What a year! In 2025, our work both anticipated and responded to the big conversations about technology's impacts on people and society, and helped make sense of this moment. Check out our year-in-review for some of the highlights. We'll be back with more in 2026! datasociety.net/points/our-y...

This was the year that AI-generated images and videos became, sometimes, indistinguishable from real ones. But as @chaykak.bsky.social writes, “if 2025 marked the mainstreaming of slop, it also ushered in an accompanying slop backlash.” www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...

“What AI imperils is not human creativity itself but the ability to make a living from creative endeavor,” Caitlin Petre and @jticona.bsky.social write. “The AI industry claims that it wants to democratize creativity, but the real goal is dominance.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/o...

In new research, experts warn that the AI technology powering new toys is so novel and poorly tested that nobody knows how they may affect young children. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

As the shine started to come off generative AI, 2025 has been a year of reckoning. @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social offers four ways to think about the state of AI as this year comes to a close, framing it as “the start of a much-needed hype correction.” www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/15/1...

“What is lost when we entrust Spotify’s systems of data collection and interpretation to do our year-end reflections for us? What...are we not writing and sharing when we hand over that labor to tech companies who would prefer to automate our thinking?” www.theguardian.com/music/2025/d...

Merriam-Webster’s president says the spike in searches for the word “slop” this year reflects that people have grown more aware of fake or shoddy content, and that they want the opposite: “It’s almost a defiant word when it comes to AI.” apnews.com/article/merr...

In OpenAI's decidedly "techno-optimistic spin," Vauhini Vara sees the company attempting “to redefine how objectivity functions in the first place” — in a way that favors their own algorithms, as they strive to get people to trust their product. www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

“If the last decade was shaped by viral lies and doctored videos, the next will be shaped by a subtler force: [AI] messages that sound reasonable, familiar, and just persuasive enough to change hearts and minds,” warn Tal Feldman and Aneesh Pappu. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/05/1...

Last week, Jon Penney, Sarah Brayne, & I discussed the role of AI and surveillance in transforming and scaling restrictions on academic freedom & speech. @jessicapriest.bsky.social has an excellent story on how gen AI is being used to do so in Texas universities www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

The public overwhelmingly supports regulating AI. Yet the Trump admin is acting unilaterally to stop state governors, legislators, and AGs from protecting people from algorithmic discrimination, AI's impacts on workers, and the environmental impacts of data centers. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/t...

An AI-powered quote-detection tool could help journalists identify when coverage leans too heavily on a single type of source and "ensure that the voices shaping our understanding of the world are as diverse and accurate as the realities they aim to represent.” www.cjr.org/tow_center/t...

"The world that ChatGPT built is a world defined by a particular type of precarity," @cwarzel.bsky.social writes, reflecting on the destabilizing promise of imminent if uncertain transformation. "It is a world that is perpetually waiting for a shoe to drop." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

🚨 New today! In "Turning the Tide: Climate Action In and Against Tech," @tamigraph.bsky.social examines how, in a time of AI ascendance and data center accelerationism, climate-conscious tech workers and larger coalitions have attempted to reform the industry. 1/3 datasociety.net/library/turn...

AI on the Ground Program Director Ranjit Singh considers the stakes of AI sovereignty, the tension between default settings and local autonomy, and who gets to decide what happens inside the systems that people come to depend on. datasociety.net/points/rethi...

This promises to be an amazing talk by D&S researcher @briana-v.bsky.social!

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...

Indian startups are building AI tools to ensure the digital representation of so-called low-resource languages like Tulu, Bodo, and Kashmiri, report Tauseef Ahmad and Sajid Raina in @restofworld.org. That work involves building digital data sets nearly from scratch. restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt...

We're navigating a moment where people are trying to make sense of the stories they're being told about AI, as they reckon with the technology’s place in the cultural conversation and in their own lives, D&S Executive Director Janet Haven tells @alixdunn.com. www.youtube.com/shorts/q3dxb...

On #ComputerSaysMaybe, D&S Executive Director Janet Haven and Board President @cmcilwain.bsky.social sat down with @alixdunn.com to discuss the tech industry’s co-opting of academia, how giving the reins to tech oligarchs hurts people, and why independent research is essential. youtu.be/xUJbo0KmbOk

Marking the third anniversary of ChatGPT's launch, Lila Schroff looks at how relying on chatbots has upended some people's ability to make decisions. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Monday is the last day to apply for this workshop!

In a new Points piece, D&S’s @tamigraph.bsky.social and the Kapor Foundation’s Cecilia Marrinan consider how California’s longstanding ties to the tech industry — and a history of environmental harm — connect to the threats the industry poses to the state today. datasociety.net/points/beyon...

New York's new algorithmic pricing law does not prohibit surveillance pricing or meaningfully explain how algorithms influence prices. But as Stephanie T. Nguyen outlines, it does offer some new ways for researchers to examine these practices. www.techpolicy.press/how-to-test-...

In a new Points piece, Hannah Lipstein & @tamigraph.bsky.social examine VA’s Data Center Alley, and explain why their research examines not only individual sites but “how the politics, economics, & cultural factors of a place" inform effective organizing strategies. datasociety.net/points/situa...

Dec 4 @ 1 pm ET: Join D&S’s Executive Director Janet Haven, @partnershipai.bsky.social’s Stephanie Bell, @ambakak.bsky.social, and @rebekahtweed.bsky.social as they discuss @alltechishuman.bsky.social’s Responsible AI Impact Report and what lies ahead for the field. events.zoom.us/ev/AkhJJWwfA...

Better digital futures are possible when *people* are at the center of decisions about how AI is developed and used. With your support on this #GivingTuesday, our public education work will equip more communities to push for essential transparency and accountability. datasociety.net/donate/

On @palumboliu.bsky.social’s podcast, D&S's @tamigraph.bsky.social and Xiaowei Wang talk about the materiality of the technologies behind things like AI and the cloud, and preview the findings of Kneese’s report on climate conscious tech workers, coming next week! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

“Generative AI is genuinely useful in some contexts, profoundly useless in others, & decidedly unproven in most,” @katie-drummond.bsky.social writes, offering a reality check on how to think about the technology. “It is situationally dependent. It is not a monolith.” www.wired.com/story/ai-jou...

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...

“AI firms want to woo us with frictionless interfaces for everything. The antidote is sitting across the table from the people we care about, and all the friction they come with, to discuss our interesting times & everything else.” Indeed! Happy Thanksgiving all! www.fastcompany.com/91447431/tha...

The unceremonious disbanding of DOGE (which, among other things, aimed to remake the government with AI) is a good time to revisit our policy brief rebutting the myth that AI can or will deliver efficiency for the public. www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...

“In an odd way, maybe the Trump administration has taken inspiration from the Brussels Effect,” D&S Policy Director Brian J. Chen tells @politico.com. It’s just that “they want to be the ones setting those standards." www.politico.eu/article/brus...

We’re “living in a world where the whims and desires of wealthy and powerful men create uncertain, unstable conditions for everyone else….Every user of mainstream AI or social media is subject to a calculus that they have no control over.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

We’re delighted that Data & Society’s own @mwoluchem.bsky.social will be part of NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani’s Transition Committee on Technology, working to advance the public interest in collaboration with so many other visionary leaders we admire

“As it has for everything else, AI has now come for the accent.” Sheon Han experiments with whether an AI-powered “accent training” app can help him sound “less Korean” — and what that might mean. www.wired.com/story/ai-ame...

Researchers say AI chatbots “pose serious risks to individuals vulnerable to eating disorders,” doling out dieting advice, tips on how to hide disorders, and AI-generated “thinspiration” — partly as a result of features deliberately designed to drive engagement. www.theverge.com/news/818508/...

December 11 @ 1 pm ET: Join us online as D&S's @tamigraph.bsky.social discusses her forthcoming report on how climate conscious tech workers are attempting to reform the tech industry from within, with Eliza Pan of @amzn4climate.bsky.social and @khari.bsky.social. datasociety.net/events/clima...

🔥 This event was one for the books! Check out the video, and stay tuned to hear more about our public education work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZHo...

If AI is a bubble, or even “the ultimate bubble,” what does that really mean? @bcmerchant.bsky.social turns to the scholars who wrote the book on tech bubbles for a “reliable, battle-tested means of evaluating and understanding the AI mania.” www.wired.com/story/ai-bub...

Can public involvement in AI evaluation improve the science? Or does it compromise quality, speed, cost? In @pnas.org, Megan Price & I summarize challenges of AI evaluation, review strengths/weaknesses, & suggest how participatory methods can improve the science of AI www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The AI tool Cluely exemplifies Big Tech’s belief “that problems created by technology can be solved by more technology,” @julieebeck.bsky.social writes, making money for companies while ignoring the reasons people talk to each other in the first place. www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/...

This new series, curated by researchers Emnet Tafesse and Abigail Oppong in collaboration with D&S’s AI on the Ground program, explores the need for a more equitable and inclusive approach to AI — one that prioritizes those in the Majority World. datasociety.net/points/democ...

In a new piece for @policyr.bsky.social, @alicetiara.bsky.social, @serena124.bsky.social, @charleyjohnson.bsky.social, and @erie.bsky.social explore the challenges of bridging empirical research and policy, and outline what’s needed to do it well. policyreview.info/articles/ana...

In a time of economic difficulty, "some of these townships are saying, ‘Well, why not?’” when it comes to data centers, D&S researcher @livgar.bsky.social says. Others are wary of the major changes data centers have brought to communities like their own. www.newsfromthestates.com/article/data...

🚨The final event in our popular series with the NYPL is happening on Thursday, w an incredible panel of experts discussing the value of human labor in the face of increasing automation. Reserve your in-person spot (they're going quickly) or RSVP to join us online! www.showclix.com/event/unders...

TODAY, at 2pm ET! bsky.app/profile/data...

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/...