Technology and Society Working Group
Civic Agency, Democratic Innovation & Critical Scrutiny
The Technology and Society Working Group is an interdisciplinary research hub dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence is restructuring social, economic, and political institutions. We operate at the vital intersection of constructive civic innovation and critical inquiry. On one hand, our research investigates how agentic AI and computational tools can be harnessed to promote the common good—empowering undergraduates and community partners to build living civic infrastructure, advance participatory governance, and deepen public policy deliberation. On the other hand, we actively develop critical frameworks addressing the systemic costs of generative AI: from the unsustainable water and energy consumption of planetary-scale data centers, to extractive data colonialism, algorithmic surveillance, and the erosion of democratic agency.
The Technology and Society Working Group is convened by Dr. Jose Marichal. Students and collaborators interested in joining can contact him at marichal@callutheran.edu. Here are places where AI and Society scholars publish.
Proposed or Ongoing Projects
Flock Cameras in Low-Income Communities
An empirical investigation into the spatial concentration of automated license plate readers (ALPR) across Southern California. Examines how privatized surveillance infrastructure disproportionately monitors marginalized neighborhoods, generates automated suspicion networks, and reshapes municipal civil rights.
Rhetoric of Data Centers and Causal Stories
This project applies Deborah Stone's concept of causal stories to municipal data center resistance across the US, deploying reinforcement learning and Charles Ragin's fuzzy-set QCA to discover minimal equifinal narrative recipes across GSS citizen archetypes.
Deepfake AI's Impact on Political Campaigns
Tracking and evaluating the weaponization of generative synthetic audio clones, hyper-realistic video manipulation, and autonomous persuasion dialogues in electoral contests. Audits the "liar's dividend", voter epistemic degradation, and legal/regulatory countermeasures for democratic integrity.
Technofeudalism and Political Resistance
Theorizing the transformation of digital capitalism into cloud-based technofeudalism. Analyzes how proprietary planetary compute and foundation models extract rent from civic institutions, while formulating strategies for political resistance: data cooperatives, public compute utilities, and open civic protocols.
Analog Politics
Can going analog become a social movement? Investigating tactile resistance, offline civic organizing, and theoretical alternatives to pervasive algorithmic mediation.
Unaccountable AI
Should we let AI go rogue? Interrogating runaway autonomous systems, institutional abdication of human discretion, and the democratic consequences of algorithmic delegation.
Techno-Pessimism
Are we better off not expecting too much from AI? A philosophical critique of techno-optimism and modern silicon salvation narratives in democratic institutions.
Pluralist AI
Can AI make democracy more, not less expansive? Exploring pluralistic alignment architectures, deliberative polling, and computational mechanisms designed for agonistic consensus rather than monocultural convergence.
AI & Ethno-Nationalism
Do AI platforms reinforce or correct racist and ethno-nationalist views?
Civic Digital Twinning
How can virtual city replicas serve as democratic digital commons rather than top-down optimization dashboards? Examining participatory urban digital twins (pioneered in Bologna, Barcelona, and Helsinki) that fuse qualitative citizen lived experience with spatial data to co-design climate resilience, heat mitigation, and transit equity.
Cloud Rent & Platform Monopolies
Investigating how dominant digital intermediaries extract economic tolls without creating underlying value. Analyzes the 51–60% Amazon merchant fee take-rates, $80B+ pay-to-play search placement auctions, Most Favored Nation (MFN) price-parity traps, and state-level antitrust remedies (e.g., California's COMPETE Act).
Idea to Civic App Pipeline
A structured 4-phase mentorship framework empowering undergraduate researchers to shift from passive learners to active civic innovators: moving from NotebookLM problem formulation and Deep Research benchmarking to rapid agentic coding with Antigravity and rigorous AI-assisted stress-testing.