The Ongoing Transformation
Archives
American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s research laid the foundation for modern astronomy’s understanding of the structure and size of the universe.
Book Review
Nikhil Menon looks at how the forces of global politics and capitalism shaped India’s technological revolution, as described in Dwaipayan Banerjee’s recent book.
Digital Identity
The nation’s experience with developing digital credentials may be instructive for other countries seeking to build an identity system that reflects civic and social preferences.
Reparative Science
How can scientists and research institutions contribute to social justice?
University Innovation
Even though the 1980 Bayh–Dole Act is widely considered a success, the modern research enterprise operates under new tensions that the legislation was not built to address.
Grid Infrastructure
A lack of standardized infrastructure data is holding back efforts to modernize the nation’s electrical grid.
Data Centers
Data centers have become tests of whether and how local governments can negotiate the physical terms of the AI economy.
Real Numbers
A core design feature allows the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs to serve a federal innovation system with missions as diverse as biomedical research, energy technology, and national defense.
Focused Research Investments
Locally focused research investments enable coalitions of scientists and citizens to serve community needs.
Poem
You have been lonely all these years.
You once loved a French lop named Cleo.
You once loved a boy named Rabbit….
AI Oversight
Oversight of artificial intelligence is largely built on benchmarks that fail to capture how models have learned to “perform for the test.” A better system would govern through learning and inquiry.
Urban Robots
As robot-human interactions become more commonplace in urban spaces, policymakers can use a diagnostic to find the best existing tools for governance and determine when new ones are needed.
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Vol. XLIII, No. 1, Fall 2026
The Fall 2026 issue explores how artificial intelligence might affect public policy in a variety of domains. Take biosecurity: Despite the fear that AI could be used to engineer dangerous pathogens, a former FBI special agent argues that the technology can also be used to uncover suspicious activity and possible bad actors before they become a threat. On economic policy: Spectacular wealth from AI will accrue to relatively few companies and individuals. What if a country were to create an AI sovereign wealth fund to distribute these profits more equitably? A group of Canadian scholars and legislators proposes to set up just such a fund. And when it comes to trust, a cultural anthropologist argues that CERN, the world’s most successful large-scale science collaboration, has many lessons to offer European regulators about how to build trust and transparency when using AI for science.
Browse the Issue
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Subscribe to the Print EditionIn response to essays published in Issues, our readers weigh in on critical topics in policy related to science, technology, and society.
Summer 2026
A Discussion of
Response By
Summer 2026
A Discussion of
Response By
Information is social: It is produced, shared, and solidified into “fact” through human relationships. Artificial intelligence is disrupting those relationships and transforming knowledge into “content.”
Response
What does it look like to search for truth across ideological bubbles? In a remote cabin, an online encyclopedia editor has collected a vast library of books that she hopes can counteract a polarized online information environment. When she gets a surprise visit from some young idealists, the editor is forced to confront what it means to curate information some find dangerous.
How can rapidly expanding cities provide affordable, green housing? To understand the challenges in doing so, look to the capital of Nigeria.
Response
Imagine a housing development that takes green architecture to another level, braiding plants into the very scaffolding of a home. Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s story brings us to such a development, where a grief-stricken daughter struggles to defend her late mother’s vision of sustainable housing against financial, regulatory, and personal hurdles.
A young protagonist is forced to follow strict prompts embedded deep in her brain via an implant. The protagonist’s parents installed the brain implant in the hopes of guiding their child to live a “good” life. But when the family immigrates to a place whose customs and language diverge from their own, the protagonist is torn between internal and external prompts—and discovers how quickly they can both become a trap.
Familial and cultural prompts shape children’s experiences of relationships and themselves—especially among children in diaspora. How do those prompts change over time?
Response
After the firing of the National Science Board, legislators have an opportunity to establish a new balance between democratic accountability and protection from partisan meddling.
Although public attention is focused on the federal government’s efforts to slash funding for scientific research, the decimation of the democratic institutional processes that undergird state-sponsored scientific research is far more consequential.
To improve the relationship between science and the public, funders should embrace a new ontology of scientific work that aligns incentives with society’s goals.
University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.
