Data & Society

Presenting timely conversations about the purpose and power of technology that bridge our interdisciplinary research with broader public conversations about the societal implications of data and automation.For more information, visit datasociety.net.

Data & Society is a society podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 140 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Data & Society, a society show with 140 episodes published.

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  Episode #141

  How Data Center Fights are Renewing Local Power Across the US | Climate Week NYC | Data & Society with the Pulitzer Center (Retro Report)

  Oct 5, 20261h 27m

  To hear many in the tech industry tell it, data centers will bring wealth and prosperity not only to those who build them, but to the communities that ultimately live with and around them. But drawing a longer historical arc is essential: AI is proposed as a new industrial moonshot in communities that have already seen the rise and fall of steel factories, coal plants, fracking infrastructure, and more. Today’s companies are trying to sell communities on yet another industrial vision. This time, those communities are raising concerns about some of data centers’ more visible impacts, including their intensive use of resources, while contending with a host of unknowns related to environmental costs, quality of life, and the future. In the face of yet another generation of rapid corporate development and promises of trickle-down benefits, community members and activists across political lines are not sitting on the sidelines. They are organizing and engaging fellow residents, media, and government to demand their say in how data centers operate and impact the places they live. The event was anchored by the launch of Data & Society’s report, The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania , a landmark study emerging out of eighteen months of field research in the Keystone State, as well as Pulitzer Center-supported reporting on data center development by The Texas Tribune.

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  Episode #140

  Protecting Democracy's Data ('Data Are Made, Not Found' by danah boyd) | Book Talk

  Sep 28, 20261h 2m

  The United States census, conducted every ten years, is one of the world’s oldest and biggest data-making endeavors, and one of the country’s most consequential. In her urgent new book 'Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census,' professor, researcher, and Data & Society founder danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amid a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians’ methods. Despite these challenges, civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses — and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy — are precarious. By documenting the perspectives of government workers in Data Are Made, Not Found, boyd provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy’s data and shows clearly why protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce that data. 

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  Episode #139

  The Limits of Human Oversight in the Age of AI Agents | Primer Launch

  Sep 28, 20261h 3m

  AI agents have begun to move from speculative promise into everyday deployment. They translate high-level goals into plans and carry them out across connected digital environments. Agent builders often promise that users will remain in control through approval prompts and pause buttons. Yet these safeguards work only when users can recognize a mistake and intervene before its consequences cascade. Drawing on fieldwork in a computational biology laboratory, Data & Society’s primer The Oversight Fallacy examines what effective oversight of AI Agents requires in practice.

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  Episode #138

  The Craft of Science with AI: Evidence, Judgment, and Practice | Public Panel

  Mar 20, 20261 hour

  As AI is integrated into scientific practice, the practice of science itself is changing. AI models that summarize, categorize, simulate, and predict not only stand to accelerate scientific research; they now sit inside these practices, alternately enhancing and eroding craft while shifting how questions are posed, what counts as evidence, how tacit judgment is taught and exercised, and reshaping trust in results. Dr. Kristin M. Branson ( @kristinmbranson.bsky.social ) is a senior group leader at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus in Ashborn, Virginia. Dr. Lisa Messeri ( @lmesseri.bsky.social ) is an associate professor of sociocultural anthropology at Yale University. Dr. Nicole C. Nelson ( @nicolecnelson.bsky.social ) is an associate professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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  Episode #137

  Mental Health, Chatbots, and the Future of Care | Databite No. 165

  Mar 3, 202659 min

  While many people have found benefit and respite in using chatbots for companionship, mental health, and emotional support, the widespread adoption of these tools has also resulted in harm and raised deep concerns about identity and safety. How are chatbots shaping people’s understanding of themselves? What concerns do therapists have about their use? How might these tools be designed and implemented to prioritize users’ wellbeing? What kinds of guardrails, regulations, and safety protocols might be effective? In connection with Data & Society’s ongoing research on mental health and chatbots , on February 26 we explored these questions and more in a conversation moderated by researchers Livia Garofalo and Briana Vecchione. Together with Luca Belli, AI safety lead at Spring Health; Miranda Bogen, founding director of the AI Governance Lab at the Center for Democracy & Technology; and psychiatrist and psychotherapist Marlynn Wei, they discussed the profound shifts in how people seek help and support, and how mental health professionals, policymakers, and tech designers are navigating these shifts now. Learn more about the event and Data & Society’s research on mental health chatbot interventions .

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