In our comment to the FDA, we draw on our ongoing research to focus on what people’s actual, everyday use of chatbots for mental and emotional support means for the FDA’s approach to generative AI-enabled digital mental health medical devices. datasociety.net/announcement...

In a new Points piece, D&S researchers @livgar.bsky.social and @briana-v.bsky.social reflect on what studying AI chatbots reveals about emotional attachment to machines, the power of illusion, and the norms and expectations that define care itself. datasociety.net/points/all-t...

Tomorrow at 10am ET: a discussion debunking myths about the impact of data centers on the economy, environment, & local communities, with D&S researcher @livgar.bsky.social, MOSACAT's Tania Rodríguez, & @slehuede.bsky.social. Interpretation in English and Spanish. us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Low-intensity warfare is uncanny. We continue to go to work, bring kids to school, shop for groceries, etc. But our everyday routines are punctuated by random episodes of spectacular violence; war as a way of life.

CHICAGO: REBUILD is providing therapy to folks detained by ICE. Please feel free to let people know. findmeatherapist.org

What our ongoing research with @briana-v.bsky.social at @datasociety.bsky.social is also finding:

This should be repeated constantly: "In three years, roughly a tenth of US energy demand will come from data centers alone." We need to have a real response to this!! www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

On Lawfare Daily, @tylermcbrien.com spoke to @mwoluchem.bsky.social, @livgar.bsky.social, and Joan Mukogosi from @datasociety.bsky.social about their research trips across Pennsylvania, where they learned about the current and future impacts of the nascent AI data center industry in the state.

It was lovely to talk about PA with @mwoluchem.bsky.social and Joan on the transformations being pushed by the data center industry across the state. Looking forward continuing this work with @anthrotechana.bsky.social and @cellllla.bsky.social 🛣️

An absolutely harrowing and important story -- ChatGPT and other chatbots are becoming deeply enmeshed in many people's personal and social lives to an incredible degree, and the consequences can be devastating.

In our second installment of our trip through PA, we linger on Three Mile Island on the banks of Susquehanna river. Nuclear energy coming back to power Microsoft data centers stands in strange contrast to small town diners, empty malls, and steel mill closures. Read below:

Thank you to @justinhendrix.bsky.social and @techpolicypress.bsky.social for eliciting some thoughts on some recent tragic incidents brought about by chatbots and what are increasingly becoming forms of technologically predatory companionships:

Commentary today from TI’s brilliant @livgar.bsky.social and many other experts about Meta’s profoundly disturbing chatbot policies and their real human impacts. Essential reflections for any and all of us using the internet

Chatbots for therapy: Worst idea ever or a good way to drive people into psychosis? On the next Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 live stream, @mharrisondupre.bsky.social‬ will join @alexhanna.bsky.social and me to process the hype: Monday, August 18, noon Pacific twitch.tv/dair_institute

Wow—the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (named after Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide) says plainly: "No more discussions, meetings, reports, sessions, summits…IF YOU HAVE THE POWER, YOU MUST USE IT." "HISTORY WILL DETERMINE THE RECTITUDE OF YOUR ACTIONS."

Today Trump, Sen. McCormick, and industry leaders convened to discuss their plan for AI-forward PA. Upshot: $92 billion will go to data centers, natural gas & nuclear infrastructure, & re-organizing labor around the AI race. DoE Sec. Chris Wright declared: “AI is our second Manhattan Project.”

Happy to have a shared piece on trust in relationality in the new @datasociety.bsky.social Trust Issues Anthology! Read below 🪢

“You don’t like AI therapists because they’re a threat to your income” No, I don’t like AI therapists because they are harmful!

It’s Earth Week! In this new series, members of our research network explore how communities have addressed the unequal power dynamics between tech production and deployment, and how tech impacts people’s everyday lives and the environment around them. datasociety.net/points/the-c...

It's Fustilarian Friday, so here's the latest statement from NSF's director, trying to dodge the news cycle. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

All of this, all of it, is illegal. Congress appropriated that money, OUR money, to support research and invest in America’s future innovation. It is not up to anyone in the Executive Branch to block it whenever they feel like it. The other co-equal branches of government have a duty to end this

It’s so weird how we’re all just working like this is still a normal country.

if the government is willing to disappear immigrants for their writing, they’re willing to do the same to citizens.

I wrote about therapy, platform intrusions, Virginia Woolf, and the need for trusted rooms of our own in these times 🪟 for The American Psychoanalyst 🛋️

Powerful lawsuit, filed today, against the Trump administration's abhorrent policy of ideological deportation. @aaup.bsky.social, MESA, and AAUP chapters at Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers are co-plaintiffs: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trustworthy Infrastructures is hiring! Come work with @livgar.bsky.social, Joan Mukogosi, and me, as we look to build out our Nodes & Conduits project. We're really looking forward to getting to know you and your work - please don't hesitate to reach out with any additional questions!

"...the Trump Administration seems to understand something that few others do: Technical infrastructure is the infrastructure of *everything.* It can accelerate or obstruct policy goals."

I wrote about Elon Musk and Gavin Kliger and acknowledging the reality of what they are: Nazis.

"You can’t rip the wiring out of the walls to map the circuitry. For many parts of the bureaucracy, including those that could use renovation, the mantra is the opposite of Silicon Valley’s: Move slowly and try not to break anything because human lives hang in the balance." nymag.com/intelligence...

Excellent 🧵 on this evening's NIH announcement of a dramatic reduction in indirect rates for research institutions, which amounts to a generational restructuring of the US research and development ecosystem. These cuts are effective immediately, not just for new grants but for existing ones.

A week after the US elections, we went on a road trip throughout PA to understand how past industries defined our world and how tech is reshaping it now. People and the places they live in and care about are always affected--and will be increasingly in the current tech oligarchy: Read here:

One of the words on this list is “historically”.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Gov is part of a drive to automate public service & admin using ungoverned, unaccountable AI systems. It will harm vulnerable people. Writing in Tech Policy Press in December, @alicetiara.bsky.social & @kevindeliban.bsky.social saw this coming. www.techpolicy.press/ai-cant-solv...

For @us.theguardian.com, I wrote about how Silicon Valley’s right-wing politics go back to the dotcom mania of the 1990s — and how they’re far more central to the tech industry than we’ve previously thought www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

NSF grantees - people who have already received their grants based on a previously funded and approved research proposal - are being told to stop any activities related to DEI and accessibility. Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects. www.opm.gov/policy-data-...

Apply apply ✉️

D&S researchers @livgar.bsky.social & Briana Vecchione are organizing a panel at @4sweb.bsky.social in Seattle called “Know Th/AI Self: Mental Health, Therapeutic Divination, and Chatbot Conspirituality” (see #177). Apply now: the CFP closes on Friday! www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

In a new 296 page report, @amnesty.org has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed - and is continuing to commit - genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. More here: www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas...

Excited to share new primer written w/ @aihathing.bsky.social on genAI & labor: genAI doesn't exist outside of industries' economic conditions, inequalities & power dynamics, and often are extensions of banal extractive trajectories we're already well familiar with. datasociety.net/library/gene...

I'm so thrilled to announce that Connective (t)Issues is finally here - a workshop on the manifold ways digital, physical, and social infrastructures are mythologized, built, broken, and reconstructed. We're looking for stories in any medium, and can't wait to read, watch, and listen to yours!