Technology Expert Amanda Ballantyne ’02 Opens Smith College Colloquium Series

At an Oct. 20 Smith College Presidential Colloquium, labor and technology policy expert Amanda Ballantyne ’02 said it’s important to view the current moment of AI expansion “as one of tremendous potential.”

Speaking to an audience of students, faculty, and staff in the Campus Center Carroll Room, Ballantyne called for a shift in the public conversation around AI, so that “we center the idea that workers and communities have a ton of essential knowledge” and a right to help determine how new technology is being developed and used.

Ballantyne, who is a visiting scholar at the MIT Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, gave the opening talk in the 2026-27 Presidential Colloquium series focused on “AI, Integrity, and the Collective Good.” Global health innovator Yacine Fall ’21 will be the upcoming speaker in the spring, on Thursday, April 15, 2027. The series is part of Smith’s ongoing inquiry into how rapid advances in artificial intelligence are raising complex questions about work, access to technology, and ethics.

Drawing on her extensive experience in labor organizing and technology policy, Ballantyne called for more accountability from tech companies who are developing AI “on what is public infrastructure,” including tax money, and research done at colleges and universities. 

“So many of the technologies that AI relies on, we paid for,” she noted. “We as a public should be able to make some return-on-investment demands.”  

Those demands should include more transparency about how technology works, and more involvement from workers and communities in decisions about how AI is used, Ballantyne said. She pointed to the opposition by many communities to construction of AI data centers—which require enormous amounts of water and energy—as evidence of “a mismatch between what communities want and what tech companies want.”

“We shouldn’t have things in our society that are only governable by technologists,” Ballantyne said. “That is not democratic. We want workers to be involved in setting priorities. If we don’t do governance, we’ll end up being governed by a chatbot.”

In a question-and-answer session with Smith President Sarah Willie-LeBreton that followed her talk, Ballantyne shared some reasons she believes workers and communities can play a bigger role in shaping how AI is used.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about the technology is that it has “mythical” powers, Ballantyne said, noting that, “We’re just at the beginning of understanding what AI can and can’t do—should and shouldn’t do. Do I want AI to cure cancer? Yes! Do I want it to manage warehouse workers? No.”

Ballantyne, who earned her Smith degree in government, praised the students she met with earlier in the day at a luncheon hosted by the Wurtele Center for Collaborative Leadership and in Professor Ben Baumer’s advanced statistical and data sciences class.

“Smith students have already thought a lot about how AI is being used,” she said, noting that they understand the way technology systems impact them and their communities, as well as “fairness and values.”

Asked about how her own Smith experience prepared her for the work she is doing now, Ballantyne said the College empowered her to “feel like my vision for the world mattered.” As a liberal arts institution, she said, Smith is a place where critical thinking, collaboration, and “the human touch” are valuable skills that students learn and take with them into jobs and careers.

As for the role that Smith can play in creating good governance around AI, Ballantyne said the College can be an important “incubator” for ideas that benefit the public good.

“People need to have their confidence built in safe places,” Ballantyne said. “The more you can do to foster critical conversations about AI and help people understand the problems with data—I think people are hungry for that, and higher education needs to be the leader.”