MIT - Critical Data

Privacy, as we once understood it, is dead. Every time we tap “Accept All Cookies” or scroll past a terms-of-service agreement to download a fitness app, we hand over intimate details about our bodies, our habits, our vulnerabilities. We present a compelling case for transparency mandates around health data transactions. The uncomfortable starting point is one the paper dances around: the traditional framing of privacy as something we can protect through consent and de-identification is largely a fiction. Our health records, wearable data, and genomic information are already circulating through a commercial ecosystem most of us never agreed to and barely understand. The real question isn’t how to lock the barn door; it’s who took the horse, where did they ride it, and who got paid along the way. What we need is a disclosure framework built on that honest foundation: Who is selling our data? What are they doing with it? Who is profiting? And who is being harmed? That kind of radical transparency won’t restore privacy in any nostalgic sense, but it can restore something arguably more important: accountability. And accountability, specifically, relational accountability, unlike privacy, is something we can still fight for.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589750025001293

Hopping on to the throwback to #2016 trend with MIT critical data photos at Beijing and Mexico City! Will take you all on more journeys through time and space soon! ✈️

The American Medical Association and MIT Critical Data organized "AI as a Catalyst" on January 15, 2026 at MIT, a transformative approach to reimagining education and healthcare by deliberately centering voices typically excluded from academic discourse, i.e., indigenous knowledge holders, musicians, artists, religious leaders, storytellers, and activists, alongside educators and clinicians. The event created an interactive space for community-centered dialogue using six conceptual tools: the mirror (reflection), flashlight (illumination), microscope (analysis), paintbrush (creativity), podium (shared storytelling), and the slingshot (dismantling of power structures). Through three workshops exploring creative expression as pedagogical practice, indigenous and religious wisdom in medical training, and justice-centered AI development, participants charted pathways toward transforming how we prepare the next generation of healers and change agents. The event embodies MIT Critical Data's commitment to challenging traditional academic power structures by recognizing that addressing healthcare's challenges in the AI era requires wisdom from diverse epistemologies and lived experiences, not just technical expertise, ultimately working to build a community of practice committed to centering creativity, love, and justice in education and healthcare.

Watch the recording of the event here:

MIT Critical Data Building a global community committed to developing & improving health AI.