Happy election day! Local races matter - go vote!

This creepy report from earlier this week is sticking with me. It's a foundational threat to freedom of speech. It's also poorly done tech deployment. Building facial rec to identify people on the street and without redress to other docs violates the ethics and scientific consensus of the field...

ICE treating facial recognition matches as definitive IDs to detain individuals is shockingly irresponsible and dangerous. Facial recognition is a highly temperamental technology, with accuracy varying significantly based on an array of factors. www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

Started a thread in the other place and bringing it over here - I really think we should be more vocal about the opportunities that lay at the intersection of these two options! So I'm starting a live thread of new roles as I become aware of them - feel free to add / extend / share :

the newest report from my colleagues at Upturn interrogates a set of under-examined automated systems that directly impact the material conditions of your friends, family, and community: Medicaid home care eligibility algorithms.

A major front of the current information war: getting your facts, frames, propaganda, disinformation, etc. into the AI systems that create so much of the content we see and are rapidly becoming the de facto “ground truth” of the internet.

The search for Upturn’s next Executive Director starts today! We're seeking candidates with 10+ years of experience and a commitment to advancing equity & justice, who can guide Upturn’s long-term political vision and continue to grow the institution. Apply by Nov 24: www.upturn.org/join/executi...

Imagine a browser where you type in “Taylor Swift” and it doesn’t even admit that her website exists. I write about Atlas, ChatGPT’s new anti-web browser that should come with a warning label. www.anildash.com/2025/10/22/a...

This is all so eerily similar to the approach conservatives took to rolling back abortion rights. They start with creating barriers to access, but the ultimate goal is a full ban.

“A data center represents a worse deal for locals than a factory like GM’s," Nick Rommel writes. "A piece of land that once fed thousands of union families will feed far fewer," displacing a community while enabling an industry that seeks "to obsolesce human labor.” thebaffler.com/latest/last-...

this was not his to take, it was ours

Thanks so much to @emilypont.bsky.social for covering what might be the most underrated climate battlefield there is. As I say in the piece, in the Trump era, there is no clearer opportunity for state and local elected officials to make a tangible difference on climate than saving transit.

🚨Today's the day! 🚨 It's the LAST day to register to vote or update your registration in PA before the upcoming election. Visit vote.phila.gov to make sure you’re registered to vote and that it’s up to date, then help make sure your friends’ and family’s are too!

Now there are reports of a “Second Amendment protest” being held at Philly’s City Hall at 4pm (an enormously high-traffic area and major public transport hub). City Council staffers are being sent home right now

The 7 million Americans who took the streets for 'No Kings' made history, and they did something even more important They got under the skin of Donald Trump and his dictatorial regime, on a day that showed that most Americans love democracy instead My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/no-k...

You can read all about the Call for Papers and what’s new for #FAccT2026 this year (hint: a Revision phase!) on our first blog post of the year! facct-blog.github.io/2025-10-16/a...

We’re excited to release the Call for Papers for #FAccT2026 which will be held in Montreal, Canada in June 2026! Abstracts are due on January 8th, papers due on January 13th. Call for Papers: facctconference.org/2026/cfp Important info in thread →

Incisive, beautiful reflection from @bedoyausa.bsky.social on his time in the FTC and how it upended his view of the world and his theory of change for it. We really can win, but we don't win by running from the fight.

Philadelphia's City Council held its first AI hearing today in its tech committee chaired by @ruephilacouncil.bsky.social . It's great to see my city taking AI's impacts on all of us seriously! I was honored to testify on "What is AI?" As I explained, AI is not magic... #PhillyAIHearing 1/n

A good rundown of an interesting hearing this morning. #PhillyAIHearing

I should probably pick a hashtag, huh? #PhillyAIHearing

Fantastic turnout for Philadelphia City Council hearing on AI, spurred significantly by @peoplestechproject.bsky.social.

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

Fact o morning: Three of the six Nobel Prize winners in the sciences are Americans who are immigrants. www.wsj.com/opinion/nobe...

As an expert on help-seeking, I'm not surprised that AI makes it harder for students to develop strong relationships with teachers. Because AI means they can get help without asking an actual human teacher, but it doesn't address the distrust that makes it hard for many students to ask. 1/

Genuine question - what are OpenAI’s Sora and other video generation tools good for? I am honestly trying to understand what is so important that it’s worth the cost. If you have examples, I would be interested to hear them. futurism.com/artificial-i...

They are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them. How a little-known appeal could force your insurer to pay for lifesaving care www.propublica.org/article/heal...

I can’t believe my life is being affected by the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Excited to introduce Vibes from Meta. Eat your slop, piggies!

“AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society, and our descendants will be digging it out for generations.”

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

When ChatGPT first took off this was the use case that confused me the most. People said they “only” used it to write “first drafts.” That’s the most important draft! That’s the thinking part!

Restricting visas doesn’t lead to hiring non-immigrants—it leads to hiring foreigners. For every H-1B visa rejection, multinationals add ~0.4–0.9 foreign employees, especially in R&D hubs like India, China, and Canada. via @florianederer.bsky.social

"The question is whether we will act while AI governance frameworks are still forming or will normalize preventable deaths, discrimination, and erosion of public trust as the cost of doing business." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... By @alondra.bsky.social

The Human Genome Project's Ethical Legal and Social Implications program dedicated more than 3% of its research budgets to this focus. Imagine 3% of public- and private- sector AI research budgets devoted to its societal impacts.

Thanks, AI. share.inquirer.com/ObEMPw

Did we not learn nothing from the abject failure of online charter schools?

It is important to remember that Waymo only operates within an operational design domain that is literally “where we know it will operate safely and well.” That’s why it doesn’t run on all roads, or in all cities, or in all weather conditions. (1/?)

My video about how LLMs are not search engines has led to many, MANY comments telling me that I should be using Perplexity. Some insisting that Perplexity does not hallucinate. Out of a list of 26 papers it just provided me (in "Research" mode) 4 were real. FOUR. 85% hallucination rate.

It’s pretty simple: - AI is driving electricity demand up - The Trump Administration is restricting new electricity supply from being built - When demand goes up and supply goes down, you pay more for electricity.

Do you work at the Office of Management and Budget? Do you know someone who does? Are you a current or former federal worker with information that you can share about Russell Vought? If the answer to any of these is "yes," please contact @andykroll.bsky.social www.propublica.org/tips/

"Age verification" laws are actually "upload your ID or get your face scanned to access every website, ending anonymity and associating your identity with everything you do online" laws and if more people understood that they would not be down for this authoritarian nonsense

It would be very cool if people who a) like the idea of free online tax filing that is not a bait-and-switch from a private vendor and b) support an innovative tool that users loved, would respond to these surveys. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-death-...

Call for Papers! 🧵 The Public's Science–A New Social Contract for American Research Policy a Special Issue of The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Editors: Alondra Nelson (IAS) and Jenny Reardon (UC, Santa Cruz) Abstract Deadline: Sept 19 www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/pub...

New @brookings.edu post up by me and @aselbst.bsky.social describes 5 points of bipartisan agreement (yes - agreement!) on how to regulate AI... and 2 points of disagreement. www.brookings.edu/articles/fiv... It's the listicle version of a forthcoming article: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Dozens of states have proposed or launched DOGE-like efforts. Some use AI to root out “inefficiencies;” others expand access to state data or seek public input. But without guardrails, these moves can risk privacy, security, and even enable surveillance. From Maddy Dwyer: cdt.org/insights/dog...

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years. Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

A thing not often mentioned here is one of the things OpenAI is trying to take away is community. Having experts beyond yourself — and professionals and friends and family and and and — means interacting with them, enforcing community. This attempts (poorly, thankfully) to diminish and destroy that.

One more effort to politicize federal grantmaking. *Grants must by approved by a political appointee, working with OMB. *"Discretionary awards must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities." *Cannot "promote anti-American values" www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...