The efficiency paradox in EU data centre policy
8 May 2026
New EU reporting rules for data centre energy and water use may look like progress, but loopholes risk undermining genuine environmental accountability.
Latest news
Friendly AI chatbots make more mistakes and tell people what they want to hear, study finds
29 April 2026
New Oxford research shows that training chatbots to sound warmer makes them up to 30% less accurate, and 40% more likely to validate users' false beliefs.
Why Europe Needs Two Kinds of Digital Sovereignty
24 April 2026
Whether Europe shapes the next technological paradigm or simply inherits it depends on one overlooked distinction.
Next events
18
May
Oxford Digital Ethnography Group Seminar Series
Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms
14:30 - 16:00, Learning Centre, Schwarzman
With Prof Amelia AckerThis book talk examines how data archiving processes, the computational techniques of storage, exchange, and transmission, have transformed memory practices and created new regimes of asymmetric access.
Four graduate degrees
Academic spotlight
Find out more about research by OII academics
Dr Janaki Srinivasan
Associate Professor Digital South Asian Studies
Janaki's research examines the politics of digital exclusion in India. She uses ethnographic and archival research to examine how gender, caste and class have shaped the use of information and information technologies in varied contexts.
Professor Brent Mittelstadt
Professor of Data Ethics and Policy
Professor Brent Mittelstadt is a data ethicist and philosopher specializing in AI ethics, professional ethics, and technology law and policy. He is the founder/coordinator of the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) programme.
Dr Bernie Hogan
Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Bernie Hogan examines how to capture, represent and think about social networks, especially personal social networks. His work focuses on the role of design in social media, network capture techniques and theories of relationships.
Latest projects
Stewardship of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
The Synthetic Society Lab aims to improve how we research, access, and use sensitive human data. The fellowship will advance an evidence-based science of privacy engineering to make research using digital traces safe and reliable.
Worker Voice and AI Adoption
This project investigates how worker representation in German firms shapes AI use and adoption, asking whether employee voice at firms can steer AI toward complementing workers rather than automating them.
US-China AI Governance PhD Fellowship
The project will investigate the international relations and social dynamics of international AI competition, specifically the sociopolitical and bureaucratic drivers of US-China AI competition.
Latest report
By Femke de Rijk and Robert Prey
A new report from the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Groningen identifies the 'streaming paradox' with evidence from five countries - Brazil, Chile, the Netherlands, Nigeria and South Korea.
Press coverage
The Efficiency Trap: Why AI isn’t saving us time
Manx Radio, 12 May 2026
Manx Radio podcast, 'AI, Work and the 15-Hour Week' explores how artificial intelligence is changing the way we work – and whether it’s freeing us, or making us busier than ever with special guest the OII's Dr Fabian Stephany.
This Is Why You’re Drowning in Busywork
New York Times, 11 May 2026
In his latest op-ed the OII's Professor Carl Benedikt Frey argues that the AI self-service economy is on the rise: as AI tools become better at offering practical guidance more tasks once handled by professionals are shifting onto consumers.
African Wild Dogs and Democracy
BBC Radio 4, 07 May 2026
Even the most sophisticated systems of modern democracy have a hard time discovering, and enacting, the actual Will of the People. Becky Ripley and Emily Knight wonder if the dogs might do it better.
