Amba Kak
Co-Executive Director
Amba Kak has spent the last fifteen years designing and advocating for technology policy in the public interest, ranging from network neutrality to privacy to algorithmic accountability, across government, industry, and civil society – and in many parts of the world. Amba brings this experience to her current role co-leading AI Now, a US-based research institute where she leads on advancing diagnosis and actionable policy recommendations to tackle concerns with artificial intelligence and concentrated power.
Amba recently completed her term as Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission. Prior to AI Now, she was Global Policy Advisor at Mozilla; and also previously served as legal advisor to India’s telecommunications regulator (TRAI) on net-neutrality rules.
Amba regularly advises members of Congress, the White House, the European Commission, UK government, the City of New York, US and other regulatory agencies worldwide; and recently testified before Congress at a hearing on artificial intelligence and data privacy. She is widely published across scholarly and popular venues and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Financial Times, MIT Tech Review, Nature, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
Amba currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Signal Foundation, and the AI Committee for the Board of the Mozilla Foundation, and is affiliated as Visiting Senior Research Scientist at the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University. Trained as a lawyer, Amba received her BA LLB (Hons) from the National University of Juridical Sciences in India, and is a former recipient of the Google Policy Fellowship and Mozilla Policy Fellowship. She has a Masters in Law (BCL) and an MSc in the Social Science of the Internet at the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
Email: amba [at] ainowinstitute.orgContributed to
(27) Publications
2. A Modern Industrial Strategy for AI?: Interrogating the US Approach
Amba Kak & Sarah Myers West
March 12, 2024
6. Reflections on South Africa’s AI Industrial Policy
Sandra Makumbirofa
March 12, 2024
Remarks from AI Now ED Amba Kak on Day 2 of the UK AI Safety Summit
Amba Kak
November 2, 2023
Stop talking about tomorrow’s AI doomsday when AI poses risks today
Nature
June 27, 2023
Opinion | Competition authorities need to move fast and break up AI
Financial Times
April 17, 2023
General Purpose AI Poses Serious Risks, Should Not Be Excluded From the EU’s AI Act | Policy Brief
AI Now Institute
, ,April 13, 2023
The Technology 202: Former FTC advisors urge swift action to counteract ‘AI hype’
The Washington Post
April 11, 2023
AI Isn’t Omnipotent. It’s Janky. – an interview with Amba Kak
The Atlantic
April 3, 2023
The Battle For AI Supremacy Got Super Intense This Week, Risks Be Damned
BuzzfeedNews
March 17, 2023
As A.I. Booms, Lawmakers Struggle to Understand the Technology
The New York Times
March 3, 2023
Sam Altman says ‘potentially scary’ AI is on the horizon. This is what keeps AI experts up at night
EuroNews
February 28, 2023
China in Global Tech Discourse
Meredith Whittaker, Shazeda Ahmed, and Amba Kak
May 27, 2021
Regulating Biometrics: Taking stock of a rapidly changing landscape
Amba Kak
September 23, 2020
Regulating Biometrics: Global Approaches and Open Questions
AI Now Institute
,September 1, 2020
AI Now submits comments to the Australian Human Rights Commission on AI and human rights
AI Now Institute
,March 13, 2020
AI Now’s comments to Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner on data privacy law and AI
AI Now Institute
, ,March 12, 2020
AI and Climate Change: How they’re connected, and what we can do about it
Roel Dobbe, Meredith Whittaker
October 17, 2019
AI Now’s Testimony to US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
AI Now Institute
,June 26, 2019
A Governance Framework for Algorithmic Accountability and Transparency
AI Now Institute
, ,Dillon Reisman
April 10, 2019