Centre for AI & Society (CAIS, in Polish: Centrum Sztucznej Inteligencji w Społeczeństwie)

Who are we?

The Centre for AI & Society (CAIS) at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (IFiS PAN), established in March 2026, is a collaborative research hub advancing cutting-edge research on how artificial intelligence (AI), data, and algorithms shape our world. Acting as an institutional umbrella, CAIS brings together researchers from across disciplines to engage comprehensively with key questions around AI—from ethics and politics to its impact on society, the economy, and the environment. Working alongside international partners, the Centre connects diverse ideas into a unified platform dedicated to responsible AI, high-impact research, and meaningful policy engagement.

What do we do?

The CAIS research group prioritizes the normative, ethical, societal, and environmental ramifications of AI, focusing on its integration into digitalization, datafication, algorithmisation, and philosophical inquiry.

Core research themes include:

1. AI as a new form of governance

Digital technologies, AI included, are transforming politics and the governance of society and nature. The work related to this theme includes normative work on democracy, surveillance, war, and the public sphere, as well as economic, political, and environmental sociology. It investigates the materiality and political economy of digital infrastructures, platform capitalism, struggles around new technologies, as well as the datafication of state institutions and the resulting challenges to the rule of law and human rights. It also examines emerging forms of AI-enabled corruption, as well as corruption risks in the design, manipulation, and application of AI systems, while critically assessing AI-based anti-corruption tools in public oversight and accountability.

2. Ethics of AI

Focusing on the moral and normative dimensions of artificial intelligence and digital technologies, work in this theme investigates issues such as fairness, accountability, transparency, agency, and human-machine interactions. It also examines how AI-based decision-making reshapes notions of integrity, accountability, and wrongfulness, including who is held responsible when harm occurs. It connects philosophical reflection with empirical examples, aiming to understand what values are embedded in and performed by digital technologies and how societies should govern their development and use. An important area of research concerns cultural biases—including ethnic, linguistic, and gender biases—generated by AI while performing tasks.

3. AI and new forms of classification

Research in this theme examines the ways AI and digital technologies sort, rank, categorise, and predict, and how these processes influence how people think and feel, as well as how they relate to one another. It addresses how data-driven classifications reshape boundaries between groups, reorder social visibility, exacerbate social inequalities, and reconfigure existing power relations. The work related to this theme includes research in organisational and cultural sociology, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.

4. AI and scientific practice

The focus of this cluster is on how AI is being used in science and how it should be used. It includes both descriptions of existing research practices and prescriptions for how scholars should conduct science in the digital age. The goal is to provide empirically-informed normative guidance on how scholars can incorporate new digital technologies into their work. This cluster includes methodologists working in computational social science, digital philosophy of science, digital humanities, the sociology and philosophy of science, studies of education in the age of AI, and science communication. The work related to this theme investigates how AI and other digital technologies reconfigure the practices and conceptual foundations of knowledge-making.

Core Objectives 

• Interdisciplinary Collaboration

• Research and Knowledge Production
• Outreach and Visibility
• Institutional Integration

Recent activities of CAIS members:

Research projects

• In October 2026, Dariusz Brzeziński, CAIS member, will launch a research project funded by the National Science Centre in Poland: The Theory of Algorithmic Culture In Light of Contemporary Developments in Artificial Intelligence. The aim of this project is to provide a new framework for theorising contemporary culture, which is increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence-based technologies. 
• In autumn 2026, Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, CAIS member, will start a new research project, Algorithmic Forensics: Algorithmic Welfare Fraud Detection in the Baltic Sea Region, which investigates the use of algorithmic fraud detection in welfare systems in Estonia, Poland, and Sweden. The project is funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies and run in cooperation with Maris Männiste as the project leader and Anne Kaun (Södertörn University).
• In July 2026, Celina Strzelecka launched the NCN-funded project “Glass Bees: Knowing, Valuing and Practising Relations with Soil in the Age of Digital Agriculture”. The project investigates how sensors, digital platforms, satellite and drone technologies, and AI-based systems transform agricultural knowledge, soil valuation, and human-soil relations.
• In December 2025, CAIS members Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, Monika Berdys, Celina Strzelecka, and Sebastian Sosnowski completed their work within the international CHANCE project Automating Welfare: Algorithmic Infrastructures for Human Flourishing in Europe (AUTO-WELF). The project investigated how algorithmic systems and automated decision-making transform welfare institutions, public services, and the conditions of human flourishing across Europe.
• In 2025, Piotr Binder launched a pilot study, Digital and AI Tools in the Transformation of Academic Labor (DATAL), conducted at universities in the UK, Sweden, and Poland. The study explores how digital and AI technologies are reshaping academic labor, knowledge production, and the negotiation of ethical boundaries. Ultimately, this pilot will lay the groundwork for a broader comparative research project and a grant application to be submitted to the National Science Centre, Poland (NCN).
• In 2025–2026, Urszula Jarecka conducted a series of experiments in the study The Role of AI in Shaping the Online Worldview: Visual Disinformation using AI tools as part of her statutory work (the “Culture in the Face of Technological Change” track dedicated to analyzing the challenges as well as unknown and unforeseen side effects of introducing digital technologies into social life). The results will be presented in scientific articles and at seminars.

Publications

• In August 2026, Anna Turner, CAIS member (IFiS PAN) and Kamil Filipek (UMCS) published the chapter Zygmunt Bauman on Surveillance in the Algorithmic Condition in the volume The Routledge International Handbook on Zygmunt Bauman edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Dariusz Brzeziński, Mark Davis, Jack Palmer. The chapter reflects on Bauman’s lasting legacy in surveillance studies, emphasizing his critical contributions to understanding the intersection of technology, power, and society in the algorithmic condition. 
• In July 2026, the article “When ‘Green’ Means More Data: Climate Data Contradictions in Digital Waste Governance” by CAIS member Celina Strzelecka was accepted for publication in Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research. The article, currently in production for a forthcoming special issue, examines the contradictions between environmental objectives and expanding data production in digital governance, highlighting the material and ecological consequences of data-driven technologies. 
• In July 2026, Maciej Zając, CAIS member, published an article regarding the testing of autonomous weapon systems. For more, see M. Zając, Problem of (In)Explainability in Testing Fully Autonomous Weapon Systems for International Humanitarian Law Compliance. Minds & Machines 36, 39 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-026-09788-7
• In May 2026, CAIS member Celina Strzelecka published a chapter, “The Future of Urban Waste: From Closed Systems to Open Waste Data Infrastructure”, in the edited volume The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices. The chapter examines how data-driven infrastructures redistribute power, responsibility, and control in environmental governance.
• In 2026 Artur Pokropek, CAIS member and head of Computational Social Science Department at IFiS PAN, co-authored an article that develops tools for quick assessment of digital competences. For more, see Vuorikari, R., Pokropek, A. & Muñoz, J.C. Enhancing digital skills assessment: introducing compact tools for measuring digital competence. Tech Know Learn 31, 519–546 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-025-09825-x
• In 2026, Monika Berdys, CAIS member, published a paper exploring the emergence and dynamics of institutional collaboration surrounding the implementation of an algorithmic video surveillance system (AVS) in a Polish city. The study examines how two groups typically reluctant to work together—a crime prevention coalition and a “Smart City” coalition—cooperated to neutralise opposing voices and engage citizens in partially funding the CCTV system through participatory budgeting. For more see: M. Berdys, “The Indicator of CCTV Success is Winning Elections”: Insights from the Implementation of an Algorithmic Video Surveillance System in Poland”, Proceedings of the 59th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2026.300
• In 2026, Ilona Wysmułek, CAIS member, published a chapter titled “Approaches to Measuring Corruption: Research Traditions, Indicators and Practices” in The Routledge Handbook of Political Corruption. The chapter explores the relationship between philosophical traditions, societal turns, and measurement approaches, including how new technologies, AI, online participation, and big-data methods are reshaping both corruption and anti-corruption practices, as well as the ways they are studied. For more, see: I. Wysmułek, “Approaches to Measuring Corruption: Research Traditions, Indicators and Practices”. In Heywood, P., Kubbe, I. and Schwickerath, A. (eds.) Routledge Handbook on Political Corruption [2nd edition].

Awards

• The article “How context matters: Human oversight of automated decision-making systems in welfare administration” by Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, CAIS member, published in the Journal of European Social Policy, has been awarded the Best Academic Paper award in the inaugural edition of the competition organized by the Digital Sociology Section of the Polish Sociological Association. An open-access version of the paper is available here.

International Cooperation

• In August 2026, a new Research Network ‘Sociology of Artificial Intelligence’ was established within the European Sociological Association. This initiative was coordinated by Dariusz Brzeziński (CAIS member) in collaboration with Justyna Stypińska (Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg; WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany) and Kathrin Komp-Leukkunen (LUT University, Finland).

Workshops and seminars

• In November 2026, Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, CAIS member, is organizing a workshop titled “Researching the consequences of public sector algorithms” in Vienna in cooperation with Doris Allhutter (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and the Vienna Scientific Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
• In October 2026, Dariusz Brzeziński, CAIS member, will co-organise a seminar: AI in Social Research: Ethical Challenges and Good Practices. The participants will include: Kamil Filipek (UMCS), Marta Kołodziejska (UW), and Gabriel Klimont-Jaroszuk (IFiS PAN).
• In June 2026, Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska, CAIS member, co-organized a CRAFT session titled “Examining the promises of AI and digitization for welfare: case studies and pathways for organized resistance” at the ACM FAccT conference in Montreal, together with Soizic Pénicaud, Teresa Barrio Traspaderne (Amnesty International), and Priya Goswami (Mumkin App).
• In June 2026, Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska co-organized a seminar titled “Digital technologies in local social policy: between innovation and responsibility” for researchers and policy-makers in cooperation with Mateusz Trochymiak (University of Warsaw, The Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies) and the University Observatory for the Deinstitutionalization of Support Practices (UODI UW).
• In June 2026, Dariusz Brzeziński co-organised a seminar with a lecture delivered by Professor David Beer (University of York), entitled: The Recursive Self: https://ifispan.pl/the-series-social-theory-and-contemporary-challenges/
• In March 2026, Dariusz Brzeziński co-organised a seminar with a lecture delivered by Professor Anthony Elliott (Adelaide University), entitled: The World on Auto-Pilot: Social Theory of Automation: https://ifispan.pl/en/the-lecture-entitled-world-on-auto-pilot-the-social-theory-of-automation-will-be-delivered-by-prof-anthony-elliott/

Open data 

• Frontiers in Psychology corpus: https://repod.icm.edu.pl/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.18150/4LJ9WD for use in ConceptSketch corpus viewer

Media

• Listen to Marta Niedźwiecka’s podcast “O zmierzchu” featuring CAIS member Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska as a guest, discussing how digitalisation undermines the welfare state.
• Read a press article by Celina Strzelecka on the social consequences of AI and automation, “Ekspertka: Technologie miały działać same. Pracujemy przy nich coraz więcej” [Expert: Technologies Were Supposed to Work by Themselves. We Are Spending More Time Working on Them], published in Rzeczpospolita PlusMinus. The print edition appeared under the title “Im więcej automatyzacji, tym mniej czasu” [The More Automation, the Less Time] as the issue’s featured article (Plus Minus, no. 24 (1734), 13-14 June 2026).
• Read the interview with Andrzej Leder about emotional relationships between humans and algorithms, technological loneliness, new social classes, and the temptation of a world where convenience may prove more dangerous than violence.
• Watch the podcast of Marcin Rotkiewicz (Copernicus Center & projekt pulsar) with Marcin Miłkowski, CAIS member, as a guest, on Czego brakuje sztucznej inteligencji | Marcin Rotkiewicz, Marcin Miłkowski
• Watch the live lecture of Marcin Miłkowski, CAIS member, for Copernicus Center: Problem czarnej skrzynki: co wiemy o tym, czego nie rozumiemy, Marcin Miłkowski

Founding members (in alphabetical order):

1. Monika Berdys
2. Piotr Binder
3. Dariusz Brzeziński
4. Joshua Dubrow
5. Daniel Kostić
6. Marcin Miłkowski
7. Przemysław Nowakowski
8. Artur Pokropek
9. Marcin Serafin
10. Sebastian Sosnowski
11. Celina Strzelecka
12. Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska
13. Anna Turner
14. Ilona Wysmułek
15. Maciej Zając
16. Tomasz Żółtak

Affiliated members (in alphabetical order):

1. Monika Berdys
2. Piotr Binder
3. Dariusz Brzeziński
4. Joshua Dubrow
5. Urszula Jarecka
6. Daniel Kostić
7. Andrzej Leder
8. Marcin Miłkowski
9. Przemysław Nowakowski
10. Artur Pokropek
11. Marcin Serafin
12. Sebastian Sosnowski
13. Celina Strzelecka
14. Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska
15. Anna Turner
16. Ilona Wysmułek
17. Maciej Zając
18. Tomasz Żółtak

classic-editor-remember:

block-editor