Senior Technologist
Amy Winecoff is the Senior Technologist at the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI) at Georgetown University. Her work focuses on developing technically informed, empirically grounded approaches to strengthen technology policy and governance, with particular attention to protecting individuals affected by digital technologies.
She has extensive expertise in AI governance, especially in the areas of transparency, evaluation, and mental health. Her research has appeared in academic venues such as RecSys, CHI, AIES, and First Monday, as well as in policy publications including Tech Policy Press and Compiler. She has also served as a responsible technology advisor to startup accelerators. Earlier in her career, as a data scientist, she developed and deployed production-scale recommendation systems for e-commerce companies.
Previously, she was a researcher at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), and an assistant professor at Bard College. She holds a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Duke University, bringing a social science perspective to her work on technology policy and governance.
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The landmark multistate Meta settlement creates new binding requirements for protections for young users on Facebook and Instagram, but consequential decisions about how those protections are implemented and evaluated are still to come. KGI offers nine recommendations for effective independent oversight focused on whether the settlement measurably reduces risks to young people.
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Age assurance is entering a new phase. From the recent multistate Meta settlement and California legislation to New York’s final SAFE for Kids Act rules, broad requirements to protect youth online are now being translated into concrete requirements for how companies determine users’ ages, measure whether their systems work, and demonstrate compliance. As these implementation frameworks take shape, New York’s approach offers important early lessons for policymakers across jurisdictions developing their own age assurance rules.
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KGI’s Age Assurance Rules provides practical recommendations for designing age assurance rules that support youth online safety while appropriately accounting for tradeoffs involving privacy, service availability, competition, and openness.
