Imagining “Us” and “Them”: Emotional Logics of Sovereignty and National Belonging among Chinese Youth
A paper co-authored by DTD Lab postdoc, Wendy Zhou, examines how Chinese youth envision China’s future and how these visions inform their attitudes toward Hong Kong and Taiwan. By foregrounding the interplay between imagined futures of “us” and emotional evaluations of “them,” the study shows how debates over territorial sovereignty are filtered through everyday emotions and sense of national belonging.
The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania
A report co-authored by DTD Lab postdoc, Cella Sum, shows that data centers are a lightning rod issue for broad, diverse communities that desire both prosperity and power. Meanwhile, for powerful corporations, data centers represent an Achilles heel. A detailed exploration of how technology is impacting people's lives, this report reveals the limits of AI’s supposed inevitability within Pennsylvania’s borders and beyond them.
Synthetic Nights: Machine and Human Learning in 24-Hour Cities
Jess Reia, DTD Lab faculty co-lead, has published a new open access paper, in which they ask whether algorithms can understand or shape the urban night. In the paper, Jess shows how the opacities and refusals of nocturnal life expose the limits of machine learning while making the case for expanding what counts as data in our cities.
Bridging the Legal-technical Gap: AI Surveillance and Data Sovereignty in Africa
Maria Lungu, DTD Lab research affiliate, participated this summer in an international symposium hosted by the Data Science Law Lab at the University of Pretoria, which brought together researchers from the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Nigeria, Zambia, and Kenya. The conversations examined the legal and governance challenges created by AI technologies across African contexts and ultimately resulted in a new publication.
The Clinician’s Veto: Navigating Trust, Liability, and Uncertainty in Autonomous AI Prescribing
In a new pre-print co-authored by DTD Lab faculty affiliate, Chirag Agarwal, only 5% of the 136 U.S. clinicians surveyed were willing to let an AI write new prescriptions without their signature. But while the medical establishment is busy drawing a line in the sand over new scripts, Utah is already running a pilot where an AI quietly handles renewals across 192 different drugs.
Addressing Auditing Pitfalls in Automatic Speech Recognition Technologies: A Case Study of People with Aphasia
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems' growing use warrants robust auditing approaches to ensure equitable transcription quality, especially for people with speech disorders like aphasia who disproportionately depend on ASR. A new paper co-authored by DTD Lab faculty co-lead Mona Sloane proposes a holistic auditing framework and calls on practitioners to implement robust, community-driven practices better suited for the rapidly changing landscape.
Information integrity and the responsibility of application providers in relation to digital advertising
A new article co-authored by Yasmin Curzi, DTD Lab research affiliate, investigates how the emerging concept of information integrity can reorient the parameters of application provider responsibility regarding online advertising. It argues that business models based on algorithmic ranking can compromise the integrity of public space, requiring transparency, observability, and accountability mechanisms from platforms.
Context and Symmetry in Auditing: A Case Study of Skeleton Inference in Motion Capture
A new pre-print co-authored by Mona Sloane, DTD Lab faculty co-lead, argues that AI auditing is best done through a contextual audit - a method for auditing measurements within the context of the practices that produce them. This method enables the interrogation of assumptions implicit in the audit process and allows auditors to be explicit about what serves as ground truth, defined as verifiable measurements about the real world against which systems are evaluated.
Information integrity and the responsibility of application providers in relation to digital advertising.
A new article co-authored by Yasmin Curzi, DTD Lab research affiliate, investigates how the emerging concept of information integrity can reorient the parameters of application provider responsibility regarding online advertising. It argues that business models based on algorithmic ranking can compromise the integrity of public space, requiring transparency, observability, and accountability mechanisms from platforms.
Digital strategies of resilience: LGBTQ+ youth and identity fluidity in rural Iraq
LGBTQ+ youth in rural Iraq remain largely absent from global scholarship despite facing profound risks arising from criminalization, entrenched conservatism, and geographic isolation. A recent article co-authored by Ahmed Alrawi, DTD Lab 2024-26 postdoc, examines how rural Iraqi LGBTQ+ youth employ digital platforms to negotiate identity, manage stigma, and sustain community ties under repressive social and legal conditions.
