Jobs and automation
AI is automating tasks across many fields. This can lower wages, eliminate roles, and shift bargaining power away from workers, often with little warning or support for the people affected.
A nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization
Understanding artificial intelligence, and its harms, in plain language.
Artificial intelligence is changing how people work, learn, and live faster than most of us can keep up with. We are a team of researchers and educators who study these changes and explain them clearly, so that ordinary people, not just companies and specialists, can understand what is happening and decide what to do about it.
Who we are
Independent experts in AI, public policy, and ethics.
What we do
Translate technical developments into clear public guidance.
How we are funded
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are not for profit and take no industry direction.
The situation
What is happening with AI
Over the last few years, a small number of companies have built AI systems that can write, summarize, code, generate images and voices, and increasingly act on a person's behalf. These systems are improving quickly and are being deployed into workplaces, schools, hospitals, courts, and public services, often before their effects are well understood.
This brings real benefits. It also concentrates a great deal of power, money, and decision-making in the hands of a few organizations, and pushes risks onto the public. We believe people deserve an honest, accessible account of both, free from hype and free from panic.
The risks
The harms we focus on
We take seriously both the harms already affecting people today and the larger, longer-term risks. These are connected, not competing, concerns.
Bias and discrimination
When AI is used to screen job applicants, set prices, approve loans, or guide policing, it can reproduce and scale existing discrimination, frequently behind systems that are difficult to question or appeal.
Misinformation and trust
Convincing fake text, images, audio, and video are now cheap to produce. This erodes shared facts, enables fraud and harassment, and makes it harder for people to know what is real.
Surveillance and privacy
AI makes mass monitoring and profiling far more powerful. Personal data is collected, combined, and acted on at a scale individuals cannot see, consent to, or meaningfully control.
Concentration of power
The resources needed to build frontier AI are held by a few firms. This concentrates influence over the economy, public discourse, and policy, and weakens democratic accountability.
Safety and catastrophic risk
As systems become more capable and autonomous, experts warn of harder-to-control failures, from critical-infrastructure accidents to misuse in weapons and biosecurity. These risks deserve serious, sober attention.
Practical steps
What you can do
You do not need to be a technical expert to protect yourself or to make a difference. A few steady, practical habits go a long way.
Prepare yourself
- Stay informed. Follow credible, independent sources and treat dramatic claims, in either direction, with healthy skepticism.
- Build durable skills. Judgment, communication, hands-on trades, care work, and complex problem-solving remain valuable alongside AI.
- Consider where the work is going. Where you have a choice, weigh careers and skills that are harder to fully automate, or that involve overseeing AI rather than competing with it.
- Learn to use the tools. Understanding what these systems can and cannot do makes you harder to mislead and more employable.
- Protect your data. Be deliberate about what you share, and learn to recognize AI-generated scams and impersonation.
Help out
- Talk to people. Help family, coworkers, and neighbors understand the basics. Clear, calm explanation is a public service.
- Support accountability. Back transparency, safety, and worker protections, and ask your representatives where they stand.
- Consider a career in the field. AI safety, policy, ethics, auditing, and education need thoughtful people, not only engineers.
- Support independent work. Nonprofit research and public-interest journalism on AI rely on public support to stay independent.
About us
About the Initiative
The AI Harms and Society Initiative is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. Our mission is to give the public an accurate, accessible understanding of artificial intelligence and its effects on society, and to help people respond.
We bring together expertise from computer science, public policy, economics, and ethics. We do not sell AI products and we do not take direction from the companies building these systems. Our aim is simple: clear information, in the public interest, that people can actually use.
Get in touch
For questions, media, or to support our work, email info@example.org.