While calling the requirements of NY's RAISE Act fair and doable, D&S policy manager @serena124.bsky.social tells @politico.com that the bill could go further to protect consumers and hold tech companies accountable. subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025...

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...

Meta knowingly makes billions from scam ads, while vulnerable users around the world lose devastating amounts. It’s time to hold the company accountable for its role in this shameful cycle of harm, @lanalanalana.bsky.social & D&S's @alicetiara.bsky.social write. www.theverge.com/tech/820906/...

"The whole idea of AGI is built on a warped view of what we should expect technology to do, and even what intelligence is in the first place,” @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social writes. www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1...

For the new season of his podcast "Shell Game," @evrat.bsky.social tests the hype about AI employees by creating a real company, run by fake people. “At first it was fun...like playing The Sims." But soon, "their fabrications became increasingly difficult to manage.” www.wired.com/story/all-my...

The money being thrown around for AI is so huge that numbers have lost all meaning. But @shiraovide.bsky.social offers one way to put it in context: The amount Big Tech has spent on AI data centers in just the past year could fund SNAP benefits for four years. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

I’ll be in conversation with Sana Ahmad next Monday, November 17 at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social about our new @commonnotions.bsky.social book on digital workers’ inquiry and my forthcoming @datasociety.bsky.social report on climate action in and against the tech industry

Talk of an economy dominated by AI output is making it hard for Gen Z to plan for the future, even if they put the technology at the center of their work. One laid-off employee who built AI agents compares it to “feeding myself into the AI meat grinder.” nymag.com/intelligence...

AI is not a climate solution. With #COP30 underway, we stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples and frontline communities in rejecting centralized tech power and the extractive practices of AI — and affirming that technology must serve people. #TheAnswerIsUs greenscreen.network/en/blog/cop30/

Microsoft and Google say data centers will create thousands of jobs in Chile, but an analysis of permit filings by @restofworld.org shows only a small number of potential positions — and most are not skilled IT jobs, but those in security and cleaning. restofworld.org/2025/data-ce...

This Thursday, 11/13! D&S Director of Research @alicetiara.bsky.social will take part in a panel discussion about the opportunities and challenges of using research to support tech policy and advocacy, and share strategies for ethical, effective research that centers marginalized communities.

AI chatbots used to be pitched as impartial tools for answering questions, but bespoke chatbots like Arya (an “unapologetic right-wing nationalist Christian AI model”) are now being programmed explicitly to reflect the biases of their creators. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/b...

To understand the complex impacts of data centers, we need to look at the relationship between social and algorithmic harms, and "and other forms of embodied harms that communities are dealing with," D&S’s @tamigraph.bsky.social tells @yamachiodi.bsky.social. www.blogs.unicamp.br/geict/2025/1...

Support Data & Society. Together, we can build a future where AI is shaped by the public, not just the powerful. datasociety.net/donate/

Chatbot-enabled letters to the editor are flooding the world’s scientific journals, “putting at risk a part of scientific publishing that editors say is needed to sharpen research findings and create new directions for inquiry.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/s...

In contrast with Wikipedia’s mission to “set knowledge free,” Elon Musk's "competitor" Grokipedia represents “the use of technological power to re-exert top-down authority over information and knowledge," @antisomniac.bsky.social writes. www.techpolicy.press/with-grokipe...

Researching the use of chatbots for mental health support, D&S's @briana-v.bsky.social heard from many people who expected less stigma from chatbots than from therapists, “which is really interesting, given what we know about machine-learning bias,” she tells @undark.org. undark.org/2025/11/04/c...

New workshop! We invite researchers and practitioners to join us in examining how scientific reasoning and imagination are being reconfigured as AI systems become a part of the everyday practice of science. Learn more and apply by December 8. datasociety.net/announcement...

AI data centers are straining already fragile power and water infrastructures in communities around the world, leading to blackouts and water shortages. “Data centers are where environmental and social issues meet,” says Rosi Leonard, an environmentalist with @foeireland.bsky.social.

As research shows how AI contributes to de-skilling, stewardship of the technology must ensure "that the capacities in which our humanity resides — judgment, imagination, understanding — stay alive in us," and that we don't lose sight of which of them matter. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

At @alltechishuman.bsky.social’s Responsible Tech Summit, D&S exec director Janet Haven talked about critical role that grounded, empirical research on AI plays in countering industry hype and creating policy that reflects the technology’s real impacts on people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnex...

Companies haven't done nearly enough to prevent their tech from being used to make violent threats, D&S’s @alicetiara.bsky.social says; most guardrails are “more like a lazy traffic cop than a firm barrier — you can get a model to ignore them and work around them.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/b...

“To leave our students to their own devices — which is to say, to the devices of AI companies — is to deprive them of...the means to understand the world they live in or navigate it effectively,” Anastasia Berg writes. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

In the latest in a series of reflections, @megyoung0.bsky.social & @tamigraph.bsky.social write about AIMLab's community-based algorithmic impact assessment of San José’s computer vision pilot program — and what happened when news broke about it while it was underway. datasociety.net/points/the-u...

ICE treating facial recognition matches as definitive IDs to detain individuals is shockingly irresponsible and dangerous. Facial recognition is a highly temperamental technology, with accuracy varying significantly based on an array of factors. www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

AI use is opening a widening gap across party lines, with one side poised to exploit the technology in ways that could create a systemic advantage in next year’s midterm elections and beyond. Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders argue that it doesn’t have to be this way. time.com/7321098/ai-2...

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨 @tamigraph.bsky.social @briana-v.bsky.social and I discuss wellness chatbots, their labor implications, & "private vibes" vs "privacy". We call for critical human-AI communication scholarship that takes into account context & political economy: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As LLMs manufacture a form of scholarship, presentation doesn’t mean what it used to. D&S's Ranjit Singh looks at how this threatens the open-access research repository arXiv, how its founder is fighting to sustain its credibility, & what researchers can do to help. datasociety.net/points/on-ar...

📣 Our method for conducting community-based algorithmic impact assessments is now available! We’ve just launched a new section on our website where you can find an extensive toolkit, documentation of our pilots, and a series of reflections on lessons learned. datasociety.net/research/alg...

TONIGHT at 6:30 pm ET! In-person tickets are sold out, but you can still join us online!

Scientific research and data analysis are essential tools for holding those in power accountable. We stand with @hrdag.org in denouncing the growing attacks on science and human rights in the US.

Since moving to civil society, I've noticed a huge dearth of support for researchers working in the space - although there are tons of us! Come join this D&SxACLUxCDT event where we talk about the opportunities and challenges of research to support tech policy & advocacy!

"I know fictional characters when I see them. ChatGPT is one. The problem is that it has no author,” writes novelist @vauhinivara.bsky.social. If OpenAI has only tenuous control over the narrator it has unleashed, she asks, who is responsible for its output? www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Tomorrow! Next in our series w NYPL, D&S ED Janet Haven will talk to @cmcilwain.bsky.social, @juliaangwin.com & @catherinebracy.com about the power and potential of AI in the *public* interest. In-person spots are going fast; reserve yours or join the livestream! www.showclix.com/event/unders...

Customers who saw Ring doorbells as a convenient tool in the fight against porch piracy have effectively (if unintentionally) teamed up with Amazon to build “a crowd-sourced, nationwide, neighborhood surveillance network to which the government now has a set of keys.” nymag.com/intelligence...

“Political experts said that even the most anodyne uses of AI by the president would normalize the tools as a potent new part of modern political propaganda,” @stuartathompson.bsky.social reports. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

For people who live with facial differences, the increasing reliance on facial recognition tech can create obstacles to accessing essential systems, as they find the stigma they have long experienced “now being echoed by the technology they are forced to interact with.” www.wired.com/story/when-f...

🔮Just in time for spooky season: A new cluster of essays in @asapjournal.bsky.social, edited by D&S’s @tamigraph.bsky.social and @briana-v.bsky.social, and @jeffreymoro.com, considers the relationships between algorithms and divination. 🔮 asapjournal.com/cluster/algo...

The search for Upturn’s next Executive Director starts today! We're seeking candidates with 10+ years of experience and a commitment to advancing equity & justice, who can guide Upturn’s long-term political vision and continue to grow the institution. Apply by Nov 24: www.upturn.org/join/executi...

Incredible to see our amazing board member @catherinebracy.com on @thedailyshow.com this week, talking about the state of the modern tech economy and how to build a more equitable future! If you missed it, catch up with video & a recap from @techequity.bsky.social. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD-4...

Loyalty programs may seem straightforward — collect points, get deals, save money — but a new report shows that many now operate as data-harvesting systems, tracking what consumers buy and how they search, and becoming engines of “surveillance pricing.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Are you concerned about how AI is reshaping democracy? Want to know what we can do about it? Don’t miss tomorrow’s conversation: Join us online at 1 pm ET! bsky.app/profile/data...

“A data center represents a worse deal for locals than a factory like GM’s," Nick Rommel writes. "A piece of land that once fed thousands of union families will feed far fewer," displacing a community while enabling an industry that seeks "to obsolesce human labor.” thebaffler.com/latest/last-...

“The perennial availability of AI is rapidly reshaping our expectations of care,” @briana-v.bsky.social and Ranjit Singh write in a new blog post about this piece. “Care is not mere output. It lives in the slow, difficult work of attunement, which no machine can truly provide.”

"Sora is a ghoulish puppet show, and exploring it feels like wandering around an empty funfair," Bobbie Johnson writes. Its purpose seems to be "overwhelming users with so much fake content that they no longer have a choice but to assume that everything is false." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/o...

This week! On Thursday, Oct 23, join “Rewiring Democracy” authors Bruce Schneier & Nathan E. Sanders, and D&S's @alicetiara.bsky.social, to explore how AI is changing power & participation, and what we can do to shape that change for the better. Learn more and RSVP: datasociety.net/events/a-roa...

In an independent piece for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social, D&S Policy Director Brian J. Chen considers US-China tech tensions, export controls, efforts to achieve digital sovereignty, and how the AI race is shifting the politics of the “national interest.” www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/gre...

New technologies like AI are radically expanding (and speeding up) our ability to catalog species. As climate change accelerates species loss, time is of the essence and taxonomists can use the help. But ultimately, every identification still depends on people. www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

Congratulations to @modelallianceny.bsky.social founder and D&S affiliate Sara Ziff for being named to the TIME100 Next list! As @aijenpoo.bsky.social writes in her tribute, “her work is a reminder that all workers have dignity, and that everyone deserves to be protected.” time.com/collections/...

“There is a genuine, Gen Z-driven Luddite renaissance building as some people reject the tech platforms that have clamored for our attention (and money) over the past two decades,” @amorrow.bsky.social writes. And the flood of AI-generated content is only intensifying it. www.cnn.com/2025/10/08/b...