AI

CBP wants to install an AI-powered surveillance tower in San Clemente capable of tracking individual people through residential neighborhoods. Residents and the city should reject this proposal. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

We're coming, DC! @emilymbender.bsky.social and I will be talking about our book The AI Con on Monday, hosted by the Center for Digital Ethics and moderated by Laura DeNardis. Hope to see you there! events.georgetown.edu/digital-ethi...

Evan Gorelick reports on how incarcerated people are thinking about AI tools, which remain largely out of their reach. Eager to use the technology for a range of uses, including legal defense, some in prison are finding creative ways to access it. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/b...

“[CDT’s Eric Null] criticized the SECURE Data Act....he said any new federal privacy law should be ‘limiting data collection for AI training & preventing use of the technology to discriminate against protected classes, but this bill does neither sufficiently.’”

“A separate report from the CDT put the figure even higher, finding that 86 percent of students in grades 9–12 used AI during the 2024–25 school year. By any measure, AI use at this level is no longer a fringe behavior. It appears to be the norm.”

AI tools are making it easier than ever for online criminals to trick people and steal money and valuable confidential data.

LLMs are evolving. The next generation of the world’s hottest technology will be cheaper, more efficient, and able to solve bigger problems without going off the rails. trib.al/NUhcdzE

To address the harms chatbots can cause, we need to start at the beginning, D&S exec director Janet Haven tells @npr.org: "Chatbots are designed to be agreeable & validating, and that can become really dangerous when users are spiraling or contemplating harmful actions." www.npr.org/2026/04/23/n...

Every system or con that depends on the argument "nobody's going to take the time to do that" is going away. AI will take the time to do that.

"At some point, our Silicon Valley overlords forgot that in order for their vision of the future to be adopted, people had to want it," @lopatto.bsky.social writes. "Normal people aren’t running around...trying to automate every single part of their lives." www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...

#NewYork #NY #Brooklyn #Manhattan #Queens #Bronx #StatenIsland Don’t miss this live taping of #AI #Hype #Theatre 3000

At the same time, safeguards remain inconsistent and insufficient. Some agencies lack robust oversight processes, limit involvement from civil rights & privacy experts, or haven’t published required plans at all. Accelerating AI use w/o consistent guardrails risks undermining responsible governance.

Transparency will continue to fall short as adoption grows. Reported federal AI use cases jumped nearly 70% in a year, but inconsistent reporting, missing details, and unclear risk classifications make it difficult to assess real impacts or ensure accountability.

In a new analysis, CDT’s Quinn Anex-Ries examines federal AI use one year after updated OMB guidance. Agencies are rapidly adopting AI, but often with fewer resources, unclear requirements, and ideological pressures. The result: progress on paper, but gaps in practice.

Will you be in NYC on April 30th? Don't miss a live taping of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000! Register at www.eventbrite.com/e/mystery-ai...

We’re all sitting uncomfortably with AI right now. It’s coming from the top down. The CEOs of the big AI companies caution us that this technology may very well take all of our jobs. Or if it doesn’t live up to that hype, it might just crash the economy instead. Or maybe both things will happen.

There’s plenty of precedent for AI being used for mass surveillance. While there’s not yet any smoking-gun evidence that the US government (or anyone else) is using LLMs to conduct surveillance in the way that could constitute a crime against humanity, there’s a clear appetite for such capabilities.

Happy Earth Day! Big AI companies are developing new gas projects to bypass the grid and provide power solely for their data centers. @wired.com found that projects linked to just 11 data center campuses could emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. www.wired.com/story/new-ga...

Plus we have this really perceptive feature from @gracehuckins.bsky.social about the new super-powered surveillance state that is emerging. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1...

Our big new list, all about AI, is live now! We asked our reporters and editors: what do our readers really NEED to know about where we are right now. This is what they said. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1...

Struggling to keep up with the AI news? We've taken a page from our annual breakthrough technologies list and cooked up a list of 10 big things in AI that matter right now www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1...

What is really worth your attention in the busy, buzzy world of AI? Our reporters and editors have spent years thinking about this question, charting AI’s progress and mapping out what’s next. Now, for the first time, we’ve distilled our answers into a single list.

I wrote about the era AI malaise, which we are all living in. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1...

Tomorrow! @ainowinstitute.bsky.social's Data Center Policy in Practice training series kicks off w "The AI Industry, Data Center Buildout, and How to Take Power Back." Register to explore practical policy pathways to stop, slow, & restrict the rapid expansion of data centers: bit.ly/policy-in-pr...

Read “Uber for Nursing Part II: How Gig Nursing Platforms Are Lobbying States to Deregulate Healthcare” by @katiejwells.bsky.social, Maya Pinto, and @fundaustek.bsky.social: ainowinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing

"If you tell people often enough that your product is going to upend their way of life, take their jobs, and very possibly pose an existential threat to humanity, they just might start to believe you," @chaykak.bsky.social writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...

Perplexity’s CEO is just the latest tech leader to tell the public their jobs will be sacrificed on the altar of the glorious AI future. It’s a compelling narrative, but it distracts us from the real impact of AI: not to take the human out of the loop, but to take away their power and cut their pay

A viral GitHub project that claims to clone coworkers into a reusable AI skill is forcing Chinese tech workers to confront deeper fears.

Quantum computers are coming sooner than expected. Now's a good time to check if your encrypted messenger has moved to post-quantum cryptography. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

“As automation and AI become ubiquitous, the human touch has become a luxury good,” @kaliholloway.bsky.social writes. Meanwhile, it’s the poor who are subject to the most consequential uses of AI. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Comparar precios no es un delito informático. Amazon intenta usar la ley CFAA para bloquear herramientas de IA que buscan ofertas en su web pública. Limitar la extracción de datos públicos (scraping) amenaza la competencia, la investigación y a los consumidores. www.eff.org/es/deeplink...

Today! Catch the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 livestream at noon PT for a special "All Hell" episode: twitch.tv/dair_institute

Congratulations, @karenhao.bsky.social! This weekend Empire of AI won the @latimes.com Book Prize for Science and Technology. www.latimes.com/about/pressr...

Joe Riley died of leukemia after relying on AI for medical advice and refusing treatment. The story of how it unfolded is also a window into how tech is reshaping our most fundamental relationships: including between father and son, and doctor and patient. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/w...

Tune into the next livestream of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social will be bringing you a very special round-up of the most recent Fresh "AI" Hell! Watch live: Monday, April 20, noon PT, twitch.tv/dair_institute

La amenaza cuántica se adelanta. Google ajustó su predicción para el "Y2K del cifrado" al 2029. El peligro de "guardar ahora, descifrar después" es real para nuestras comunicaciones actuales. Es vital acelerar la transición hacia algoritmos poscuánticos. www.eff.org/es/deeplink...

Hash matching can slow the spread of NCII, but it is not a silver bullet. It only catches known content, struggles with edits and AI variants, & cannot determine consent or context on its own. That is why governance, not just tech, matters. Read CDT’s brief:

Watching Sam Altman's World ID announcement on its new ID verification partnerships w/ Tinder, Zoom, AWS, etc & want to point out that @technologyreview.com predicted all of this 4 years ago—while pointing out the privacy violations they built on. www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1...

What role should AI play in a healthier digital ecosystem and who gets to decide? In the latest Tech Talks episode, CDT’s Alexandra Reeve Givens + Mozilla Foundation’s Mark Surman dig into the choices shaping our online world. Listen now:

The money is flowing. Companies and investors put $6.1 billion into humanoid robots in 2025 alone, four times what was invested in 2024. What happened? A revolution in how machines have learned to interact with the world.

“What AI changes is scale, speed, and accessibility. The technical barrier has dropped significantly, which means more people...can produce more convincing outputs with minimal effort. As with many AI-enabled harms, this results in a glut of content.” www.wired.com/story/deepfa...

Our Data Center Policy in Practice training series starts on April 22nd at 1 pm ET with “The AI Industry, Data Center Buildout, & How to Take Power Back.” Explore policy interventions and organizing interventions to tackle corporate power. RSVP: bit.ly/policy-in-practice-training-series

“In the last school year across the county, 15 percent of students reported seeing sexually explicit deepfakes of someone associated with their school, according to a recent report by the Center for Democracy and Technology.”

“The true scale of deepfake sexual abuse taking place in schools is likely much higher…[] 15 percent of students surveyed by the Center for Democracy and Technology said they knew about AI-generated deepfakes linked to their school.”

The immediate danger is not that machines will act without human oversight; it is that human overseers have no idea what the machines are actually “thinking.” The Pentagon’s guidelines are fundamentally flawed because they rest on the dangerous assumption that humans understand how AI systems work.

“But today people actually report being in relationships with AI companions. According to a 2025 survey by CDT, about 1 in 5 high school students say they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with an AI.”

Scammers are buying tools advertised on Telegram that trick banks' facial recognition checks. The stakes are enormous with crypto scams tallying an estimated $17 billion in 2025 alone. Banks and regulators are struggling to keep up.

“People should be able to move through their daily lives without fear that stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists across the political spectrum are silently and invisibly verifying their identities," as face recognition on smart glasses would enable. www.wired.com/story/meta-r...

I am at #CHI2026 representing @datasociety.bsky.social! I'm participating in the Social & Emotional Uses of AI workshop, where I'll be contributing findings from our longitudinal study on how people use LLMs for mental & emotional care. If you're around, please say hi! @chi.acm.org

In an effort to reduce labor costs, companies pushing genAI are are instead yielding a deluge of "workslop." GenAI is often presented "as a general-use tool that can do anything, but the reality doesn’t work that way,” says D&S's @aihathing.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

CDT’s Travis Hall in the The Washington Post: “If you look at the legislation, it actually does regulate the way in which AI is being used for consequential decisions like people’s health care and their employment.” www.washingtonpost.c...

At "the racing heart of the modern AI horror genre" is a fear not of intelligence but of desire, Amanda Gefter writes: "A machine that knows a lot doesn’t scare us. A machine that *wants* something does." www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...

We have a new list of noteworthy AI trends and advances—and we’re excited to share it with you.

“Crawford of CDT says HIPAA isn’t failsafe as it protects users only from the institutions that process and store data, not the data itself. Which means AI companies, not coming under the ambit of such law, have no reason to worry while stealing it or forming users to deliver it.”

. @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social called for “independent, rigorous evaluations that objectively assess the risk of tools within existing cyber laws. Democratic institutions should determine how these models are released and deployed, not a private corporation with its own incentives." shorturl.at/4dkAm

“A lot of the ways that AI systems play out now are just a reiteration of different kinds of algorithmic controls and disempowerment of workers that we’ve already seen before,” says Labor Futures Researcher (and Siegel Research Fellow) @cariatida.bsky.social. www.siegelendowment.org/insights/ale...

In an industry that doesn’t stand still, Stanford’s AI Index, an annual roundup of key results and trends, is a chance to take a breath. (It’s a marathon, not a sprint, after all.)

Today! Join the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 livestream to hear @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social chat with very special guest Carmen Maria Machado noon PT, twitch.tv/dair_institute

Remember the cyberattacks on the U.S. government in the early 2020s? The Biden admin asked tech companies to help and got some “free” upgrades. The Trump admin is doing similarly with AI. But our reporting shows there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

And when opposing all regulation seems untenable? Companies place themselves in the driver’s seat by laying out their own alternative platforms with all the right sounds but no teeth: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-c...

We spoke with @wsj.com and @theguardian.com this week on how to make sense of OpenAI's latest policy rebrand. While the doc has a lot of the sounds of wanting more regulatory oversight, the company has lobbied aggressively for a deregulatory stance toward AI: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

CDT’s Anex-Ries: “It’s not only heightening the risk of failed AI projects and wasted taxpayer dollars, but it also opens the American public to a host of potential AI harms.”

CDT’s Quinn Anex-Ries: “Without these kinds of measures in place, some of the riskiest tools used by federal agencies are left without real oversight or mechanisms for agencies to validate performance and efficacy.”

An analysis of Google’s AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately 9 out of 10 times. That might sound pretty good, but given the trillions of searches Google processes, this means it provides “tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/t...

If you’re following AI news, you’re probably getting whiplash. AI is a gold rush. AI is a bubble. AI is taking your job. AI can’t even read a clock. The 2026 AI Index, AI’s annual report card, comes out today and cuts through some of that noise.

On the next Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social will be speaking to author Carmen Maria Machado about the use of LLMs in writing, from language arts classes to the publishing industry. Listen live: Monday, April 13, noon PT, twitch.tv/dair_institute

For more, see our work: ainowinstitute.org/publications...

On @channel4news.bsky.social @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social explains the stakes of Anthropic’s Mythos and its impact on security. We lack the evidence and independent expertise needed to verify the claims around the security tool - especially problematic given the risks posed by LLMs. shorturl.at/kNtU9

"Glasswing is built on a deeply uncomfortable premise — that the only way to protect us from dangerous AI models is to build them first," @caseynewton.bsky.social writes. "And Anthropic is doing so in an environment that is barely regulated at all." www.platformer.news/anthropic-my...

Upwards of 12 percent of the population struggles with health anxiety, and turning to AI chatbots for health advice can make it worse. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Two months before Calvin Alexander’s parole hearing date, he was told he was no longer eligible. Why? An algorithm had deemed the nearly blind 70-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, a “moderate risk,” barring him from speaking to the parole board. (Published April 2025 w/ @veritenews.org)

CDT urges NIST to adopt standards that incorporate civil rights principles, incl. anti-discrimination measures like disparate treatment + disparate impact testing, & encouraging the development of domain-specific standards like housing, lending, education, & employment.

CDT joined a civil society letter to the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) responding to the agency’s draft guidance on practices for automated benchmark evaluations of language models.

The results of a new Gallup survey suggest that Americans’ animosity toward AI extends to a younger generation — one that is currently struggling to find its footing in the workplace. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/s...

The Pentagon’s race to adopt AI without effective regulation poses serious — even deadly — risks. Congress must establish guardrails. Learn more in our report on the military and AI: bit.ly/4sJCA2S

“Transparency should be a ‘foundational piece of any effort’ on a national AI framework and shouldn’t be framed as an ‘additional burden that’s being imposed,’ Bogen said. ‘We actually need this if people want this technology to go anywhere.’”

“Major AI developers [] have moved to adopt their own safety frameworks & publicly document some info ab their models to address concerns. The bill would help clarify, offer guidance, & standardize that process at the federal level, said [CDT’s] Miranda Bogen

“In fact, according to a 2025 report from CDT, which included surveys from students in grades 9-12, only 22% of students said they received guidance on their school’s AI policy, yet 86% of students say they have used AI during the last school year.”

The Pentagon’s race to adopt AI without effective regulation poses serious — even deadly — risks. Congress must establish guardrails. Learn more in our report on the military and AI: bit.ly/4sJCA2S

As companies like OpenAI test ads, AI systems could become more personalized and more persuasive, while raising risks around trust, manipulation, and profit-driven outputs. “Watch the business models.” Read more:

In The Globe and Mail, CDT’s Miranda Bogen argues that ads coming to AI chats aren’t surprising — they’re a warning sign. We’ve seen this playbook before with social media, and the incentives are hard to resist.

The CEO of Microsoft AI writes about the complex and fast-moving reality powering AI development.

🔇🔇🔇 On Friday April 17th (9am PDT/5pm CET/7pm EAT), we'll have a virtual event introducing our Refugees, Migrants and AI research program which centers the lived experiences of refugees and migrants and puts power back into their hands🧵 ☘️☘️☘️ Register at www.eventbrite.com/e/refugees-a...

The Pentagon’s race to adopt AI without effective regulation poses serious — even deadly — risks. Congress must establish guardrails. Learn more in our report on the military and AI: bit.ly/4sJCA2S

Join @emilymbender.bsky.social and I in New York for Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000’s first LIVE show! We’re doing a live taping at the Starr Bar in Brooklyn on Thursday, April 30. Space is limited, so get your tickets. All profit goes to @dairinstitute.bsky.social. www.eventbrite.com/e/mystery-ai...

Read the research! "[G]enerative AI technologies make it far easier for companies to radically manipulate models’ images and repurpose them,” write @cariatida.bsky.social, Zoë West, and Sanjay Pinto. datasociety.net/points/fashi...

"I want to stay provocative in our thinking — the more we talk about [AI] and the more we can think about it, we won't get so controlled or seduced by it," says Pamela Anderson, in an article that cites D&S research on how AI is reshaping modeling work. www.marieclaire.com/fashion/cele...

“Two years ago, there was an investigation showing that Maven can have 30% or less accuracy, which isn't far from indiscriminate targeting.” @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social joins @telegraph.co.uk to unpack the risks of systems like Maven and what safeguards could look like: youtube.com/watch?v=NdHYDGHN5rQ

Exactly! The underwater data centers of the 2010s weren't conceived because computers needed cooling but because it was a fun idea, like underwater restaurants.

CDT’s Maddy Dwyer: “Through the [GovAI] coalition’s network, gov, civil society and industry leaders can share knowledge & discuss ideas, pushing the public sector towards responsible and trustworthy AI adoption and use in the delivery of public services.”

Proposed rules about how the government buys and deploys AI could allow bureaucrats to sidestep necessary safeguards and supercharge mass surveillance. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

Business owners and e-commerce experts told MIT Technology Review that AI tools are making sourcing more accessible and significantly shortening the time it takes to go from product idea to launch.

The very existence of the "constitution" Anthropic created for its LLM, Claude, "is a product of the larger crisis of constitutionalism in the United States,” Jill Lepore writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

NEW: We’ve been reporting on cybersecurity for years. As President Donald Trump and his Cabinet say artificial intelligence will transform the nation, the messaging isn’t new. It follows a familiar pattern.

1. Read “Empire of AI” by @karenhao.bsky.social 2. Watch this talk between Karen and @timnitgebru.blacksky.app 3. Follow @dairinstitute.bsky.social, Karen and Timnit for a sober, critical analysis of the “AI” field.

The incentives need to be on humans not to publish things that are p hacked or not generalizable. Human beings will then use AI to ensure that their name is not attached to shoddy work. We are in charge of AI, we can make it do whatever we want. If it doesn't do what we want we can train and repair.

There must also be incentives. Penalties for having some things p-hacked or unrobust with your name on it. AI can help you cheat,and AI can help you do a better and more generalizable science. It's about incentives, what we're rewarding, and what the review process is promoting.

Once things are engineering problems, they see progressive improvement. AI on the reviewing side can test robustness under alternative specifications, evidence of p hacking, etc. AI can exert effort human reviewers won't, extending their abilities. The rest is incentives.

I think AI is more likely to tell people they’re misusing stats than to get people to misuse them. People have generally been proceeding with little understanding and the only way is up.

Proposed rules about how the government buys and deploys AI could allow bureaucrats to sidestep necessary safeguards and supercharge mass surveillance. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...