Policy Brief
The authors highlight why we believe the problem of “plural publics” to be a core challenge of data governance, discuss existing tools that can help achieve it and a research agenda to further develop and integrate these tools.
By:
Divya Siddarth
Glen Weyl
Shrey Jain
Data governance is usually conceptualized in terms of “privacy” v. “publicity”. Yet a core feature of pluralistic societies is association, groups that share with each other, privately. These are a diversity of “publics”, each externally private but with the ability to coordinate and share internally. Empowering them requires tools that allow the establishment of shared communicative contexts and their defense against external sharing outside of context. The ease of spreading information online has challenged such “contextual integrity” and the rise of generative foundation models like GPT-4 may radically exacerbate this challenge. In the face of this challenge, we highlight why we believe the problem of “plural publics” to be a core challenge of data governance, discuss existing tools that can help achieve it and a research agenda to further develop and integrate these tools.
Additional Resource
After Neoliberalism: From Left to Right brought together hundreds of leading economists, political scientists, journalists, writers and thinkers from across the political spectrum to explore and debate emerging visions for the future of the political economy.
Panel videos below.
Open Access Resource
Allen Lab authors Sarah Hubbard, David Kidd, and Andrei Stupu introduce an ethical-moral intelligence framework for evaluating AI models across dimensions of moral expertise, sensitivity, coherence, and transparency in their recently published paper, Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted? in Springer AI & Ethics.
Additional Resource
The Allen Lab is proud to have contributed to this timely landscape report from The David & Lucile Packard Foundation mapping the emerging field of AI and democracy.
Policy Brief
A new report summarizes key insights from the Nonviolent Action Lab’s December 2025 convening on how artificial intelligence can empower pro-democracy movements.
Additional Resource
After Neoliberalism: From Left to Right brought together hundreds of leading economists, political scientists, journalists, writers and thinkers from across the political spectrum to explore and debate emerging visions for the future of the political economy.
Panel videos below.
Open Access Resource
Allen Lab authors Sarah Hubbard, David Kidd, and Andrei Stupu introduce an ethical-moral intelligence framework for evaluating AI models across dimensions of moral expertise, sensitivity, coherence, and transparency in their recently published paper, Crocodile Tears: Can the Ethical-Moral Intelligence of AI Models Be Trusted? in Springer AI & Ethics.