If you're following this story in the NYT by @kashhill.bsky.social, I recommend @schancellor.bsky.social's post that breaks down why AI is bad at therapy. Pretty much everything she she warns about shows up in this story, which is heartbreaking notatechdemo.substack.com/p/why-ai-can...

What is it going to take to get companies to care about this and do something? It's been a tough day reading this great report by @kashhill.bsky.social on the risks of chatbots. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

Hi friends! I've been writing about AI safety and mental health. Two articles up lately - What data about screen timers tell us about chatbot timers, and - Why chatbots can't replace your therapist. Brief 🧵to summarize, find both here - notatechdemo.substack.com

"We have Trivial Pursuit now, so if you’d just give it a try, maybe you’d realize that this vacation can still be saved. So sit down, shut up, and tell me who Gerald Ford’s vice president was."

#birdbot

The best place to find me now is on Substack for long-form writing! ✨📬👋 (insert self-promo emojis here) Seriously though. I started a Substack. It’s called This Is Not a Tech Demo. I'm writing about AI, mental health, social media, and how to live better with tech. 🔗 notatechdemo.substack.com

The thing about interdisciplinary work is everyone gets to misunderstand you from a unique angle

I've been working on something! It's not nearly done yet, but I thought no need to gatekeep the work in progress. This is an AI ethics "syllabus" based on a post-hoc curation of hundreds of short form videos I've made for social media, to make the content more accessible. bit.ly/ai-ethics-sy...

New blog (by me!) finding research identity with Agre's Critical Technical Practice: medium.com/@stevie-chan... CTP taught me my interdisciplinary #hcai work was a powerful strategy to build socially-relevant AI. I hope others embrace the cross-cutting identity as much as Agre helped me to.

Tip for PhD applicants reaching out to prospective advisors: Don’t use an LLM to write these emails. It’s not a great first impression to express your admiration for a recent paper the faculty member published if that paper does not exist.

"It just really comes as a shock that such accomplished intellectuals, who’ve spent their entire careers pushing the upper bounds of human achievement, could be judgy about a machine that runs the entirety of human imagination through a shredder and glues together what comes out."

Another week, another research ethics controversy. TL;DR Researchers released a public dataset of 2B+ messages from 4M+ users on 3k+ "public" Discord servers. Usernames/IDs are anonymized. But let's unpack this one... 🧵 www.404media.co/researchers-...

ICE Deports Mariner Moose Back to Canada: tinyurl.com/vswvxhrr

"Finally—finally!—we can reroute those dangerous funds from writing workshops and elementary school jazz ensembles into more important things. Like tax breaks for billionaires. And tanks."

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

🧵I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be going to @facct.bsky.social this June to present timely work on why current LLMs cannot safely **replace** therapists. We find...⤵️

I wrote up a take about how the Trump Administration's pressure on NIH to cute indirect costs to 15% will stifle American scientific leadership and hurt American jobs. Please share this broadly - this issue transcends my normal scientist friends. medium.com/@stevie-chan...

"You want to stop, but the amount of time and energy you’ve put into this makes it hard to quit."

Breaking news: 22 states are suing to block NIH’s cutting of indirect costs. See our updated story on the Friday night news and its aftermath. scim.ag/4hTJQ6v

Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again.

Here are some facts about "facilities and administrative" (F&A) costs, what we in the business call "indirects" and what Musk is calling "overhead" as he tries to convince Americans with being ok with cutting billions on dollars from medical and public health research at universities & hospitals 1/

Idea for GenAI app: rewrite click bait headlines to normal headlines in the browser. Input: you’ll never guess this one company organizing the best deals of the year Output: Amazon has a modest sale on phone chargers

An absolutely shocking timeline showing how an Alaska sexual assault defendant has been able to prevent his case from going to trial since 2014 by getting judges to approve more than 70 delays so far. @propublica.org @adn.com

same vibe

I'm looking forward to doing my annual review in the next two weeks - this is still the way I reflect on and set goals for the year ahead! medium.com/@stevie-chan...

My TEDx talk about people-centered AI and mental health is finally live! This was a really big accomplishment with a lot of work, and I'm proud of it, esp in light of conversations on social media and mental health we're having today - www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30b...

Springer wrapped just dropped. My top artist is "log in via an institution to check access."

Two stages of writing: 1) This shouldn't take too long 2) Oh no

Sick day means I get to play with S3 and torrents. Feels like a middle school throwbacks, minus the homemade CD with a Sharpie title

Interested in building AI to complementing humans or understanding how AI fits with human goals? Please apply to be a postdoc UChicago DSI @dsi-uchicago.bsky.social datascience.uchicago.edu/research/pos...

I made a starter pack for the GroupLens current faculty and students + alumni! Please reply here if I need to add you or I missed you (thanks @estellesmithphd.bsky.social and @danielrunningen.bsky.social for the idea) go.bsky.app/6AZrbC8

The FATE group at @msftresearch.bsky.social NYC is accepting applications for 2025 interns. 🥳🎉 For full consideration, apply by 12/18. jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo... Interested in AI evaluation? Apply for the STAC internship too! jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

ACLU is hiring an Algorithmic Justice Fellow to work on cutting edge projects focused on digital rights! Come work with us to interrogate how automated systems are being used in high stakes areas. Please share widely! www.aclu.org/careers/appl...

When I will respond to your email

🚨Out in PNAS Nexus🚨 Content moderators can often get exposed to falsehoods In field studies with professional moderators, we show that exposure to false claims increases belief in those claims - BUT getting them to consider accuracy when exposed prevents this! academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

The follow-energy is great, but these 30+ follower list notifications make it really hard to find friends from bots. I promise I'm not trying to side eye you!

Discussing Bluesky migration in terms of liberal flight misses the simple fact that most people use social media for fun not influence and this platform, unlike X and cruddified Facebook, doesn’t feel like you’re wading through shit to reach your friends. It’s not that deep.

We’re hiring at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab: 6 postdoc fellow positions for 2 yrs in tech & democracy, broadly understood. All disciplines welcome. We sponsor visas, offer research $ and benefits. Join info sessions. Come work with me, apply by Jan 15: jobs.virginia.edu/us/en/job/R0...

I made a Black women in tech starter pack because I couldn’t find one and it annoyed me. go.bsky.app/5upv7SQ

-taptap- is this thing on? How's my outfit look for the party?