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Karen Hao

Senior AI Editor | The Wall Street Journal

Karen Hao came to media via Silicon Valley. Whether she’s interviewing scientists about their research or poring over data to find my next story, she has always thrived best at the intersection of storytelling and technology.

She is now a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering China tech & society, and was formerly a senior editor at MIT Technology Review, covering the latest research and social impacts of artificial intelligence. She is also an MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow and a Harvard Technology and Public Purpose fellow. Her work won an ASME Next Award in 2022 for “outstanding achievement for magazine journalists under the age of 30.” Her former weekly newsletter, The Algorithm, was also named one of the best newsletters on the internet by The Webby Awards, and an AI podcast she co-produced called In Machines We Trust won two Front Page Awards.

In 2018, her “What is AI?” flowchart was featured in a museum exhibit in Vienna. In 2020 and 2021, her pieces on the forced dismissal of Google’s ethical AI co-lead Timnit Gebru and Facebook’s addiction to and funding of misinformation were cited by Congress (here, here, and here).

She has guest lectured at MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Notre Dame. Her work is taught in universities around the world.

Prior to MIT Tech Review, she was a tech reporter and data scientist at Quartz. Her writing has also appeared in Mother Jones, The New Republic, and other publications. In a past life, she was an application engineer at the first startup to spin out of Google[x]. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering and minor in energy studies from MIT.

Karen Hao served as an External Evaluator for the 2022 Just Tech Fellowship.


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