Data & Society Research Institute

Now hiring: We’re looking for an exceptional senior HR professional to join our team and be responsible for managing human resources and organizational culture at Data & Society. Learn more and apply! https://lnkd.in/eemJh68p

On Points, D&S’s Anuli Akanegbu, PhD reflects on the connections between data practices and systemic racism, and offers a set of recommendations — or resolutions — to guide work that prioritizes the humane over the artificial in 2025 and beyond. https://lnkd.in/daJ_eBXH

Are you in SF on 1/28? Join Data & Society Research Institute AI Now Institute Brian Merchant Alexandra Mateescu Edward Ongweso for The Business of Generative AI and Worker Power, a fireside chat & mixer! RSVP: https://lnkd.in/eKycKUVH

📣 New CFP! On May 8 and 9, we’re hosting an online workshop on the intersection of generative AI technologies and work. Learn more about what we’re looking for and apply by February 7. https://lnkd.in/eBGqHyAR

As 2024 comes to a close, we’re looking back on some highlights of a milestone year. Thank you for reading and being part of our community! We’ll see you back here in 2025. https://lnkd.in/ggHysejR

In the latest installment of her series “A Working History of the Verified Internet,” Robyn Caplan looks at what happened when celebrities and media companies began flooding social media platforms, creating a new demand for verified status and identity. https://lnkd.in/gkcixunE

We're working to raise $100k by the end of the year to lay the groundwork for paradigm-shifting research and policy on AI's environmental impacts. With your support, we can help strengthen environmental protections and broaden community participation in tech governance. https://lnkd.in/eisqFK7j

With the promise of providing quick solutions to complicated problems, it appears AI will be central to the new Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to reduce costs, cut staff, and remake government more broadly. Writing in Tech Policy Press, Alice Marwick and Kevin De Liban explain why using AI in the name of “government efficiency” is likely to create more problems than it solves — with vulnerable communities paying the steepest price. https://lnkd.in/egUaN59S

If you want to understand how Generative AI is impacting workers, this new primer, 'Generative AI and Labor: Power, Hype, and Value at Work' from my colleagues Aiha N. and Alexandra Mateescu, does a brilliant job uncovering both ongoing challenges and nuanced harms, including that enterprise applications of GenAI will likely have the greatest impact on workers. In their own beautiful words: "AI is neither just a story about displacement nor is it just about “augmentation” of work. As with past forecasts of mass AI-driven unemployment, such major economic disruptions have failed to materialize. Rather, the introduction of AI often changes how work is organized, how industries are structured, introduces new extractive dynamics, and shifts ideas about whose work and what work is valuable." https://lnkd.in/eUPMZpdW

In her contribution to Nieman Lab’s annual predictions for journalism package, D&S Director of Research Alice Marwick offers her forecast for 2025: The mainstream media will lose its last grip on relevancy, and the fundamental gap in understanding between partisan Americans will widen. Moving forward — and, she argues, decisively past the “disinformation” frame — “we should not be concerned with isolated incorrect facts, but with the deeply-rooted stories that circulate at all levels of culture and shape our points of view. The challenge for 2025 is to confront these deeper epistemic divides that shape how Americans understand the world; in other words, the ways we arrive at the knowledge that forms our perspective.” https://lnkd.in/e_dxPskw