President of Signal & Chief Advisor of the AI Now Institute
Meredith Whittaker: Biography at a Glance
- As President of Signal and Co-Founder of the AI Now Institute, Meredith Whittaker leads efforts to advance privacy-focused technology and shape global AI policy through research and advocacy.
- With over a decade at Google, she founded and led Google’s Open Research Group and co-founded M-Lab, gaining deep expertise in AI development, product strategy, and research.
- She is a trusted advisor to global policymakers, having provided expert guidance to the White House, FCC, FTC, European Parliament, and other institutions on AI, privacy, and security.
- As an ethical AI and tech reform advocate, she critically examines AI’s societal impact, ensuring its implementation prioritizes human rights, fairness, and accountability.
- She helps organizations and individuals navigate AI adoption, offering strategic insights to mitigate risks related to bias, surveillance, and data ethics while maximizing AI’s benefits.
Videos
Biography
Meredith Whittaker is the President of Signal. She is the current Chief Advisor, and the former Faculty Director and Co-Founder of the AI Now Institute. Her research and advocacy focus on the social implications of artificial intelligence and the tech industry responsible for it, with a particular emphasis on power and the political economy driving the commercialization of computational technology. Prior to founding AI Now, she worked at Google for over a decade, where she led product and engineering teams, founded Google’s Open Research Group, and co-founded M-Lab, a globally distributed network measurement platform that now provides the world’s largest source of open data on internet performance. She has advised the White House, the FCC, FTC, the City of New York, the European Parliament, and many other governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, internet policy, measurement, privacy, and security.
Topics
The AI Convenience Trap: How Agentic AI Threatens Privacy
Meredith Whittaker explores the hidden risks behind AI agents—systems designed to handle tasks like booking tickets and managing messages. While marketed as convenient, these agents require deep access to personal data, financial information, and messaging apps, often operating with near-root-level permissions and cloud processing. Whittaker warns that this erodes privacy, increases security risks, and blurs critical boundaries between applications and operating systems. She challenges the audience to reconsider whether AI-driven convenience is worth the cost of personal autonomy and security.
