When someone builds a cheap and ubiquitous slop firehose, we're all forced to close our windows and lock our doors Still waiting for someone to explain how this has been a net benefit for human society www.404media.co/arxiv-change...

There's a lot of confusion about saying all LLM behavior is "learned." Plenty is externally designed, albeit in different ways than we would design any other product. Developers can steer models through data curation, fine tuning, system prompts, RLHF and other directed RL techniques, and so on...

Launched my Substack! ✨📌 First post is about Trump's AI executive order requiring system prompt disclosure to prove AI isn't 'woke.' It's not making AI neutral, just embedding Trump's ideology while claiming objectivity. Check it out: researchagainstthemachine.substack.com/p/donald-tru...

There could never be a 'Woke AI.' On a technical level, these are machines trained to identify and reproduce statistical biases in uncurated datasets. They are constrained only by the instructions written by the companies building them. The order just demands AI companies do it in a specific way. ⬇️

Anthropic: "omg guys, our model can't even keep an in-house vending machine profitable, lol" Also Anthropic: "oh but please use it for your high-stakes financial decisions 🥺"

Data & Society’s Jacob Metcalf writes that whenever you hear someone advocating for acceleration, you should ask: accelerating toward what? Today’s techno-accelerationists aim to undo generations of slow, arduous progress toward social, political, and economic equality, he says.

Ohhhh Molly Crockett‘s @mjcrockett.bsky.social keynote talk at #FAccT2025 was soo good 🔥🔥🔥 She talked about how techno-optimism is really human pessimism, how DEAD benchmarks don’t capture full human capacities and feed the hype cycle, how we need to avoid monoculture & imagine new worlds together

It's good that bigger mainstreamer people such as John Oliver are also talking about the "AI slop" era and phenomenon. I do think he was a bit too charitable though. AI slop is not just bad visuals, it's the esthetic of modern fascism. youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?...

“One major culprit behind the wave of depersonalisation is the widespread reduction of individuals to data. Feeling invisible can stem from repeatedly experiencing standardised interactions” aeon.co/essays/our-c...

Our #FAccT2025 proceedings are out!! 🎉 Read all of the published papers here: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...

"I do not need the one magic machine that claims to solve all my issues and then makes me jump through conversational hoops to get a mediocre result. That is actually the opposite of what I need." On chatbots as a bad design paradigm “ChatBot” is bad design

Looking for posts about #FAccT2025? Check out our 🦋 custom feed 🦋 which is already lively and full of papers, events, and attendees for this year's conference in Athens! Click the pin 📌 in the upper right hand corner to keep this feed quickly accessible. bsky.app/profile/mari...

Please come see us at the RC Trust Networking Event! You can sign up with the QR Codes around the venues and get some free drinks! 🙂‍↕️ #FAccT2025

🚀 We’re excited to host Anna Neumann, PhD researcher (@rctrust.bsky.social) for a #PubTalk ✨ on "Seeing What's Missing: Bringing #ResponsibleAI Research Gaps into Focus Through A Landscape Analysis" ⏰ 8 May | 3PM UTC Read more and register: community.aiequalitytoolbox.com/c/march-fed1...

we're hiring! ✨ looking for researchers who want to make AI accountable and trustworthy 📚 PhD position (3 years, fully funded) 🔬 Postdoc position (3 years, fully funded) high independence, interdisciplinary team, real-world impact diverse backgrounds welcome: CS, law, HCI, & more interested? 👇

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

"It’s not just that [AI slop's] aesthetics are useful for Trump, its entire mode of being is useful for how his administration has governed so far" The AI Slop Presidency

no shit www.science.org/content/arti...

they are openly advocating for the use of physiognomy in recruitment make it stop

The rise of gen AI, backed at every level by the far-right, suggests the arrival of an _anti-information_ age. AI offers a self-reinforcing bullshit loop that, much like a Russian disinfo operation, serves to muddy the information space and create doubt about the very nature of reality.

This is horrible on so many levels. Most probably completely cemented and unaccountable by the time anyone can get Musk out of there... www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Funny (actually horrifying) considering Musk can't even automate cars

When I wrote my book The Tech Coup, quite a few people remarked that the word ‘coup’ might be an overstatement. Today it sadly seems like an understatement ↘️ bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

"The dominance of US firms in artificial intelligence and its global market structure depends heavily on their oligopolistic control of large-scale data extraction, which translates into global control over knowledge production and consumption." www.techpolicy.press/ready-for-th...

See now I’m starting to think that these people want a machine to summarize things for them because when a human does it, the human uses words like “no” and “that would hurt people” and “that’s illegal.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Gov is part of a drive to automate public service & admin using ungoverned, unaccountable AI systems. It will harm vulnerable people. Writing in Tech Policy Press in December, @alicetiara.bsky.social & @kevindeliban.bsky.social saw this coming. www.techpolicy.press/ai-cant-solv...

This would kill all algorithmic bias and discrimination research in the US. Right when AI systems are incorporated into government agencies. No one there to audit governing systems, this is incredibly effective and so horrifying

what are the projects/initiatives you know of working on developing technologies for refusal and resistance?

From a journalist friend: Just spreading the word. The CDC is purging data, so people should archive their favorite CDC datasets today, namely ones around race/ethnic diversity, LGBTQ, and reproductive health. Also health data involving climate. The youth risk behavior survey has already gone down.

repeat after me: an AI system does NOT and CANNOT seek power. it CANNOT seek, want, & desire anything more than your toaster can. people in positions of power use AI to seek, assert, consolidate, and centralise power

taking the tech out of technosolutionism, now embracing *nosolutionism*

"...there is reason to worry about cognitive automation depriving us of the opportunity to build and retain those cognitive muscles. That’s the risk of intellectual and moral deskilling. It’s already happening and I think we have to resist it." -Shannon Vallor #AIethics www.vox.com/future-perfe...

"What is needed is self-confidence on the part of democratic government to make sure that these companies, these services, are taking their proper role within a rule of law-based system, and are not overtaking it." Deep sigh and thank you @marietjeschaake.bsky.social for your words.

“I’ve been skeptical about the moral machines project, because it usually ends up just trying to crowdsource moral judgments [and train AI on them] — but the whole point is that the crowd isn’t always right!…it’s a very dangerous thing to crowdsource moral judgments.” www.vox.com/future-perfe...

If it can be scraped, it will *inevitably* used to train AI

No, ChatGPT won't help in the classroom, won't save teachers time, and doesn't represent a set of skills students need to learn. On OpenAI's latest nonsense: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

"However, transparency does not necessarily guarantee accountability or democratic control over one’s data. While transparency is important, it is certainly not enough." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...