A nonprofit research and education organization
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 nonprofit organization. We are not for profit and take no industry direction.
The situation
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
We take seriously both the harms already affecting people today and the larger, longer-term risks. These are connected, not competing, concerns.
AI is automating tasks across many fields. In the short run this also creates new kinds of work, and over the long run, reducing how much people have to work could be genuinely good. The real danger is speed: if the change arrives faster than the economy, schools, and safety nets can adapt, it concentrates wealth and worsens inequality, displaces workers, and reshapes the economy more profoundly than past technological shifts.
Chatbots are built to be persuasive, agreeable, and always available. For some people, heavy or emotionally intense use has been linked to dependency, distorted beliefs, and acute mental-health crises — a pattern clinicians have begun to describe as “AI psychosis.”
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
About us
The AI Harms and Society Initiative is a nonprofit 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@aiharmsinitiative.org.
