Community-Focused AI

Community-Focused AI

Building AI systems that center community needs and values

About This Research Area

Building AI systems that center community needs and values

Projects

project

Community LLM Adapters

ongoing

Lightweight, easy-to-train adapters that allow communities to customize LLMs can help decentralize AI use and help communities experiment with how to best use AI systems.

Started: 2025-09-01
Dana Calacci
HS
Matt Viana
Shomik Jain
project

Tools for Crowdsourcing Platform Data

ongoing

We are building new crowdsourcing tools that will allow users of platforms, ranging from Instagram to TikTok to Doordash, donate data to researchers and advocates with minimal effort.

Started: 2025-08-01
Dana Calacci
Clayton Colson
VR
AG
SD
project

How Users Internally Negotiate AI Use

ongoing

Investigating how users internally negotiate the use of AI in their daily lives to design more contextually appropriate systems.

Started: 2025-03-01
Matt Viana
Dana Calacci
project

The Workers Algorithm Observatory (WAO) is a inter-institutional collaboration focused on developing tools and doing research to support labor organizing and advocacy in the algorithmic age.

Started: 2023-06-01
Dana Calacci
SD
VR

Recent News

People

person

Dana Calacci

she / her

Director

Asst. Professor, Penn State IST

🔗 Website
person
HS

Harini Suresh

she / her

Affiliate

Asst. Professor, Brown University

person

Matt Viana

he / him

PhD Student

Penn State IST

person

Shomik Jain

he / him

PhD Candidate

MIT IDSS

person

Clayton Colson

he / him

Research Engineer

Penn State ICDS

person
VR

Varun Rao

he / him

Affiliate

PhD Candidate, Princeton University CITP

person
AG

Ananya Gollakota

she / her

Undergraduate Researcher

Penn State IST

person
SD

Samantha Dalal

she / her

Affiliate

Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University CITP

Related Work

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