Jer Thorp

Jer is also a brilliant business speaker. He tracks consumers in ways few digital experts can—contextualizing their behavior, personalizing the anonymous, and frequently validating the work of digital marketers.

On stage, Jer illuminates the exciting potential of what his projects mean for society. “The work we do with data is not passive. It affects people’s lives and wellbeing,” he says. Data is about meaningful connections, as Jer explored in his moving 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, for which he wrote a program that organized the names of victims not by alphabetical order, but by relationships—putting coworkers next to coworkers, and brothers next to brothers.

“We hear every day how data is affecting our world. But Living in Data is the first time we can really feel it. The result is a highly accessible, even stirring, view into the often-invisible systems that shape our lives.”— Anil Dash, CEO, Glitch

From 2013 to 2017, Jer operated The Office for Creative Research, where he and his team implemented ingenious projects—like counting all the endangered elephants across the African continent, which helped influence ivory poaching policies. In February of 2017, amidst a rising tide of xenophobia, The OCR installed a sculpture in Times Square that depicted New York City’s rich history of immigration. A mesmerizing, funny, and socially engaged activist—often working at the juncture of social justice, technology, marketing, and art—Jer reveals what we normally, and understandably, could never see in big data. And he makes it look cool.

Jer has been at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence research for years. He coded his first neural network over a decade ago, and is now involved with the AI Now Institute (NYU) and Knowing Machines (NYU & USC). In talks, he draws on his unique career and expertise to show us what AI like ChatGPT can and can’t do, what it’s made of, and how we can work alongside it to develop a more productive, democratic, and flourishing future.

Native to Vancouver, Jer now lives in New York City, where he teaches in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. He has been a vocal advocate around data, ethics, and privacy, spearheading a project with The OCR called Floodwatch, a collective ad monitoring tool that empowered individuals to see how advertisers were profiling them (often inaccurately, and unfairly). The aim was to help combat discriminatory practices, such as targeting specific demographics to fill a housing development over others. His award-winning work has been exhibited, read, and implemented in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and South America. He has over a decade of teaching experience, and has presented at The Ford Foundation in New York City, the National Academies, and the Library of Congress.