Widely cited measures of AI exposure “give the wrong impression” about who will be most affected — and, in particular, tend to understate the impact on people without college degrees, older workers and people of color. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/b...

The politics of people for or against data centers can’t be easily distilled into red or blue, D&S's @mwoluchem.bsky.social tells @19thnews.org. “Communities should be at the forefront of these decisions," she says. "They are going to be the ones living amongst them.” 19thnews.org/2026/06/wome...

Wrapping up our series "Reimagining the Future of Digital Health," Odia Kane looks to the informed consent model in human subjects research as she considers what meaningful consent looks like when it comes to AI use. datasociety.net/points/can-a...

63% of respondents said the risks of using generative AI tools to analyze data and scientific literature outweigh the benefits — yet nearly 60% felt they would be left behind if they didn't use AI tools in their work. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Women’s specific judgment on safety, labor, and bodily autonomy is crucial for AI policy," Nancy Lyons writes, pointing to D&S Executive Director Janet Haven among many who have been leading critical work in this space. www.startribune.com/artificial-i...

"It's pretty hard to make the argument this is driven by foreign influence when you are dealing w people in sometimes very small communities showing up at town hall meetings angry about things directly affecting them," says D&S affiliate @tamigraph.bsky.social. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

"[T]he same tools that can be genuinely useful for research can also be destabilizing for education," professor @laurenaulet.bsky.social says. "‘AI helps me code’ does not straightforwardly translate into ‘AI is good for universities.’” www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

In researching patients' attempts to get healthcare systems to honor their wishes about consent and privacy, D&S affiliate Alex Rosenblat kept hearing the same thing: patients are being asked to sign privacy waivers without knowing exactly what they’re signing. themarkup.org/privacy/2026...

The Great American AI Act discussion draft released today by Reps. Obernolte and Trahan leaves critical gaps unaddressed. (1/4) www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

The pope's encyclical on AI “presents a remarkable case for placing moral concerns, and not profit, or competitive advantage, or efficiency, at the center of any discussion of artificial intelligence,” @newyorker.com's Jill Lepore writes. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

"There is no positive vision of AI that has been offered in the US as a way to anchor what people’s relationship to this technology should be,” D&S Program Director Ranjit Singh tells @csmonitor.bsky.social . www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/...

According to a new Gallup poll, women are driving the increasing opposition to data centers. This aligns with what D&S's @anthrotechana.bsky.social is seeing in her research on PA's data center industry, she tells @19thnews.org. 19thnews.org/2026/05/wome...

As part of our series “Reimagining the Future of Digital Health,” @puellaludens.bsky.social considers what historical and contemporary practices of mutual aid can teach us about how to develop skills for the collective governance of healthcare at a grassroots level. datasociety.net/points/lesso...

AI's impact on productivity isn't straightforward, but companies are pressuring workers to use it anyway. If employers actually want to understand where the technology is helpful (and not), they should listen to feedback from workers, D&S's @aihathing.bsky.social says. www.vox.com/technology/4...

"The vulnerability is an astounding, high-profile example of the types of risks that companies are putting their users and workers under when they offload important functions to AI." www.404media.co/hackers-simp...

"When a society is unmoved by decades of advocacy from disabled communities but springs into action when a tech company needs the same accommodation, it reveals whose claims on shared resources are treated as legitimate and whose are treated as optional." www.techpolicy.press/the-web-is-b...

"In a society already failing to confront visible inequality, digital consumer profiling tools threaten to create new, more under-the-radar patterns of advantage and disadvantage. When such patterns spread and become entrenched in the marketplace, democracy suffers." lpeproject.org/blog/coaliti...

Y2K showed that choices in computer design ultimately had implications for everyone. Today we can draw a clear parallel to AI: as the technology becomes intertwined with critical infrastructure, even those who swear off AI are becoming reliant it. just-tech.ssrc.org/articles/new...

You can learn about our upcoming AI Civics program, which is mentioned in this op-ed, here. datasociety.net/announcement...

Excited to share my recent essay where I reflect on AI in women’s health and what gets lost when digital health systems prioritize efficiency over the complex ecosystems where care, trust, harm, and decision-making actually happen.

Join us on June 4 @ 12:30 pm ET: In an event produced with our partners @pulitzercenter.org, D&S researchers @livgar.bsky.social & @briana-v.bsky.social and Pulitzer Center Fellow @paticlarke.bsky.social will discuss chatbots and mental health! pulitzercenter.org/event/invest...

As automation creeps into the lives of hospitality employees, it is decreasing their autonomy while increasing surveillance. “You have a device telling you, ‘move here, move there,’ like if you were a robot," one housekeeper tells @proofnews.bsky.social. www.proofnews.org/hotel-housek...

Domestic violence is an ecosystem, one that flattened datasets reduce to individuals, incidents, and risk scores, @hawrarabaan.bsky.social writes. "A woman becomes a case file. Harm becomes a checkbox. Context becomes metadata." datasociety.net/points/how-a...

AI executives "don’t seem to feel much pressure to win people over," @michellegoldberg.bsky.social writes. The fact that they don't feel constrained by public sentiment "shows how broken America’s democratic feedback loop has become.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/o...

The strongest protections against AI at work have come from collective bargaining by organized labor, @bedoyausa.bsky.social says. It’s the workers we should be listening to: “They’re the only ones who seem to understand the assignment.” washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/20/a...

Featured in today’s civic education news roundup on The Renovator - a little overlap with our tech and democracy news roundup!

📣 Join us for #CASPR2026 — CASTAC in the Spring! "Labor and Technoscientific Worlds: Historical Encounters and New Directions in the Field" — a roundtable with Kalpana Shankar, David Nemer & Lilly Irani honoring David Hakken. 📅 May 29 | 10:30AM–12:30PM CT 🎟️ Register: caspr2026.eventbrite.com

Though President Trump rescinded the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, it is having a second life. As red and blue states draft their own versions, they're drawing on the vocabulary Americans have long reached for to contest power, @alondra.bsky.social writes. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As part of our series “Reimagining the Future of Digital Health,” Mira D. Vale writes about the importance of building moral infrastructure for mental health care AI, which will form the scaffolding for whatever safeguards may exist in the future. datasociety.net/points/build...

Applications for @pulitzercenter.org's US Civil Society Microgrants are open until June 8. These small grants will boost projects on climate & the environment, information & AI, and global health. Interested? Check out the info session on May 27. pulitzercenter.org/grants-fello...

Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org

In a new series on Points, @rwjf.org futurist-in-residence (& D&S affiliate) Joan Mukogosi is exploring what the intertwining of care & AI might mean for the future of digital health. That future is ours to shape, and these essays offer inspiration for building it. datasociety.net/points/reima...

It's critical for independent researchers and oversight bodies to be able to thoroughly assess and audit chatbot behavior, D&S researcher @briana-v.bsky.social says; right now AI labs are “grading their own homework.” spectrum.ieee.org/mental-healt...

"As the industry has warned about AI’s risks, it has also done a remarkably poor job of articulating the positive vision of the future it wants to build," @cwarzel.bsky.social writes. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

As AI models have become more capable and available, they’ve created problems that we’re told can be mitigated only with *more* AI. How convenient, then, that a very small number of very large firms are positioned to capture basically all of the upside. nymag.com/intelligence...

The US vs. China AI race is “a story used to justify sprinting ahead without guardrails,” @yilingliu95.bsky.social writes. It obscures what many people in both countries share: a sense of precarity and powerlessness as they face the technological future. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/o...

A scroll through someone’s chat queries may paint an incredibly intimate, hyper-personalized portrait of them and their world, from their daily activities to their inner life. For OpenAI, that's information they have users' tacit consent to collect, store, and share. futurism.com/artificial-i...

AI companies are writing their own constitutions. Meanwhile, a shared vocabulary for contesting algorithmic power has been traveling across red and blue states, from legislatures to civil society. New from me in @science.org: "A Civic Grammar for AI Rights" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵

"As much as Silicon Valley would wish you to believe it, AI does not necessitate imperial conquest, nor could broad-based benefit from the technology ever emerge from such a foundation," @karenhao.bsky.social writes. www.theguardian.com/technology/c...

"The problem is not the tool; it is the mystique that has grown around it. Mistaking mirrors for windows is not a technological error so much as an old human one." www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

"So much of the current discourse around deepfakes has focused on the extreme — fabricated political scandals or world events," @lilashroff.bsky.social writes. But "the mundane, micro-targeted" ones might actually be more sinister. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"[A]s famous women try to convince other women that adopting the technology isn’t just the best thing they can do for their careers — it’s the only way to survive,” we're witnessing a new but predictable phenomenon: "the girlbossification of AI." www.thecut.com/article/ai-g...

We’re thrilled to officially launch our AI Civics program, aimed at building civic strength for the AI era. And we're grateful to do so with $2 million from Humanity AI, a collaborative philanthropic initiative dedicated to ensuring that AI serves the public good. datasociety.net/announcement...

"Much has been written about 'AI psychosis,' the nonspecific, nonscientific diagnosis given to people who have lost themselves to AI. Less has been said about...the insidious nature of having to navigate an internet & a world where lazy AI has infiltrated everything." www.404media.co/your-ai-use-...

[T]he biggest AI labs now loom like the new faces of American oligarchy…a fearsome concentration of economic and social power producing a self-compounding pattern of extreme inequality of the kind that has lacerated American life for decades.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/m...

As part of our series “Democratizing AI for the Global Majority,” Jesin James writes about a project that aims to understand emotions in te reo Māori and to build technology that reflects these ways of feeling. datasociety.net/points/devel...

We’re so excited that Sareeta Amrute, Data & Society's inaugural director of research and a current affiliate, is among these incredible scholars! Congratulations, Sareeta!

Many clinicians are embracing AI tools in healthcare settings. But because far fewer of them are rigorously assessing how well the tools actually work, we don’t know whether using them leads to better health outcomes for patients. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/24/1...

The Trump administration has announced its intent to test frontier AI models before they're released to the public. Government oversight of AI is long overdue, but securing Americans’ rights & safety will take more than what the admin is signaling. Read our statement. datasociety.net/announcement...

"The threat is not a robot uprising, but a world in which decisions are seamlessly made for us, rather than by us," Konstantinos Komaitis writes. "AI governance, then, becomes ultimately a question of democracy itself." www.techpolicy.press/how-ai-rever...