I have an article under review where I draw a line connecting Scientology and AI rationalists and, well, this picture in the times article about the AGI house and those dissenting from the pope makes me feel like I’m not out on as far as a limb as I thought…

Three things said about AI and social science: it's a topic to study, a thing to critique, a tool to use. My new Daedalus essay argues these aren't three conversations; they're one. A 🧵 on "Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object, and Tool." www.amacad.org/publication/...

This is the policy we need at every institution of higher education across faculties. Now.

“Academic science is not only about productivity but also deep understanding, creative solutions & training critical thinkers as next generation of researchers. Now is the time for our community to evaluate whether AI products help or hinder these.“ @lmesseri.bsky.social & @mjcrockett.bsky.social🧪👇

Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained go.nature.com/3RiE5HN

Is the purpose of science and 🧪 training to churn out papers or to create a healthy knowledge community? In a @nature.com comment, @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I check in on how AI helps with the former while jeopardizing the latter 1/

We’re hiring! 📣 The Whitney Humanities Center at Yale seeks a recent humanities PhD with experience in program-building, innovative humanities work, and higher ed service for a Postdoctoral Associate in Humanities Leadership. $70K + $3K stipend | Deadline: June 12, 2026 🔗 apply.interfolio.com/185526

Though I received the award in November, the citation for the 2025 Bateson Prize is now up. The citation beautifully captures what I hoped the book would mean to readers. As we all have less time (and attention) for reading, what an honor to know so much time was spent on one's words and ideas.

JFC. Utterly shocking but ultimately not surprising. A military policy built on dehumanizing the other—a necessary precondition for the ongoing genocide—will likely result in this happening.

honestly if some venture capitalist /tech mogul can remake an entire university in a matter of a year or two in exchange for around 2 days of Bezos’s salary(USC founded 1880), it means that any rich person can do anything to any of our institutions at any time unless we take them back systematically

Like a drug dealer, this tech donor offers a free resource that will inevitably hook its users into a dependence, enriching the donor while simultaneously reducing the value of the education students receive. I'm old enough to remember a President Biden who offered sensible regulations on AI.

USC said "it would use a *venture capitalist’s* $200 million donation to apply AI across academic disciplines." "The donation... came from Mark and Mary Stevens. Stevens... is among the largest individual shareholders of the chip giant Nvidia, where he has spent decades on the board." Screaming.

"Nonetheless, it seems a bit odd that, when it comes to predictions about our A.I. future... declarations about higher education have been relatively mellow." Like, what? does he not see the daily existential discourse that we have on this site about AI and higher ed?

oh but it gets better. that guy? will probably be this Thiel protégée blog.ucs.org/julian-reyes...

this bill authorizes the NSF to provide grants for incorporating "AI literacy" into K-12 education. So infuriating to allocate federal grants to create a system for which profits funnel directly back to Big Tech. Further infuriating that this is proposed while the NSF is under-funded & under attack

Watch and read Molly’s brave and deeply timely thoughts. What a role model for us all in terms of how to use our platforms. 🤩

It's really satisfying to have written the rebuttal to this imagination of AI science [checks notes] more than two years ago.

I resigned from the National Science Board in May when meaningful oversight became untenable. I respect colleagues who stayed to serve the NSB's mission. Today's news clarifies that was an erosion of oversight and function has become open elimination of the Board itself. 🧵 time.com/7285045/resi...

🔥 Make DEAD happen osf.io/preprints/ps...

if you post this clip, you should also post clips from the same episode of him saying the 2020 election was stolen, the civil rights movement was “disgusting,” and trump can’t be racist bc he has sex with black women. tucker didn’t have a change of heart over trump; he had a change in strategy

This is a wild, beautiful, wonderful ride.

"Shining a laudatory spotlight on Carlson, Kelly and their ilk does their work for them, lending their reputations new legitimacy the next time they attack immigrants or promote authoritarians. Infighting among voices on the right is welcome, but it’s often best to let them fight amongst themselves"

I've been threatening to teach a course called "Living the Luddite Life" for several years now, and have slowly been seeding the idea in my chair's mind that he'll give me space for a typewriter lab...

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

When a writer you admire shouts you out… dawwwww (and pupppppy) 😳

An extraordinary interview.

In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, writer Neal Stephenson coined the phrase "Metaverse" to describe a VR world experienced through goggles. Now, Stephenson says he no longer believes face-worn computing is the future: “People don’t like wearing things on their faces and don’t trust those who do.”

Tomorrow in Berlin, giving a talk! “1:1 - drawn to scale”. It was fun to think across space, VR, and AI to discuss simulations that strive for realism.

The first academic talk i ever gave (as a 2nd year grad student maybe?) was on the humor that resulted from Pluto being demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet.

i have an anthropology joke but it's culturally sensitive

"the delusions of the Oligarchs... manifest as infrastructure, but will later [be] societal ruins. So, it might be easier to act now — to resist the data centre buildouts that usher in their worldviews — than to rebuild a society that has collapsed from a failed social experiment."

On "Ezra Klein", Jack Clark of Anthropic kept talking about "taste" as what they look for in hiring, now that Claude codes so well. When pressed, he defined "taste" as experience. In addition to the functions Chayka talks about, taste also seems to be a way to replace and diminish "expertise."

Thinking about this 2018 cartoon by Tom Gauld for no reason whatsoever

Nice timing for @mjcrockett.bsky.social and my article on AI Surrogates and Illusions of Generalizability to be officially published. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

In writing about AI Surrogates for human subjects research, @mjcrockett.bsky.social and i realized that their appeal indexes disciplinary anxieties. Dave's post nicely details some of the broader (institutional) anxieties that promises of AI replacements are surfacing. bsky.app/profile/lmes...

There is such an easy route that Uni's are failing to take. Lead with culture change. Stop spamming us about the new software and partnerships. Stop the endless workshops in the teaching and learning centers. Start talking about what learning is and when these products help or hurt this process.

i.... can't.

Revising an academic manuscript, as told in Matthew McConaughey GIFs. Phase 1: Completing the first draft and deluding yourself it's perfect. You did it!

UCLA has inked a deal to give all its faculty discounted access to ChatGPT, the same company who made it possible for their owner to give 25 million to the supreme leader Trump's campaign, the same president who has sued UCLA and ruined its campus life and damaged its reputation. That's leadership!

I had sent MJ this essay. we were both reading it and finding it 🔥 but nearly at the same time realized it was largely LLM penned. If folks want to spend time conversing with an LLM, fine. But i'm frustrated by how much time i spend reading slop (w/out knowing it). Disclose use of LLM from the jump!

Grateful to @mjcrockett.bsky.social for explaining the concept of "epistemic vigilance" that we all need to get up to speed on.

Enough with this winter wonderland!

"Anthropic, the wildly successful AI company that has cast itself as the most safety-conscious of the top research labs, is dropping the central pledge of its flagship safety policy, company officials tell TIME."

Is this bad

Many are appropriately outraged by Altman’s comments here implying that raising a human child is akin to “training” an AI model. This is part of a broader pattern where AI industry leaders use language that collapses the boundary between human and machine. 🧵/

Stanford CS researchers just got a huge payday for promising AI agents that can simulate the real world. @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I wrote about these researcher's vision. Screen shotting quite a lengthy part of our paper, because we spent A LOT of time thinking about the paucity of this promise

reckless endangerment

I don’t really pay attention to charges of doomerism. I don’t know what it means offline. I do know that refusing a version of how the future will unfold forecloses on the power that actually shapes that future. That’s not disavowing that tech changes are happening but they are in now a given.

Everyone should go read "More Work for Mother," by Ruth Schwartz Cowan.