Michal Luria

AI Labs Want More of Your Time. That's a Serious Problem.

In @compiler.news, CDT’s @mluria.bsky.social & Amy Winecoff warn that major AI labs are quietly optimizing chatbots for engagement — despite public claims to the contrary. As financial pressures rise, companies risk prioritizing stickiness over safety, even for vulnerable users.

A.I. labs want more of your time. That's a problem. Healthy disengagement — not stickiness — should become a core safety feature within AI chatbots.

If AI companies truly cared about “healthy engagement,” they’d design for healthy disengagement. Most aren’t, write @mluria.bsky.social and Amy Winecoff from @cdt.org.

It was especially fun to use one of my favorite design research methods in this project — and for the first time in a policy context. #Speeddating allows participants to review and reflect on many possible futures scenarios to explore and articulate their full and nuanced perspectives.

Delighted to share my collaboration with @aliyabhatia.bsky.social on research that grounds online safety debates in what families actually say they need and value. We touched on four key topics: age verification, feed controls, screen-time features and parental access.

Advocating with Evidence: Lessons for Tech Researchers in Civil Society Advocating with Evidence: Lessons for Tech Researchers in Civil Society November 13, 2025, 10-11am ET online Civil society is struggling to address how technology and the tech industry contribute to e...

I receive so many questions about what research in civil society is like -- Join our virtual panel to hear more about exactly that! @cdt.org @datasociety.bsky.social @aclu.org

With @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social @alicetiara.bsky.social and @mkgerchick.bsky.social

To register:
cdt.org/event/advoca...

Tech Talks: Age Verification In this episode of Tech Talks, we dive into the growing debate over online age verification. While often framed as a way to protect children, these policies carry major implications for how everyone, adults and children alike, accesses the internet. Unlike showing an ID at a bar, online age checks can require the collection and […]

Guests @zevesanderson.com, CDT Research Fellow @mluria.bsky.social, and guest host
@aliyabhatia.bsky.social unpack what users really think about age checks, how they shape online behavior, and what’s at stake for balancing child safety with digital rights.

AI-Powered Deception: A Deeper Dimension of Dark Design Patterns in Conversational AI Tools and Platforms  This post was led by CDT Intern Adinawa Adjagbodjou Have you ever struggled to cancel a subscription you didn’t know you were enrolled in? Or have you been invited to join a platform by a friend only to discover that it was the site impersonating someone in your contact list? If so, you’ve encountered a […]

🚨 NEW BLOG led by CDT Intern @adinawa.bsky.social, with CDT’s Ruchika Joshi & @mluria.bsky.social, explores dark patterns in conversational AI — subtle design tricks in tools like ChatGPT, Replika & Character.AI that influence spending, attention, & data sharing:

9/9 As Savage mentioned in her testimony, UX researchers generally advocate for users — especially vulnerable users like children. To get there, it is crucial to ensure that they have freedom to ask hard questions, pursue answers with the appropriate methodology, and communicate findings clearly.

8/ In parallel, we need clear auditing and accountability processes within companies, as well as access to data to vetted independent researchers.

7/ That’s why it’s not enough to have research teams — it’s also about making sure research is conducted and reported at the highest standards. In this case, the researchers themselves seem to have held the highest standards; but everyone, all the way to top leadership, must be onboard too.

6/ Doing research inside a big tech company is already extremely difficult. Researchers face significant pressure from internal and external stakeholders, and the potential for conflicts of interest are an everyday reality. Still, this work is deeply necessary, and understaffed.

5/ This testimony matters, and these whistleblowers are courageous for coming forth. At the same time, such allegations shouldn’t undermine trust in UX research, which would be a devastating outcome — company researchers are among those working hardest to surface safety risks and push for change.

4/ The only thing worse than having no research on a critical safety-related research question, is having misleading research; A gap in knowledge can be acknowledged and addressed. But if the research is riddled with malpractice, the harm is harder to detect — and far more damaging.

3/ If true, this profoundly undermines research integrity. Excluding findings, deleting data that sheds light on people’s safety, misrepresenting findings — these would all directly violate the most fundamental research ethics code.

2/ The testimony focused on alarming internal interactions between research teams, leadership, and legal, that allegedly suppressed, altered, and misrepresented research and research findings to protect the company from liability and damage to reputation.

It’s not every day that UX researcher whistleblowers testify before the Senate. Yesterday, two former Meta researchers, Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, shared their concerns with safety research for Meta VR products, and more broadly within Meta. So how does UX research move on from here? 🧵

With a wave of tragic headlines about AI-related deaths and lawsuits it's critical to reconsider the design choices that enable this -- as a first, stir away from intentionally humanlike chatbots.

We used a Design Research approach (#speeddating) to test scenarios currently being proposed and debated in policy circles with teens and parents. Here is what we found on age verification approaches 👉

Full report on all topics, including screen-time features and algorithm controls coming soon.

Teen and Parent Perspectives on Approaches to Age Verification Age verification (AV) is being rolled out by online services to comply with new laws in Europe and across states in the United States. Proposed legislation at the federal level in the U.S., such as the Kids Off Social Media Act and the Kids Online Safety Act, may also result in increased adoption of AV […]

CDT’s @mluria.bsky.social + @aliyabhatia.bsky.social's interviews with families reveal concerns about privacy, efficacy, & the need for transparent, user-centered approaches that support both agency & parental discretion. Read more:

The Kids are Online: Research-Driven Insights on Child Safety Policy Executive Summary This report summarizes the key discussions and insights from an in-person symposium held in September 2024 on the topic of children’s online safety policy. The event convened academi...

Instead of hearing Senate Judiciary Committee members paint a sensational picture about social media, read what over 20 researchers and experts say can actually move the needle on sustainable and equitable policymaking that benefits all young people w/ @mluria.bsky.social: cdt.org/insights/the...

Check out CDT’s latest report, led by @mluria.bsky.social and also starring @arianaaboulafia.bsky.social and me, on disabled workers’ experiences with gamified hiring tests, AI scored video interviews, and other modern digitized employment assessments.