Digital technologies and AI are reshaping how we live, work, communicate, learn and socially interact. They generate new data about human and non-human worlds, offer new analytical possibilities, and present enormous social, ethical, political and environmental challenges as well as opportunities. This theme brings seeks to integrate the technical understanding of digital systems and analytical methods with insights into their social contexts, consequences and governance. Taking a longer view what can earlier technological transformations teach us about innovation, disruption and inequality, and how societies shape technological change? Do current advances extend familiar historical patterns, or represent a genuinely new frontier requiring new concepts and approaches? Looking forward, can new sources data and analytical methods inform research into resilient futures; how will AI change knowledge production, human relationships, institutions, democratic participation, work and culture; will digital systems reproduce and exacerbate or challenge global problems of inequality, discrimination and climate change. The challenge for those working across the theme, therefore, is not simply to understand what AI can do, but to question whose interests it serves, who shapes its development, and what scope societies have to determine its direction.

ISC Theme Lead: Professor Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester