Tiera Tanksley - Sundance Collab

Dr. Tiera Tanksley is a Senior Researcher whose work examines the socioemotional, mental health and academic impacts of digital and artificially intelligent technologies on Black youth. Her work examines anti-Blackness as the “default setting” of schools and school-based technologies, including GenAI chatbots, facial recognition systems, weapons detection systems, and more. Her work simultaneously recognizes Black youth as digital activists and civic agitators, and examines the complex ways they subvert, resist, and rewrite algorithmically biased technologies to produce more-just and joyous digital experiences for Communities of Color across the diaspora.

In 2020, Dr. Tanksley founded the Race, Abolition and Artificial Intelligence summer program - a critical science and technology program that prepares young people to have more critical, agentic and algorithmically-conscious relationships with digital technologies that exist within and beyond the educational setting. In 2025, she was awarded an AI in Education research grant from the Spencer Foundation.

Collab items I'm associated with:

Story Forum Collection

Story Forum: Exploring Art and Innovation - ON DEMAND

Together with creators, educators, industry leaders, and technologists, we explored the creative technologies that are impacting storytelling and how today’s artists are evolving. Now you can experience it all on-demand for free.

Video

Tackling the Ethics of AI Through the Making of GHOST IN THE MACHINE: Part 1

With: Alix Dunn and 5 more

FREE

Tackling the Ethics of AI Through the Making of GHOST IN THE MACHINE: Part 1

With: Alix Dunn, Alli Finn, Johnathan Flowers, Thema Monroe-White, Tiera Tanksley and Valerie Veatch

In the first of two Story Forum sessions on the film, Veatch presents a deep-dive into the making of her documentary as well as the technology’s implications with regards to racial discrimination and climate devastation. During this session, Veatch leads two panel discussions with five participants from the documentary: Thema Monroe-White, Tiera Tanksley, Johnathan Flowers, Alli Finn, and Alix Dunn. These conversations offer insight into finding and shaping your story with your documentary participants, and prove essential for those interested in the systems surrounding the development of AI.

FREE