AI

#MysteryAIHypeTheatre #Mystery #AI #Hype #Theatre #Tech #Technology #Healthcare #Health

“The Center for Democracy and Technology reported 85% of teachers and 86% of students used AI in the 2024-2025 school year; 54% of students reported using AI weekly, and 25% said they use it every day.”

lol feels more like life annihilates itself trying to build ai god with how things are going lately though

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...

NEW: Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Episode 71: A Bad Case of Hype-itis @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social tackle Dr. ChatGPT. What's the cure for an expensive and inaccessible health care system? One thing's for sure — it's not AI hype. www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

Some cybersecurity researchers say it’s too early to worry about AI-orchestrated cyberattacks. Others say it could already be happening.

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...

Risky Business provides a framework to understand these moves and their implications. As AI becomes central to our lives, companies and policymakers alike must anticipate incentives, mitigate harms, and safeguard the public interest.

The report examines 5 major players — Google, Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI — analyzing how their market strategies and corporate structures shape decisions around product features, model development, safety, data collection, and policy positions.

CDT’s Risky Business report explores how frontier AI companies’ business models and structures can shape – and impact – user rights, safety, and the future of AI.

“The concept of an AI that predicts the future in terms of whether somebody is going to commit a crime is fundamentally problematic,” EFF’s Jacob Hoffman-Andrews told @FedScoop.bsky.social. fedscoop.com/justice-dep...

At this AI Impact Summit, the global south is being pitched as a “third way” AI alternative to the US and China. Can it deliver without capitulating to Big Tech? Analysis from @ambakak.bsky.social, Astha Kapoor, Sumedha Deshmukh & Mila Samdub in @restofworld.org: restofworld.org/2026/india-a...

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-...

“Groome and Andrew Crawford, senior counsel at CDT’s Data and Privacy Project, said that tech companies like OpenAI, Anthropic & Google almost certainly would not be considered covered entities under HIPAA’s security rule….”

“Multilateralism” with @chinasa.bsky.social: What does inter-country collaboration on AI look like in the context of global power imbalance? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

“Linguistic Diversity” with Chenai Chair: What’s the point of training AI models on different languages if we’re not listening to the people who speak them? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

“Open Source” with @meredithmeredith.bsky.social: What does open source even mean in our LLM and tech monopoly era? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

We’re dropping the final four interventions with @meredithmeredith.bsky.social @grohmannrafael.bsky.social, Chenai Chair, and @chinasa.bsky.social. In Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, we’re reframing the narratives that shape AI discourse, policy, and power today. 🧵

Episode 1 is OUT!! 🥳 🙌 This week on The Interface, we discuss: * That insane Superbowl ad for Ring * The US TikTok takeover * And the beef that launched ChatGPT Listen wherever you get your podcasts: app.magellan.ai/listen_links...

After the whole OpenClaw furore, @gracehuckins.bsky.social asks: can personal AI assistants ever be totally secure? www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/11/1...

@alixdunn.com asked @timnitgebru.bsky.social, Founder and Executive Director of the @dairinstitute.bsky.social, for her take on “Frugal AI” as part of our Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026 series, in partnership with @ainowinstitute.bsky.social and Aapti Institute. Watch the full interview here:

“ These people came along and decided that they wanna build a machine God, and then they end up stealing data, killing the environment, exploiting labor in that process.” - @timnitgebru.bsky.social

Experts have made progress in LLM security. But some doubt AI assistants are ready for prime time.

“A 2024 [CDT] report found that the AI-detection tools widely used in classrooms ‘are not consistently effective at differentiating between AI-generated & human-written text.’" huntnewsnu.com/91247...

CDT proudly recognizes visiting Fellow Karen Kornbluh for her new TEDx talk, “Redesigning institutions so that AI works for humans.” She reminds us that innovation alone isn’t enough — we must “use our voices” to ensure AI raises living standards & strengthens democracy.

18 February: Advancing Multilingual AI: Global South Governance of Non-English Model Development + Deployment w/ Cornell Global AI Initiative & Masakhane African Languages Hub. CDT’s @aliyabhatia.bsky.social will present & co-lead. 3:30 PM to 4:25 PM, in Shakuntalam Banquet in Sushma Swaraj Bhawan

And in the days leading up to the Summit: 16 February: Whose Language, Whose Model? Public Interest Multilingual LLMs, hosted by ECNL, CDT, and CCG. CDT’s @aliyabhatia.bsky.social will present and co-lead. 12:30 PM to 1:25 PM IST in West Wing Room 6 in Bharat Mandapam.

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...

"When I asked ChatGPT to comment on its chief rival, it noted that Claude is “good at ‘helpful & kind without becoming therapy.’ ... Claude was, it italicized, “less mad-scientist, more civil-servant engineer.”" Yeah, well I asked the Lady of the Lake about DeepSeek; she said it was a Commie trap.

"The existence of talking machines—entities that can do many of the things that only we have ever been able to do—throws a lot of other things into question." A cement mixer also does work that was unique to humans at one point. But we're not asking general contractors whether they're conscious.

For gits and shiggles, let's look at some choice lines: "What Pavlick means... is that large language models are black boxes. We don’t really understand how they work." No, we do understand this. But by this LLM people mean, "we don't know what exact neurons activate to generate specific outputs".

At the #AIImpactSummit, we (@cdt.org) will be hosting two sessions on February 16th and 18th digging into a few of these questions and more under the frame of building multilingual AI tools and how to put language speakers and communities at the fore. Please join impact.indiaai.gov.in/agenda

Local startups will also have to consider how to deal with overzealous gov requests while building tools that truly serves Indians and their rights, particularly when they're closer to the horse's mouth and govs have more tools to control access to info than before: foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/14/c...

Language capabilities matter at all levels - from ensuring AI tools work as intended to ensuring safety mechanisms don’t disproportionately burden language speakers as @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social and I elaborated upon in the case of Tamil for The Hindu www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-e...

I ask similar questions in my @thewire.in piece from late 2024: Is the GoI simply giving a blank cheque of access to Big Tech under the guise of "linguistic diversity" or do language stewards and local startups have a seat at the table? thewire.in/tech/big-tec...

Will India truly forge a 'third way' at the #AIImpactSummit next week in Delhi or further entrench Big Tech actors' roles in the Global South at the expense of local alternatives? Great read by @ambakak.bsky.social and Astha Kapoor: restofworld.org/2026/india-a...

This article immediately labels @emilymbender.bsky.social and I as "curmudgeons" because we don't think that the spicy auto complete has a concept of the self.

In our latest #GlobalAIWatch, @hickokmerve.bsky.social examines South Korea’s $73.5B public investment in a national foundation model and asks whether smaller language models, energy efficiency, and stronger evaluation may be wiser bets. Read: rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/korea-p...

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...

“You take enabling a president, proximity to the president, and an unease around AI ... and now people are starting to take action with their wallets.”

A new paper, presented at the EurIPS ’25 Beyond Regulation workshop, maps different actors within the private insurance industry & how they may influence AI development/use. We’re seeking insights from experts — reach out at aigovlab@cdt.org.

As policymakers work to define guardrails for AI risks, CDT’s AI Gov Lab Director Miranda Bogen + independent researcher Tina Park are exploring another emerging lever: private insurance. cdt.org/insights/wha...

Read “AI For Good” from @abeba.bsky.social: When people say “AI for Good” - who is this AI really good for? And who gets hurt in the process? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Read “Democratization” from @audreyt.org: Can we really trust private companies to “democratize” AI? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Read "Frugal AI" from @timnitgebru.bsky.social: Why do tech execs think that every AI model has to be a massive, resource-hungry machine? And how we might build otherwise? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

We just dropped the next 4 essays in Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, our new series with Aapti Institute and @themaybe.org – this time with Nikhil Dey, @timnitgebru.bsky.social, @audreyt.org, and @abeba.bsky.social 🧵

QuitGPT is one of the latest salvos in a growing movement by activists and disaffected users to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions.

Imagine going anywhere on earth and being able to understand the language www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/g...

"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...

As LLMs become more central to T&S workflows, our new brief offers practical guidance for engineers & practitioners on improving multilingual moderation and reducing inequities across language communities. Read the full brief:

Automated Trust & Safety (T&S) tools too often perform poorly in widely spoken, low-resource languages. CDT convened four roundtables with AI experts & data annotators to dig into why — and how to build tools that work equitably for all users, not just English speakers. cdt.org/insights/bet...

“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-...

Making AI Work, MIT Technology Review’s new AI newsletter, is here! Learn how to apply LLMs across industries in 7 weekly editions of our new free newsletter: www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/09/1...

Behind the Face of AI 💥 «¿Sabías que podes estar hablando con un trabajador precarizado en vez de un chatbot? No es automatización completa. Es trabajo humano desplazado hacia el ocultamiento, donde la precarización no se nota tanto» 🎯 @milamiceli.bsky.social @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social

People sharing with LLMs, but it's actually gig workers behind the scene.This shouldn't be legal! "Workers impersonating AIs have to work at impossible paces and follow ever-changing rules and restrictions that censor and standardize the personal and human style they were precisely hired for."

“If my incentive is how we get cheap tech, I may not care very much about how much student data ends up being leaked out to some other entity or what they do with it,” EFF’s Lee Tien told @sfpublicpress.bsky.social. www.sfpublicpress.org/school-dist...

“It's part of this whole rush to just throw everything into the data-driven machine-learning nexus, and then hoping something more good will come out of it, your private information be damned,” EFF’s @legind.bsky.social told @CNET.com. www.cnet.com/home/intern...

“There’s a cascading set of problems with this app and what ICE and CBP are doing,” says @mariotrujillo.bsky.social. “Field facial-recognition scans in the interior are incredibly invasive...It gives a veneer of certainty when there isn’t certainty behind the scenes.” www.wired.com/story/cbp-ic...

This is a good opportunity to remind everyone that all pieces in the DWI can be used as classroom material. Our students deserve to know that chatbots in their favorite social media and messaging apps rely on precarized workers. ➡️ data-workers.org/france/

“There’s a cascading set of problems with this app and what ICE and CBP are doing,” EFF’s @mariotrujillo.bsky.social told @WIRED.com, and “there’s a straightforward argument that DHS and its components are exceeding their authority here.” www.wired.com/story/cbp-i...

For some, Moltbook showed us what’s coming next: an internet where millions of autonomous agents interact online with little or no human oversight. But is it? Smart from @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/06/1...

For a few days this week the hottest new hangout on the internet was a vibe-coded Reddit clone called Moltbook, which billed itself as a social network for bots. As the website’s tagline puts it: “Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.” We observed!

Read @brianjchen.bsky.social’s brief, “The Big AI State: How the Trump Administration Is Shaping US Industrial Policy Toward 'Global Technological Dominance’“ datasociety.net/library/the-...

Policy Director @brianjchen.bsky.social talks to @jathansadowski.com and @edwardongwesojr.com about his recent policy brief examining the Trump administration’s AI agenda, and the actions the federal government is taking as it pursues global technological dominance. soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”

Big news: @alexhanna.bsky.social and I are over the moon to welcome @naomiaklein.bsky.social to Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 to discuss “AI” and the military industrial complex. Join us for the livestream: Monday, Feb 9, noon PT, twitch.tv/dair_institute

On the workforce front, Woelfel and Shetty highlight concerns around civil rights risks, gig worker protections, and job displacement. CDT continues urging rigorous auditing, transparency, and safeguards to ensure AI broadens opportunity rather than limits it.

Kristin and Ridhi break down key education themes raised by members — student well-being, human-in-the-loop oversight, stronger AI literacy, greater transparency from edtech vendors, and meaningful parent involvement — all areas where CDT polling shows growing concern as AI use surges.

New from CDT’s Kristin Woelfel and Ridhi Shetty: At last month’s Building an AI-Ready America House hearing, CDT CEO Alexandra Reeve Givens testified on the need for strong transparency and guardrails as AI expands across schools and workplaces.

With some help from ChatGPT, Reece Rogers gained access to Moltbook, the social network for AI bots that has captivated the tech world. Once inside, he found the hype overblown, with AI agents "mimicking sci-fi tropes, not scheming for world domination." www.wired.com/story/i-infi...

To some, METR’s “time horizon plot” indicates that AI utopia—or apocalypse—is close at hand. The truth is more complicated.

“That was the message at a Tuesday CDT panel that centered on CDT’s five core areas in the use and governance of AI, which include public transparency & stakeholder engagement, accuracy and reliability, governance & coordination, privacy and security, and legal compliance.”

“Healthcare apps rolled out by AI firms are raising new privacy concerns in the absence of federal standards, according to the CDT, which urges the companies to limit the data they collect while warning consumers to carefully consider their uses of such tools.” insideaipolicy.com/s...

I wanna keep doing this work, in any form (podcast! newsletter! movie? AI literacy class!). Pls msg me on Signal at nitasha.10 if you need someone who’s well-sourced in AI & SV, worked hard to understand the technology + ideas + players, cares about getting it right and informing the public

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

“CDT found 53 bills were proposed regarding AI in education across 21 states last legislative session, ranging from advancing AI literacy, requiring the creation of guidelines around AI usage and cyberbullying, and prohibiting AI in certain situations.” thehill.com/homenews...

Psst: Stay tuned next week to hear more about Data & Society’s answer to the limitations of AI literacy. 👀 6/6

AND: Join us on Feb 17 @ 12pm ET as 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. 5/6 datasociety.net/events/404-j...

As a companion to this report, we’re also publishing a policy brief @serena124.bsky.social and Akanegbu co-wrote that lays out recommendations to help ensure that AI literacy efforts actually address the struggles and needs of American workers. 4/6 datasociety.net/library/404-...

Ultimately, Akanegbu calls for a complete reimagining of workforce development in the age of AI — one that shifts from worker-first rhetoric to worker-centered practices. 3/6

Based on months of ethnographic fieldwork in #Atlanta, Akanegbu analyzes “AI literacy” as a social and political construct powered by employer expectations, media narratives, place branding, philanthropic investments, and political agendas. 2/6

New! Anuli Akanegbu’s report “(404) Job Not Found” interrogates what it means to be perceived as “AI literate” in today’s labor market, & how those perceptions are shaping the career outcomes of Black workers who are already navigating a wide range of inequities. 1/6 datasociety.net/library/404-...

The choices that advanced AI companies make today about how they’ll cover the mind-boggling costs they are taking on to build AI systems will shape our world for decades to come. bsky.app/profile/mbog...

Anthropic’s announcement that it won’t incorporate ads into Claude engages honestly with the fact that advertising can cultivate deeply perverse incentives, even when platforms claim otherwise.

For deeper analysis on AI advertising and other business models, check out @cdt.org’s recent report Risky Business: Advanced AI Companies’ Race for Revenue cdt.org/insights/ris...

The choices that advanced AI companies make today about how they’ll cover the mind-boggling costs they are taking on to build AI systems will inevitably shape the systems themselves. That could have an enormous impact on our world for decades to come.

Anthropic’s announcement that it won’t incorporate ads into Claude engages honestly with the fact that advertising can cultivate deeply perverse incentives, even when platforms claim otherwise.

"There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them." www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

AI coding tools are revolutionizing how we write, test, and deploy code, making it easier and faster to build sophisticated websites, games, and other applications. We named generative coding to our annual list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies.

Later this month, I'll be headed to Delhi to participate in the AI Impact Summit with @ainowinstitute.bsky.social. I spoke with @themaybe.org as part of their series exploring the kinds of narratives we might expect to hear, and how to move away from the harmful ones that entrench global inequality.

In the new TMK, We’re joined by @brianjchen.bsky.social — policy director at @datasociety.bsky.social — to discuss his new report on the Trump administration’s industrial policy for building The Big AI State and achieving “global technological dominance.” soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

LISTEN: EFF’s Beryl Lipton joined @WBUR.org’s On Point to explore the AI surveillance state. From your online browsing habits to traffic cameras on your commute and more, AI helps gather, store and share detailed information about you faster than ever. www.wbur.org/onpoint/202...

Do recent layoffs signal AI is actually replacing human workers? Or do companies just think it sounds good to investors? @smw.bsky.social on @marketplace.org: “It’s a way for companies to look like they’re being innovative while stepping back over-investment.” www.marketplace.org/story/2026/0...

“Yet the reality is that 85% of teachers and 86% of students across the country used AI at some level during the 2024-25 school year, according to a study by the Center for Democracy and Technology.”

The photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong's arrest, which the White House doctored with AI, "​h​as the hallmarks of brazen disinformation from the top level of government." Levy Armstrong sees the Trump administration's use of the image as “a wake-up call for the nation.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u...

In two weeks, world leaders and tech executives will descend on Delhi for the AI Impact Summit 2026. There, power brokers will paint a pretty picture of the role AI will play in saving the world - from sharing prosperity to fixing climate change.

PS: Read our opening essay, “The India AI Impact Summit 2026: Early Forensics and Planting the Seeds for a People-centered Alternative.” ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Joan Kinyua, “Human Capital:” Why are human capital discussions speaking about the "future of work" leaving out the workers undergirding AI development? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

Usha Ramanathan, “AI for Development:” We've learned hard lessons about tech for development from digital public infrastructure – is history repeating itself with AI? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

@naomiaklein.bsky.social, “AI for Climate:” Is positioning AI as a solution to climate challenges obscuring AI's material impacts and local resistance? ainowinstitute.org/publications...