His research aims to make the practice of machine learning more robust, reliable, and aligned with societal values. After obtaining a PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2011, Hardt was a postdoctoral scholar and research staff member at IBM Research Almaden, followed by two years as a research scientist at Google Research and Google Brain. Together with Solon Barocas, Hardt co-founded the workshop on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning (FAT/ML) in 2014.