Ramesh Srinivasan

Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor of information studies at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies whose work explores the connection between technology, politics and culture. He also teaches in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts.

Srinivasan has studied the impact of the internet, social media and artificial intelligence on democracy, politics, public policy, health, economic development and culture, and he is an authority on issues related to disinformation, fake news and social media manipulation in politics.

He is the author of “Beyond the Valley: How Innovators Around the World Are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow” and “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World,” among other books. “Beyond The Valley” was named a top ten 2019 book in Tech by Forbes.

His work focuses on understanding how humanity can overcome the pressing issues that technology has perpetuated, such as artificial intelligence, social media and data privacy, disinformation, tech regulation, political bias, and AI’s impact on the future of work.

He blends his skills as a leading academic, author, engineer, social scientist, storyteller, policy adviser, and thought leader to shine a light on how technology and innovation, from all quarters and countries, will make a balanced world possible, for all. His mission is to help repair the disconnect between designers and users, producers and consumers, and tech elites and the rest of us: toward a more democratic internet.

Ramesh has been a faculty member at UCLA since 2005 in the Information Studies and Design|Media Arts departments. He is the founder of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab which offers a unique, people-focused analysis of new technologies working across every continent and dozens of countries across the world. This lab examines the means by which new media technologies impact businesses, economics, cultures, politics, labor, and the environment through collaborations with global partners. He explores the future of algorithms, AI, automation, and cryptocurrencies with these themes in mind. He holds degrees from Stanford (B.Sc. in Engineering), the MIT Media Laboratory (M.Sc.), and Harvard (Ph.D.).

Additionally, he is on the board of directors for Digital Democracy, which works with land protectors in the Amazon and all around the world. He also advises One Project, New Public, numerous members of the US congress (House and Senate) as well as global leaders.

In 2024, he launched his new podcast series, ‘Utopias,’ based on a series of conversations with well known individuals who are interested in a future that is more equal and just. Featured guests include political figures, journalists, artists, scientists, environmentalists, religious practitioners, and scholars, including American philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West, political commentator Ana Kasparian, American businessman and 2020 democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, Congressman Ro Khanna, among others.

Ramesh also previously served as a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and as an Innovation policy committee member for President Biden.

Ramesh appears frequently on NPR, The Young Turks, MSNBC, BBC, CNN and other major media networks. His articles and interviews have been published by the Washington Post, Wired, The Economist, Quartz, the Financial Times, Forbes, the New York Times, among others.

In February 2021, Ramesh was cited in an opinion piece by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. Mr. Friedman reiterated Ramesh’s suggestion that America urgently needs to enact a digital bill of rights that “sets the right balance between free speech and algorithms that make hate speech and blatantly false information from unreputable sources go viral.”