Sharing our CoP Year in Review for 2025

The Natural Language Processing Community of Practice (NLP-CoP) is a global community made up of members from all over the world. It has come a long way since 2022, when it was founded. We are currently almost 2000 members engaging in critical conversations about tech, data, AI, and their applications in development, humanitarian, human rights, and other social sectors. 

As Community Manager for the CoP, in 2025 I got to witness how important it is to have independent, industry-free spaces to discuss the potential uses of AI tools and their impact on our day-to-day work and the lives of the communities we work with. As large, resource-intensive, general-purpose AI models cause undeniable harm to the environment, the climate, and communities around the globe, holding space to grapple with the broad repercussions of AI, discuss the practical implications of these technologies, and think about alternatives feels more important than ever. 

For the CoP, 2025 was a year for crucial discussions about privacy, ethics, bias, consent, and harm caused by AI, as much as it was for conversations about designing feminist AI, raising considerations about climate and environmental impacts, working with small language models, prioritising deployment of tech in purposeful and controlled ways, and reminding ourselves that responsible and ethical principles don’t stifle innovation – they make room for the right kind of innovation. 

We are happy to share with you our CoP 2025 Year In Review!

In it, we are sharing some highlights this year, as well as some of our plans for 2026.

Thanks to all of you who are part of this Community of Practice. The wealth of knowledge and diversity of perspectives our community members bring make this space so meaningful and we look forward to continuing collaborating together in 2026!

And for those who are keen on reading more about our takeaways from 2025, on our blog, Linda has also written about our trends and learnings from the year.