• Professional:
• PhD student at UMSI
• AI Justice, Critical AI, and Critical Race and Algorithmic Justice
• Fighting for transformative and racial justice for historically oppressed communities
• Advisory Board Member: AI4K12
• Current Affiliations: UM ESC, UM Digital Studies Institute, UM A/PIA Studies
• Previous Affiliations: SMASH (Kapor Center), AI4ALL, CogitAI (SonyAI), and NYU

• Personal:
• Anime (Staff at Fanime since 2020)
• US Boba History
• Super Smash Bros. Melee (aiming to be a TO)
• Indonesian & Taiwanese American; non-binary; pan/bi/demi; he/she/they
• Ohlone Land (Oakland, CA) + Anishinaabeg Land (Ann Arbor, MI)

• I care about:
• Critical Race and Digital Studies and Race and Digital Justice
• Societal Implications of AI and AI Justice
• Critical Pedagogy and Inclusive CS Education
• Prison Abolition, Transformative Justice, and Housing as a Human Right
• QTPOC and Diasporic Asian Issues
• Civic Tech and Tech Policy

Wells Lucas Santo (he/she/they) is a queer, non-binary, and disabled Indonesian and Taiwanese American PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information focusing on critical race and algorithmic justice, in particular on how algorithmic technologies disparately impact marginalized communities across the interlocking axes of race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

Prior to his return to academia, he worked in the non-profit education equity space, where he built inclusive, accessible, and culturally responsive curriculum on artificial intelligence and social justice, serving as the Director of Education at SMASH (Kapor Center), the original Education Manager at AI4ALL, and an Advisory Board Member for the AI4K12 initiative. In these capacities, he has spoken about the societal implications of AI at venues such as the United Nations Youth Assembly, the Annual oSTEM Conference, and top universities such as Columbia, NYU, and CMU.

. . .

His current research focuses on the “Asian” racial classification and its formation and history in the United States, specifically how state data, diasporic community activism, image datasets, and facial analysis algorithms reify and essentialize a US-centric, pan-Asian racial category, which is then exported transnationally as a racial/colonial project.

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Keywords: critical AI; AI justice; critical race and digital studies; QTPOC; societal implications of technology; transformative justice; intersectional feminism; community-centered research

Writing Samples:
Facing Identity: The Formation and Performance of Identity via Face-Based Artificial Intelligence Technologies (Oct 2024)
Algorithmic Neighborhoods: The mapping of space and/as algorithmic redlining (Jan 2023)
Towards a New Classification of Social Media: From Social Network Sites to Social Algorithm Platforms (Oct 2022)

Last updated: 3 Nov 2023

I am currently rewriting this bio!