We saw some great wins and steps forward in state legislatures this year. We also fought some troubling trends. eff.org/deeplinks/2...

#GhostRobotics, a company that supplies robots for public safety, disaster relief, and the US military, is adding an arm to its #robots. spectrum.ieee.org/ghost-roboti...

AI is shaking up OnlyFans. Chatbots are replacing the Filipino workers who pretend to be models in DMs with fans, and AI-generated images are so realistic that they cannot be distinguished from real photos https://restofworld.org/2025/onlyfans-ai-dm-bots

I wrote a thing. New essay (no paywall or ads): "The Comfort of Scale." I look at why AI is now being framed as a way to clear emotional burden, and what institutions gain when systems are imagined to absorb feeling. jgcarpenter.com/blog.html?bl...

"The boom in #AI data centers is colliding with weak power grids, soaring energy demand, and growing local pushback": restofworld.org/2025/ai-data... #ethics #tech #business #gov #sustainability #environment #education #activism

Unlike a search query, a #prompt... carries tone, cadence, emphasis, and vulnerability. And the interface responds as if the disclosure is being heard. This sense of conversational intimacy lowers the threshold for expression": jgcarpenter.com/blog.html?bl... #ethics #AI #privacy #data

ICYMI: "An Assessment of California Data Centers’ #Environmental and Public #Health Impacts": next10.org/publications... #ethics #law #tech #AI #gov #business #energy #water #education #research #highered

"[F]oundational skills like problem solving and communication are consistently prioritized by employers." That's another reason why we need to keep #AI from undermining the courses and activities in which students develop those skills: spectrum.ieee.org/ai-effect-en... #ethics #tech #education #work

"Before he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency’s role as an independent branch of the federal government": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #gov #internet #tech

"LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled '60 Minutes' segment": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #internet #media

"Talkative Teddy Bears and #Toy Takes on Taiwan: A season of AI-powered toys and ethical issues galore": www.scu.edu/ethics/inter... #ethics #AI #tech #chatbots #contentmoderation #business

"LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled '60 Minutes' segment": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #internet #media

"Before he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency’s role as an independent branch of the federal government": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #gov #internet #tech

Queen Elizabeth stopped by police. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shoplifting. 'Leaked conversations’ from elections. A wave of deceptive media circulating during conflicts. 2025 saw AI-generated media cross a threshold, write Zuzanna Wojciak and shirin anlen from WITNESS. What lessons can we learn?

"Talkative Teddy Bears and #Toy Takes on Taiwan: A season of AI-powered toys and ethical issues galore": www.scu.edu/ethics/inter... #ethics #AI #tech #chatbots #contentmoderation #business

"The deal is expected to need approval from the Chinese #government before closing... [and] require regulatory approvals from both countries": cnn.com/2025/12/18/t... #ethics #law #TikTok #business #socialmedia #data #privacy #contentmoderation

ICYMI: "Silicon Valley data centers totalling nearly 100MW could 'sit empty for years' due to lack of power--huge installations are idle because Santa Clara can't cope with surging #electricity demands": tomshardware.com/tech-industr... #ethics #tech #AI #sustainability #gov #business #access

"Lately, he’s been bugging his parents not for a new video game or an upgraded phone but for a mainstay of their own childhoods: a bicycle. He wants to hang out with the new friends he’s made at #school on the weekends": nymag.com/intelligence... #ethics #tech #education ht @kevinroose.bsky.social

On early experiments with "vibe teaming" and efforts to develop "[d]eliberately designed, #AI-enabled room+model processes [that] can drive better problem-solving within and across #policy domains": brookings.edu/articles/ai-... #ethics #tech

#ethics #tech

The FCC has "removed a statement from its website that said it is an independent agency": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #gov #media #internet

"The news comes as Trump Media’s share price has plunged this year. Truth Social... has announced efforts to diversify into artificial intelligence, crypto and asset management": cnn.com/2025/12/18/b... #ethics #tech #gov #business #AI #socialmedia #energy

"Browser extensions with more than 8 million installs are harvesting complete and extended conversations from users’ #AI conversations and selling them for marketing purposes, according to data collected from the #Google and #Microsoft pages hosting them": arstechnica.com/security/202... #privacy

Featuring: @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social's Adrienne Heinz, @steelworkers.bsky.social's Roxanne Brown, @pattiegonia.bsky.social, @iethics.bsky.social's Irina Raicu, @agu.org's Brandon Jones, @billmckibben.bsky.social, @youthvgov.bsky.social's Julia Olson, Jane Goodall, and @ucs.org's Rachel Cleetus

"Browser extensions with more than 8 million installs are harvesting complete and extended conversations from users’ #AI conversations and selling them for marketing purposes, according to data collected from the #Google and #Microsoft pages hosting them": arstechnica.com/security/202... #privacy

"The news comes as Trump Media’s share price has plunged this year. Truth Social... has announced efforts to diversify into artificial intelligence, crypto and asset management": cnn.com/2025/12/18/b... #ethics #tech #gov #business #AI #socialmedia #energy

The FCC has "removed a statement from its website that said it is an independent agency": arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... #ethics #law #gov #media #internet

Since I can’t get it out of my head, I wrote up my thoughts on @kevinbaker.bsky.social's critique of AI-automated science and the logical end of processes that can't self-correct.

#ethics #tech

On early experiments with "vibe teaming" and efforts to develop "[d]eliberately designed, #AI-enabled room+model processes [that] can drive better problem-solving within and across #policy domains": brookings.edu/articles/ai-... #ethics #tech

"Lately, he’s been bugging his parents not for a new video game or an upgraded phone but for a mainstay of their own childhoods: a bicycle. He wants to hang out with the new friends he’s made at #school on the weekends": nymag.com/intelligence... #ethics #tech #education ht @kevinroose.bsky.social

ICYMI: "Silicon Valley data centers totalling nearly 100MW could 'sit empty for years' due to lack of power--huge installations are idle because Santa Clara can't cope with surging #electricity demands": tomshardware.com/tech-industr... #ethics #tech #AI #sustainability #gov #business #access

"The deal is expected to need approval from the Chinese #government before closing... [and] require regulatory approvals from both countries": cnn.com/2025/12/18/t... #ethics #law #TikTok #business #socialmedia #data #privacy #contentmoderation

"Encoding all of humanity’s skill and know-how into checklists is an enormous, possibly quixotic undertaking, but the frontier labs have billions to spend, and the sheer scale of their demand is reconfiguring the #data industry": theverge.com/cs/features/... #ethics #AI #business #tech

Re-upping: "Knowledge doesn’t work like that. Nothing works like that... So what I tell my students in introductory programming classes is this: programming is forgetting. And this is both a methodology and a warning": opentranscripts.org/transcript/p... #ethics #tech #data #code #education

Interesting to read the "Best for" guidance for OpenAI's "Nerdy" and "Cynical" #ChatGPT custom "personalities": help.openai.com/ko-kr/articl... #ethics #tech #AI #chatbots #design #language

A "catalog of very common patterns observed over many thousands of instances of AI-generated text, specific to #Wikipedia": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... #ethics #internet #tech #language #AI #writing #data #education

"Grokipedia, as an encyclopedia designed to reflect an explicitly political point of view, recalls the pre-Enlightenment encyclopedias that blurred the voices of contributors and editors into one voice blessed by the church or the monarch": prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno... #ethics #internet

"AI reasoning models used 30 times more power on average to respond to 1,000 written prompts than alternatives without this reasoning capability or which had it disabled, according to a study released Thursday": fortune.com/2025/12/05/a... #ethics #AI #tech #sustainability #research

"Trump is trying to preempt state #AI #laws via an executive order. It may not be legal": npr.org/2025/12/11/n... #ethics #gov #tech #business

"Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that 'Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact' or a variation of that sentiment": nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne... #ethics #AI #toys #tech #business #contentmoderation

"Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that 'Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact' or a variation of that sentiment": nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne... #ethics #AI #toys #tech #business #contentmoderation

"Trump is trying to preempt state #AI #laws via an executive order. It may not be legal": npr.org/2025/12/11/n... #ethics #gov #tech #business

"AI reasoning models used 30 times more power on average to respond to 1,000 written prompts than alternatives without this reasoning capability or which had it disabled, according to a study released Thursday": fortune.com/2025/12/05/a... #ethics #AI #tech #sustainability #research

"Grokipedia, as an encyclopedia designed to reflect an explicitly political point of view, recalls the pre-Enlightenment encyclopedias that blurred the voices of contributors and editors into one voice blessed by the church or the monarch": prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno... #ethics #internet

"[F]or Grokipedia, self-published and self-sourced material appears to be preferred to content from... mainstream news organisations. This helps explain why 23 of the 98 citations on my Grokipedia page refer to my personal website": prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno... #ethics #internet

A "catalog of very common patterns observed over many thousands of instances of AI-generated text, specific to #Wikipedia": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... #ethics #internet #tech #language #AI #writing #data #education

Interesting to read the "Best for" guidance for OpenAI's "Nerdy" and "Cynical" #ChatGPT custom "personalities": help.openai.com/ko-kr/articl... #ethics #tech #AI #chatbots #design #language

Re-upping: "Knowledge doesn’t work like that. Nothing works like that... So what I tell my students in introductory programming classes is this: programming is forgetting. And this is both a methodology and a warning": opentranscripts.org/transcript/p... #ethics #tech #data #code #education

"Encoding all of humanity’s skill and know-how into checklists is an enormous, possibly quixotic undertaking, but the frontier labs have billions to spend, and the sheer scale of their demand is reconfiguring the #data industry": theverge.com/cs/features/... #ethics #AI #business #tech