Mediated technologies focus on how people communicate and connect. Emergent AI focus on what AI systems do, how they evolve, and how unpredictable or disruptive they are.

At CPI, we monitor mediated and emergent AI (and their overlaps) with a cyberpsychological lens.

WHAT IS A MEDIATED TECHNOLOGY?

Mediated technologies facilitate interaction between people; they’re the “middlemen” that shape human communication or social connection.

Examples include:

  • Zoom (mediates virtual meetings)
  • Instagram (mediates self-expression and audience engagement)
  • Text messaging (mediates interpersonal communication)

Even though many mediated technologies are digital, what defines them is their social or communicative function, not their digital nature.

Mediated tech list

WHAT IS AN EMERGENT AI TECHNOLOGY?

While these AI technologies may use digital infrastructure, they represent new leaps; they’re still developing, still being tested, or just beginning to enter society.

Examples include:

  • AI-Generated Companions & Social Bots (reshape how people form emotional bonds, relationships, and even experience loneliness)
  • Brain-Computer Interfaces or BCIs (blur the line between thought and machine control)
  • Emotion AI & Affective Computing (systems claim to detect, read, or even influence human emotion)

These technologies have the potential to significantly change how people live, work, think, or connect but their impacts are not yet fully understood.

Emergent AI tech

WHY MONITORING THESE TECHNOLOGIES MATTERS

It’s important to monitor mediated and emergent AI technologies because they RAPIDLY RESHAPE how people think, feel, and connect — OFTEN IN WAYS THAT OUTPACE:

  • ethical standards,
  • psychological understanding,
  • and societal readiness.

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