"[A] tool that began public life as a chatty interface for summarizing emails and helping you write a cover letter is now sitting somewhere along the chain that turns information into violence," writes @stokel.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

AI companies are hiring white-collar professionals to produce the training data needed to automate their jobs, @joshdzieza.bsky.social reports. This massive harvesting of human expertise is enabled by “an arrangement in which employers can turn labor on and off like a tap.” nymag.com/intelligence...

AI-generated deepfakes are fueling a global wave of financial fraud, and institutions are struggling to keep up. A new @datasociety.bsky.social Research Institute Policy Brief examines the limits of current regulatory approaches and makes the case for stronger institutional accountability.

"In the same way that legitimate businesses are integrating automation, so are organized crime,” says D&S Director of Research @alicetiara.bsky.social, discussing the growing prevalence and mounting toll of AI-enabled scams. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

📣 New! Around the world, AI-generated deepfakes are being used to enable financial fraud — and they're causing serious harm. Our policy brief w @columbiasipa.bsky.social unpacks the limits of current regulations & underscores the need for institutional accountability. datasociety.net/library/deep...

"When an [AI] agent misbehaves, there’s little chance of accountability: As of now, there’s no reliable way to determine whom an agent belongs to. And that misbehavior could cause real damage," Grace Huckins writes. www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/05/1...

"By calling what AI can do 'intelligence,' we are conflating a technological capability with a human attribute," writes novelist Charles Yu. "The danger isn’t that we are overestimating AI. It’s that we are underestimating ourselves." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A new report from US PIRG finds the AI companies ask very few questions about who is using their technology and for what. When it comes to toys for kids, the result is a market where the job of ensuring child safety is largely left up to unvetted third parties. pirg.org/edfund/resou...

“Do we have the right rules in place and accountability norms to handle the exponential growing use of [AI tools in warfare]? My answer would be no,” says Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at @carnegieendowment.org. restofworld.org/2026/anthrop...

In @techpolicypress.bsky.social, experts consider the urgent questions and fault lines about the role of technology in armed conflict that have emerged in the days since the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran. www.techpolicy.press/key-question...

Grammarly's new "Expert Review" tool uses AI to simulate feedback from famous authors and academics, including those who died decades ago. “These are not expert reviews, because there are no ‘experts’ involved in producing them,” says historian @ceaubin.com. www.wired.com/story/gramma...

AI on the Ground Program Director Ranjit Singh looks at an experimental history project that exposes some surprisingly basic problems in how today’s AI models understand time. datasociety.net/points/can-w...

Great resource for anyone engaged or interested in US AI policy and governance from @geomblog.bsky.social and his team www.brown.edu/news/2026-03...

March 19 @ 12 pm ET! As AI is integrated into scientific practice, the practice of science itself is changing. Join Ranjit Singh, Kristin M. Branson, Lisa Messeri, & Nicole C. Nelson to explore what this means for the nature of proof, inference, uncertainty, & error. datasociety.net/events/the-c...

“These are private corporations that, in many respects, have been given a lot of political deference to engage in this very accelerated behavior,” says Nicol Turner Lee of @brookings.edu. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"When fluent speech without responsibility becomes normal...it changes what it means to be human," Deb Roy writes, weighing how AI might be training us to “accept words without ownership and meaning without accountability.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"Mounting a principled opposition to the resource grab for AI allows us to fight for just distributions of green technologies," write D&S program associate Hannah Lipstein and affiliate @tamigraph.bsky.social. www.techpolicy.press/us-critical-...

In @404media.co, @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social looks at @whitneyphillips.bsky.social's Data & Society report "The Oxygen of Amplification" and the lessons it holds for dealing with extremists and manipulators in today's "amplification renaissance.” www.404media.co/we-have-lear...

“When I joined the tech industry, I thought tech was about making people’s lives easier,” an Amazon Web Services employee told @theverge.com, “but now it seems like it’s all about making it easier to surveil and deport and kill people.” www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

NEW: Check out our popular education toolkit to help understand and dismantle the AI Surveillance Pipeline! It includes: ✅ a printable zine / board game ✅ videos featuring tech, policy, and labor experts ✅ a roundup of even more research, reports, and tools Explore it all at bit.ly/AIpipeline

If an AI can go to school for you, what’s the point of going to school? Matthew Kirschenbaum, who teaches English at UVA, says that the attractiveness of agentic AI programs like Einstein is a symptom of a decades-long trend toward a transactive model of education. www.404media.co/whats-the-po...

As part of our series “Democratizing AI for the Global Majority,” Teanna Barrett (@bound4nostar.bsky.social) examines the politics and power asymmetries shaping AI development in Africa today, and how developing local AI ecosystems might offer a path for progress. datasociety.net/points/towar...

Join us online TODAY at 12 pm ET! (Please note corrected time)

"[T]o liken raising a child — or, for that matter, the evolution of Homo sapiens — to developing algorithmic products makes very clear that the [AI] industry has lost touch, if it ever had any, with what it means to be human," @matteowong.bsky.social writes. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“We’re so trained to think anything AI is better,” says Columbia Climate School researcher Andrew Kruczkiewicz. “Even if models are considered better or high quality, decision-making is not necessarily simplified.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

"The more and more that AI becomes infrastructural and becomes part of our everyday lives, the more likely we are to encounter scams and fraud,” says @lanalanalana.bsky.social, co-author of our primer "Scam GPT: GenAI and the Automation of Fraud." www.marketplace.org/story/2026/0...

Surveying the growing backlash to AI, TIME spoke to nine Americans from disparate regions, ideologies, and professions — including a nurse, a pastor, and a filmmaker — who are taking the fight over this technology into their own hands. time.com/7377579/ai-d...

“Are you steering the technology or is it steering you?” asked a slide on the classroom whiteboard at Washington Park High School. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/t...

Perpetrators have long used new technologies to enable abusive behavior. @mharrisondupre.bsky.social finds that AI delusions are amplifying domestic abuse, harassment, and stalking in disturbing ways. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Wrote a short post on @cunygcdi.bsky.social's blog, 'Tagging The Tower' on attending a @datasociety.bsky.social event earlier this week. It prompted me to think about #AILiteracy / #DigitalLiteracy / #CriticalAI in @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social's ecosystem: gcdi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2026/02/20/t...

Thank you to @newint.bsky.social and @deccamuldowney.bsky.social for letting us write about Pennsylvania, its planned AI futures, and how people are pushing back. Read online and find in print! The entire March issue is about the humans behind the AI empire machine.

While many people feel relief after using chatbots for mental health support, they are designed to keep you coming back and can drive dependence. "You need to really be careful about what forms of other care you’re displacing,” says D&S researcher @briana-v.bsky.social. www.msn.com/en-us/health...

In @newint.bsky.social, D&S's @mwoluchem.bsky.social and @livgar.bsky.social write about their work tracing the impacts of, and resistance to, the AI industry's development push in Pennsylvania — and introduce us to some of the people living in the thick of it. newint.org/science-and-...

Looking forward to reading more work in this vein at next month's D&S workshop on AI-enabled science 🦾

In one illustration of how AI is reshaping scientific practice, AI on the Ground Program Director Ranjit Singh considers the research a computational biologist is conducting on fruit flies, and the lessons it holds for the field. datasociety.net/points/simul...

Next week @livgar.bsky.social and I are hosting a discussion on our research into how people use LLMs for care/support—with voices across psychiatry, policy, engineering, and research in one room (rare & urgently needed). Come ask hard questions + share thoughts 💙 datasociety.net/events/menta...

Feb 26: Join researchers @livgar.bsky.social & @briana-v.bsky.social, in conversation with Luca Belli, @mbogen.bsky.social & @marlynnweimd.bsky.social, as they explore ongoing research on mental health and chatbots, and how to navigate a profound shift in care. datasociety.net/events/menta...

“AI companies seem to look at college students as a strapped customer base to hook when they are most stressed....The headlong pursuit of AGI...has significantly hampered building support for developing systems that might help make students smarter.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

Really looking forward to this event, in which we will be discussing Anuli's insightful and provocative report on the reality of AI literacy and upskilling in the "Age of AI". Hope to see you there!

“Public officials now face a defining choice: Invest in public infrastructure, regulatory frameworks and enforcement mechanisms that protect workers — or allow AI-driven inequities to harden,” D&S researcher Anuli Akanegbu writes in @ajc.com. ajc-ajc-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/opinion/2026...

Next week! Join us on Feb 17 as D&S's Anuli Akanegbu, GA State Senator Nikki Merritt, @techequity.bsky.social's @tnewmsblues.bsky.social, & Bard Professor @threatstovalidity.bsky.social discuss what the AI literacy trap is doing to workers, w @serena124.bsky.social. datasociety.net/events/404-j...

Fully aware that adding facial recognition to its smart glasses carries safety and privacy risks, Meta has a plan: launch in a "dynamic political environment" where its critics "have their resources focused on other concerns.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

We’re honored to be among the incredible organizations to receive a generous grant from @macfound.org, part of their aligned grantmaking in support of Humanity AI! This support enables our civic engagement work, including events on AI and the public interest. www.macfound.org/press/press-...

Tonight! Moderated by D&S’s @mwoluchem.bsky.social, this conversation will feature legal and built environment experts Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Sebastián Díaz Howard-Allman, Gillian Graber, and Marina Otero Verzier.

This is so good: @weratedogs.com calls out Ring for using people's love of dogs to manufacture consent for mass surveillance.

Scientists are moving toward the “fully automated monitoring of ecological communities,” bringing potential for new understandings and greater pattern recognition. But the decline in field experience could also mean more errors, bias, and oversimplification. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Ring has always been a surveillance tool, but adding AI analysis and networking the devices together — like with its "Search Party" feature — turns discrete pieces of tech into massive, automated surveillance dragnets, @jasonkoebler.bsky.social writes. www.404media.co/with-ring-am...

📣 The public deserves more than basic training on how to use AI. That’s why we’re launching a new AI Civics initiative, treating AI not as a tool to be mastered, but as a domain of civic life where people have rights, responsibilities, & avenues for collective action. datasociety.net/points/build...

"To think about any of [the dozens of ads from AI companies that ran during the Superbowl] for more than five seconds is to realize how little they stand up to scrutiny. Which is exactly how the brands want it generally: feeling more, thinking less." www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

“The key question may not be whether a computer can be as 'intelligent' as a doctoral student, or even as smart as a fifth grader, but rather: What image of the world are these tech firms trying to create?” thebaffler.com/latest/half-...