The way I see it, there are only two real possibilities here — either OpenAI is so desperate to prove it's still on the cutting edge of AI to placate investors and partners, or it's so arrogant that it thinks it can harvest and appropriate intellectual property at will, regardless of current law.

"the solution is still the one that can succeed: to build a new cultural order, a new civilization. To do so, academics must embrace an unusual new role: as knowledge workers, they must seize the means of knowledge production." www.publicbooks.org/academics-mu...

OpenAI's Sora gambit is somehow even more reckless and arrogant than we've grown accustomed to with the company. OpenAI is betting that it can spit in the face of creatives, workers, and the largest media companies on the planet—and bend copyright law to its whims.

Begging everyone to think just a little bit about the explicit goals of tech companies before buying the lastest 'innovative' product

Private equity discourse about education is ramping up again: "education has become a compelling asset class offering strong returns, long-term stability, and global scalability" PE investors are desperate to turn education into financial assets with long-term ROI huntscanlon.com/private-equi...

There is a whole micro-industry in edtech market valuation that aims to support investors to price their investments - and humongous figures like the $8t conjured up by big financial orgs surely help prop up edtech markets even when markets look bad www.holoniq.com/notes/edtech...

Billionaire-owned “philosopher” Benjamin Bratton finally coming out as full technofash in this declaration of alliance with JD Vance & a16z — here’s his scathing rejection of those who “stand in the way” of corporate AI agendas nobody wants. www.noemamag.com/is-european-...

Weird when “media studies” is portrayed as a powerful anti-AI lobby. “AI progress” has not been “blocked” — look at stock valuations or US policy! Media scholars are not cited in AI regulation or invited to Trump’s inauguration. It’s a weird cabal to invent and blame for a world that doesn’t exist!

“The opera will tell two parallel stories: one set in 2030 focusing on a tech entrepreneur who has created a humanoid AI, the other set in 1813 telling the story of the luddite leader, George Mellor, as he faces the gallows.”

“The media studies cabal is holding back AI”

“All of this feels ridiculous because that’s exactly what it is. But the larger goal is to inure you to the strangeness of it all so that when these products — be they movies, shows, or TikToks — finally come to market, your reaction is ‘Sure, why not?’”

Such an excellent piece on private equity edtech investors building "a portfolio of companies that amass data and effectively track kids throughout their educational journeys" as a route to big returns.

CNWL NHS Adult ADHD Service: "We're so sorry you've been waiting 203 weeks for a follow-up after your initial diagnosis, submit a Shared Care Agreement from your GP immediately or you will be removed from the wait list! Ta!" eMed, my GP: "Trying to login? 404, fuck you." NHS app: "Call your GP!"

"Hype is no longer fleeting noise. It has become institutionalised, calculable, and consequential." Neat little essay on studying hype practices, devices, and techniques www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/about/news/h...

Macron is now openly calling out bigtech extractive practices and commidification of the user. Good. We need a lot more of this. We need universities to lead this pressure everywhere. #digitalsovereignty #eu #datasociety #academia #academicchatter https://news-pravda.com/eu/2025/10/04/1744416.html

News in Instagram robo-hacking: I just got this. I deactivated my IG about 5 yrs ago. I used to love IG when it wasnt owned by FB but now its just a dump for marketing and grifting, just what we all feared after FB bought it. I haven't attempted to log in for […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

So yes, there's a new public consultation about Canada's AI strategy. It's hard to feel like one can help "define" this next chapter, when the direction seems so set. ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en...

Do Meta spy on us? Eavesdrop through the mic? Meta apps (afaik) track phone behaviour whether you have a Meta app open or not. You only need to have Meta apps installed. #surveillancecapitalism #surveillancesociety #meta #socialmediaads […]

I know this is far too late to make any difference, but I had always thought that the better term for what LLMs do is confabulation.

Interesting. I am not holding my breath. But yes, it will say a *lot* about the Society if they do not expel him now. @deevybee.bsky.social

…y'know what? fine: Touch the bright red shiny stovetop again. I'm sure this time'll be different & not at *all* massively catastrophic due to the kinds of errors necessarily introduced by LLM-based "AI" systems being especially dangerous for anywhere you'd use *Fucking EXCEL* what is WRONG w/ you?!

This will be a claim researchers should interrogate: "Conversations involving religious or political views, sexual orientation, health, and racial or ethnic origin won’t be used to customize ads or content, the company said." www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...

Have you seen that last month ChatGPT's revenue on Android dropped for the first time in history, according to Sensor Tower?

Nora Stanton Barney UK-born #US civil engineer, architect, suffragist. 1 of 1st US women engineering graduates. Given ultimatum of "be wife or practice engineering", chose engineering. Granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton US suffragist. b. #OTD 30 Sep 1883 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_St...

New: ICE has bought a tool that tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of phones globally, updates every single day. Usually harvested from apps and advertising www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

The banned words list applies to all work done at the largest federal funder of clean energy technology. n.pr/4nQ9sEq

New essential reading from Ed Zitron. Ed will feature in at least 2 papers I'm currently writing on knowledge and power. Academic libraries should archive his work (and Merchants too). #ai #genai #academia https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

“.. a fivefold increase in U.S.-based applicants seeking to relocate to European institutions ..” 🤡 @politico.com www.politico.eu/article/euro...

Mark Zuckerberg is introducing a feed that's just 100% AI slop. No pesky creativity from real people to get in the way. Eat up little piggies

Ran into this poster on our campus today 😊

Heartening to see so many students sign our open letter openletter.earth/open-letter-...

One thing that feels underrepresented in our conversations around AI/education is the not-insignificant number of students who have a negative reaction to the idea of using AI—especially being compelled to do it by teachers. They deserve a voice in this conversation, too.

I realised a few years ago that from the point of view of university administration, the research exists solely in order to get research funding, and the teaching exists solely in order to bring in tuition fees. This was not an enjoyable revelation.

We just get, “well, we bought Microsoft 365, and it demands that users employ the AI, so you can’t blame students who use it.” Which is, well, I don’t take pedagogical advice from people who bought software that won’t shut up.

No only is this alarming for the reasons you've pointed out, but all of this new "agency" that AI is promising, is going to wreak havoc on any cybersecurity efforts (which are also being dismantled). No protections, little to no governance - just full speed into hype technology with no seat belts.

I thought we might put up a fight in defense of actual education. I guess I should have known better.

"AI is going to replace actual teaching & instructors & solve the problem of unplugging 20-25% of the entire budget of every research university in America" is an incredible revealed preference. I mistakenly believed we were trying to educate students & conduct actual research. How naive of me.

We have allowed the lazy, grifting Silicon Valley charlatans into the front door, & in doing so, we have learned just how many of our own colleagues & administrators simply are not interested in the actual business of education. It's incredibly demoralizing. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

I saw this great post yesterday from @benpatrickwill.bsky.social about LinkedIn and some app for making it easy to outsource 'every aspect of academic integrity'. But, he deleted it. Please share it again Ben, your voice makes a difference and it was a great post!!

The AI workslop has now cometh. Of course anyone with a brain knew this 2 years ago. Literally I was having chats with someone about AI emails replying to other AI emails. Ridiculous hype and pointless waste of electricity, how humans believe this stuff is just mad. #ai #genai #aislop […]

Londoners! Are you attending Breaking the (G)loom? If not why not? Its tomorrow, its free. #luddites #london https://breakingthegloom.com/ https://london.architecturediary.org/venue/set-social-peckham/

Yes this is as strange and alarming as you think it is: www.wsj.com/tech/peter-t...

A bright side about Nano Banana is it's giving people both "wow, that's incredible" moments, immediately followed by the "oh, so deepfakes are now easily available to anyone" realization. The conversation around content provenance just went from "important" to "hair-on-fire" #AIgovernance #AIsafety

Before the summer I was worried the UK was basically an extended Microsoft franchise, and I guess I didn't see that the sequel to that would be "and now everything belongs to Nvidia"

I was thinking: the US AI industry (aka USAI-Inc) is like a new Empire colonisation. Like the East India Company. Or Belt & Road. Or others. Now its USAI. Many territories and sectors are being extorted and occupied (esp UK & UKHE). Then yesterday I saw that Berkman Klein had the same thought […]

"[R]esisting AI’s further creep into intellectual labor will also require blunt-force militancy. The steps are simple. Don’t publish AI bullshit. Don’t even publish mealymouthed essays about the temptation to produce AI bullshit."

Throwing back to the top of this thread, and the UK's "special" relationship with the US, our version of digital sovereignty looks quite a lot like being a US vassal state on.ft.com/4mWiYFX

This is good on the challenges of AI implementation even in very applied contexts on.ft.com/460us5w (and good to see @mustbemistry.bsky.social quoted here on the use of AI in radiology)