The Media Manipulation initiative works to provide news organizations, civil society, platforms, and policymakers with insights into new forms of media manipulation to ensure a close and informed relationship between technical research and socio-political outcomes. This requires assessing strategic manipulation, imagining the possibilities for encoding fairness and accountability into technical systems, and conducting ethnographic research to describe and understand new social activity.

The AI on the Ground Initiative–an interdisciplinary team of researchers with experience in a range of fields including anthropology, law, science and technology studies, communication, engineering, design research, and human rights–develops robust analyses of AI systems that can effectively inform design, use, and governance.

Technology is disrupting, destabilizing, and transforming many aspects of the labor force. The Social Instabilities in Labor Futures initiative seeks to better understand emergent disruptions in the labor force as a result of data-centric technological development, with a special focus on structural inequalities.

Rapid technological innovation in health care, and the integration of digital data infrastructures in everyday life, has outpaced our understanding of how these developments affect human relationships, behaviors, and well-being. The Health and Data initiative produces empirical research about the unintended consequences of health data collection, equitable outcomes in data-centric approaches to health, and what constitutes healthy behavior in the context of technology use.

Libraries and Privacy is a suite of projects exploring the roles of libraries in supporting their communities with regard to data-centric technological development. Topics include privacy in libraries, facilitating safe research data sharing worldwide, and new roles for librarians as data scientists.

Machine learning raises novel challenges for ensuring non-discrimination, due process, and understandability in decision-making. This initiative uses computational approaches and quantitative and qualitative datasets to translate findings to policymakers, regulators, and advocates who seek to understand issues in data and AI ethics.

What is the value of data in education and learning? The Enabling Connected Learning (ECL) initiative assesses how existing and proposed policies affect connected learning initiatives, and where and when education-related
data can and should be used.

Data can provide real-time awareness about disaster, violence, or protest. Yet practitioners, researchers, and policymakers face unique challenges and opportunities when assessing technological benefit, risk, and harm. The Data, Human Rights, and Human Security initiative asks: How can these technologies be used responsibly to assist people in need, prevent abuse, and protect them from harm?