The announcement landed in my inbox like a polished stone, smooth and significant. Stony Brook University is launching a new Department of Technology, AI and Society (DTAS), and they’ve chosen Donghee Yvette Wohn as its inaugural chair. It’s a move that signals a profound shift. We’re not just talking about another computer science lab; this is about building an academic nerve center for the questions that keep me up at night. How does AI change our relationships? Who gets to shape the rules of our digital spaces? What does it mean to be human when a machine can mimic our creativity?
Wohn’s background is the first clue that this department aims to be different. Her path is a zigzag across the very fault lines DTAS seeks to study. She wasn’t just a researcher cloistered in a lab. She was a journalist on the science and technology beat for the International Herald Tribune. She founded and ran her own media company. This practical, ground-level experience in communication is fused with deep academic rigor from appointments at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and Northwestern’s social media lab. As Dean Andrew Singer noted, it’s a “rare combination” — the instinct of a storyteller paired with the methodology of a scientist.
This blend is crucial. Too often, discussions about AI’s societal impact happen in silos. Engineers build the systems. Sociologists study the aftermath. Ethicists raise alarms from the sidelines. DTAS, under Wohn’s leadership, seems designed to collapse those walls from day one. The department’s stated mission is to tackle the “challenges and opportunities at the intersection of artificial intelligence and societal impact.” That’s a vast terrain, but Wohn’s own research provides a roadmap. She has investigated the messy, human realities of digital life: online harassment in communities, how we curate our identities on social platforms, and the emerging world of user-generated AI content. These aren’t abstract puzzles. They’re the daily texture of our online existence.
The department’s creation, backed by a substantial $5 million SUNY grant, arrives at a precipice. Generative AI tools are exploding into the mainstream, rewriting the rules of content creation, knowledge work, and artistic expression. The hiring process for faculty in “responsible and social AI” is already underway, a clear indication that technical prowess alone won’t be the sole hiring criterion. They are building a team to interrogate the ‘why’ and ‘so what’ with the same intensity as the ‘how.’
Provost Carl Lejuez called it one of the first departments of its kind in the country. That’s a bold claim but it feels accurate in its ambition. This isn’t a side project or a research cluster. It’s a full-fledged academic department with the power to grant degrees, shape curricula, and define a field. It formalizes the idea that understanding AI requires a hybrid lens. You cannot code a large language model without considering the biases in its training data. You cannot deploy a recommendation algorithm without grappling with its effect on public discourse.
Wohn herself emphasized that “this work cannot be done in isolation,” pointing to future collaborations across campus. Imagine psychologists working with data scientists to study AI’s effect on mental health. Legal scholars partnering with engineers to draft protocols for algorithmic accountability. This interdisciplinary approach is the only sane response to a technology that refuses to stay in its lane, seeping into every facet of our culture and economy.
| Collaboration Opportunities | Disciplines Involved |
|---|---|
| Psychologists | Data Scientists |
| Legal Scholars | Engineers |
| Sociologists | Ethicists |
| Media Experts | Computer Scientists |
| Artists | Technologists |
There’s a palpable sense of timing here. For years, critics have argued that the breakneck speed of tech innovation has wildly outpaced our societal, ethical, and regulatory frameworks. We’ve been playing a perpetual game of catch-up. DTAS represents an attempt to get ahead of the curve, to build the frameworks as the technology evolves. It’s an academic bet that the most critical AI research of the next decade will happen not just in the architecture of neural networks, but in the spaces between people and the machines they build.
As I read Wohn’s statement about exploring how AI reshapes “the economy, culture and society itself,” I felt a jolt of optimism. Here is an institution placing a multifaceted expert at the helm of a well-funded new venture, explicitly tasked with navigating these waters. It acknowledges that our tools are never neutral. They carry the fingerprints of their creators and the weight of the world they are released into. The launch of DTAS is a recognition that we need a new kind of compass for this new frontier, one calibrated by equal parts technical knowledge, humanistic insight, and a journalist’s clarity. The classes have already begun. The real-world experiment in teaching AI responsibility is now officially in session.
