MAIRI Featured Speaker Series: Mona Sloane
Predicted: Mona Sloane on How AI is Restructuring Social Life
When: November 12, 2026: 4:00-5:30 PM
Where: Charles Hall, 105, Ontario Tech Downtown Campus
The age of AI is not what you think. Rather than ushering in a fourth Industrial Revolution, AI has become a crucial social infrastructure of everyday life. It’s embedded in the tools, platforms, and systems that organize our most intimate lives and our interactions with fundamental institutions, from government agencies to banks and schools. In these linkages are embedded assumptions about who we are, what we can do, and where we belong. Drawing on over a decade of empirical research and real-world examples, this book invites readers to see AI for what it is: deeply social, deeply political, and open to change. Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life is a call to reclaim deliberations about progress and innovation as a public good and to ensure that the futures we chart are the ones we choose—together.
Bio:
Dr. Mona Sloane is an assistant professor of data science and media studies at the University of Virginia (UVA). As a sociologist, she studies the intersection of technology and society, specifically in the context of AI design, use, and policy. She co-leads the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab and serves as the editor of the Co-Opting AI book series at the University of California Press. The lab spearheads social science leadership in applied work on responsible AI, public scholarship, and technology policy.
She also convenes the Co-Opting AI series and serves as the editor of the Co-Opting AI book series at the University of California Press as well as the Technology Editor for Public Books. Mona’s book Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life is available now through the University of California Press. More at monasloane.org.