Skip to the main content

Arvind Narayanan

Faculty Associate

Arvind Narayanan is a Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. 

He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil and a newsletter of the same name which is read by 60,000 researchers, policy makers, journalists, and AI enthusiasts. He previously co-authored two widely used computer science textbooks: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies and Fairness in Machine Learning. Narayanan led the Princeton Web Transparency and Accountability Project to uncover how companies collect and use our personal information. His work was among the first to show how machine learning reflects cultural stereotypes. Narayanan was one of TIME's inaugural list of 100 most influential people in AI. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He is currently working on a book elaborating the "AI as Normal Technology" thesis.

Community

Princeton University Press

On Bullshit in AI

Arvind Narayanan joins the Ideas Podcast to discuss how insights from Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit can be brought to bear on AI, given the (often overblown) hype sounding AI…

Sep 8, 2025
UN Development Programme

Human Development Report 2025

A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI

Read Affiliate Joe Bak-Coleman's contribution to the UN Human Development Report 2025, with advisory input from Faculty Associate Arvind Narayanan and alums J. Nathan Matias and…

May 6, 2025
AI Snake Oil

AGI is not a milestone

"Treating AGI as a milestone for the development of transformative AI is seductive but misguided." Faculty Associate Arvind Narayanan and Affiliate Sayash Kapoor argue that AGI is…

May 1, 2025
The New York Times

Meta on Trial + Is A.I. a 'Normal' Technology?

Faculty Associate Arvind Narayanan joined the New York Times podcast Hard Fork to unpack his paper coauthored with Sayash Kapoor, "AI as Normal Technology," which challenges…

Apr 18, 2025
AI Snake Oil

AI as Normal Technology

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor challenge notions of AI as an existential threat.

Apr 15, 2025
Knight-Georgetown Institute

Better Feeds: Algorithms That Put People First

Faculty Associates Arvind Narayanan and Elissa Redmiles, along with Affiliates Aviv Ovadya and Nathaniel Lubin, contribute to a roadmap for designing recommender systems that…

Mar 13, 2025
AI Snake Oil

AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products. Good.

Turning models into products runs into five challenges.

What mistakes have AI companies made, and what challenges should they anticipate?

Aug 19, 2024
AI Snake Oil

AI safety is not a model property

BKC Faculty Associate Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor argue that current safety efforts are limited because AI safety is not a model property.

Mar 12, 2024

Events

Event
Apr 17, 2025 @ 12:15 PM

AI as Normal Technology

Arvind Narayanan will talk about his new paper, which articulates a vision of artificial intelligence as “normal technology,” in contrast to both utopian and dystopian visions…