Free Press (December 22, 2019).
- “Win in the war against algorithms: Automated Decision Systems are taking over far too much of government,” New York Daily News (December 15, 2019).
- Podcast: “Should We Be Afraid of AI in the Criminal-Justice System,” The Atlantic’s Crazy/Genius (June 20, 2019).
- “As More Departments Adopt ‘Predictive Policing’ Practices, Concerns About Discrimination Follow,” Wisconsin Public Radio (February 21, 2019).
- “Can Technology Help Undo the Wrongs of The Past?,” Doteveryone (August 10, 2018).
- “TSA Tests See-Through Scanners on Public in New York’s Penn Station,”, ACLU blog (March 2, 2018).
- “‘Textalyzer’ Aims to Curb Distracted Driving, But What About Privacy?,” NPR’s All Tech Considered (April 27, 2017).
- “Equity should be at the heart of I-81 planning process,”, Syracuse Post-Standard (March 10, 2017).
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- Best Practices for Government Procurement of Data-Driven Technologies (2021).
- Facial Recognition in the Public Sector: The Policy Landscape (German Marshall Fund, February 2021).
- Addressing the Harmful Effects of Predictive Analytics Technologies, in #Tech2021 Ideas for Digital Democracy (German Marshall Fund, November 2020).
- Bottom-Up Biometric Regulation: A Community’s Response to Using Face Surveillance in Schools in Regulating Biometrics: Global Approaches and Open Questions (AI Now Institute, September 2020) (with Stefanie Coyle).
- Confronting Black Boxes: A Shadow Report of the New York City Automated Decision System Task Force (AI Now Institute, December 2019).
- Litigating Algorithms 2019 US Report: New Challenges to Government Use of Algorithmic Decision Systems (AI Now Institute, September 2019) (with Jason Schultz & Vincent Southerland).
- A Governance Framework for Algorithmic Accountability and Transparency (European Parliamentary Research Service, 2019) (with Ansgar Koene, Chris Clifton, Yohko Hatada, Helena Webb, Menisha Patel, Caio Machado, Jack LaViolette, and Dillon Reisman).
- AI Now 2018 Report (AI Now Institute 2018) (with Meredith Whittaker, Kate Crawford, Roel Dobbe, Genevieve Fried, Elizabeth Kaziunas, Varoon Mathur, Sarah Myers West, Jason Schultz, and Oscar Schwartz).
- Litigating Algorithms: Challenging Government Use of Algorithmic Decision Systems (AI Now Institute 2018) (with Jason Schultz & Vincent Southerland).
- Algorithmic Accountability Policy Toolkit (AI Now Institute 2018) (with Dillon Reisman).
- Ending & Defending Against HIV Criminalization: A Manual for Advocates on State and Federal Laws and Prosecutions (2d ed. 2014) (with Shoshana Golden & Catherine Hanssens).
Rashida Richardson
Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science