Race, Power and Algorithms: Critical Race Theory and AI

Critical Race Theory is not a political slogan. It is a rigorous academic framework developed by legal scholars to understand how race and racism are embedded in institutions, laws, and systems, not merely in individual attitudes. Applied to artificial intelligence, CRT offers one of the most powerful lenses available for understanding why AI systems so frequently harm people of colour, and why those harms are so rarely acknowledged or remedied. This course introduces CRT’s core concepts and applies each one to contemporary AI challenges, from facial recognition failures to predictive policing, from biased hiring algorithms to discriminatory credit scoring.