Sarah Myers West

Sarah has spent the last fifteen years interrogating the role of technology companies and their emergence as powerful political actors on the front lines of international governance. Sarah brings this depth of expertise to policymaking in her current role co-directing AI Now, with a focus on addressing the market incentives and infrastructures that shape tech’s role in society at large and ensuring it serves the interests of the public. Her forthcoming book, Tracing Code (University of California Press) draws on years of historical and social science research to examine the origins of data capitalism and commercial surveillance.

Sarah’s award-winning research is featured in leading academic journals and prominent media platforms including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Financial Times, Nature and the Wall Street Journal. She regularly advises members of Congress, the White House, European Commission, UK Government, Consumer Financial Protection Board and other US and international regulatory agencies and the City of New York, and has testified before Congress on issues including artificial intelligence, competition and data privacy.

She recently completed a term as a Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission, where she advised the Agency on the role of artificial intelligence in shaping the economy by working on competition and consumer protection matters. She currently serves on the OECD’s AI Futures Working Group, and has affiliations as a Visiting Research Scientist at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University and at Cornell University’s Citizens and Technology Lab. She holds Doctoral and Masters Degrees from the University of Southern California, where she was the Wallis Annenberg Graduate Research Fellow, and has received Google Policy and New America Cybersecurity Fellowships, as well as a Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarship.