“I had this rising sense of anger that Amazon is attempting to infringe on my rights to speak out politically in my city,” Patrick Schloesser, a software engineer at Amazon, tells The Times “If we allow corporations to decide which speech is or is not allowed, that absolutely hurts democracy.” #AI

“The next day, an Amazon employee relations staff member met the three workers in individual meetings and told them that they were under investigation for their testimony. Mr. Irani said he was repeatedly questioned about his testimony and who else at Amazon was present at the hearings.”

AI has started blocking the Wayback Machine from chronicling the web. Considering that nearly 40% of websites disappear after 10 years, this will enforce a giant loss in collective memory.

these tech billionaires are all TESCREAL cultists and they say the most Bond-villain type of things. we should prioritize our biology (and the rest of the planet) over their deranged fantasies

Oh my god, PLEASE do not fangirl/fanboy over **actual fascist** Giorgia Meloni

L to R: Chris Richards: biracial kid from Alabama who speaks about black history and has tattoos of MLK, Ali, and Obama Sergiño Dest: Dutch-Surinamese, emigrated to Brooklyn as a kid, naturalized Fola Balogun: born in Brooklyn to vacationing parents, raised in UK but CHOOSES to play for USA

AI is making us stupid.

All you have to do to get ahead is get a good education, work really hard, have the right mom, and be willing to work for the antichrist

Counterpoint: the only thing this set of people want to get rid of more than academic research is serious teaching.

According to a Brown University study, George Bush’s post 9/11 wars killed between 4.5 to 4.7 million people, mostly Muslim, mostly civilians, women, and children. Let’s not normalize war criminals who said God sent them on a divine mission to invade Iraq and mass murder millions of people.

What makes my heart heavy is that 13 servicemembers and a school full of girls died for no reason except to attempt to boost a sad old man’s ego

I think the thing that's standing out to me is that like...groomers aren't nearly as common as they're made out to be, but even if they were, "hey kid, tell anyone and you'll get in trouble for breaking the law" is one fucking amazing way to guarantee kids will hide it.

I really do think a lot about how big tech systematically destroyed all the reasonably-safe places intended specifically for kids online…. and now powerful interests are turning around and claiming that we have to destroy Internet privacy because being online is obviously dangerous for kids.

Right, it’s terrifying to consider the possibility of kids not reporting groomers and abusers if they’re afraid THEY will get in trouble for defying age verification laws.

PHEW this thread.

I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +

This fits with the dozen or so studies I have read so far about cognitive loss from AI use. I wonder if the speaker's peripheral awareness of his intellectual and creative loss lead to the feelings of "uselessness" in the face of AI, despite its severe limitations.

Utterly aghast at this thread. This guy is trying to make himself, his peers, his field “obsolete”. And he knows it’s wrong. Otherwise he’d have been open about it from the beginning. They’re trying to force us to accept it by sneaking it in. I’m not having it.

NEW: the US government intervened Monday on behalf of xAI in a lawsuit over its gas turbines, claiming that the company needs to run the turbines in order to power Grok, which is "vital" for national security lots of wild stuff in the filing:

"Trends have shifted left" is straight white man for "I don't got the juice." We are further right than we have been in decades. We are literally one click away from outright fascism. Corruption has never been more rampant. Open bigotry against minorities is a daily occurrence. What can't you say?

This is a fucking racist-ass World Cup (because US immigration/visa policy is extraordinarily racist right now), and we have been presented with ample evidence of this for months. I am just saying

I am having a hard time finding enjoyment in "Europeans come to the US for the Cup" because hey did you already forget that they refused to let non-white people into the USA for this

During Germany Curacao match a referee did a white nationalist sign.

THANK you, KTLA

I am so constantly, ceaselessly, and quite genuinely angry about how AI slop has started to ruin fun animal videos on the Internet.

Very true story: my choir director almost got arrested because when we visited the Lincoln Memorial she was so moved she had us sing an impromptu song in honor of him without a permit. This is grotesque.

i really, truly, find this offensive

What changed is that Focus on the Family, Family Research Council & all the CNP hate groups who made hundreds of millions 💰 scaring voters about 5 trans athletes used that 💰💰cash to launch a new nationwide initiative to overturn gay marriage.

All "Generative AI" Systems Do Is Fabricate Evidence: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

All "Generative AI" Systems Do Is Fabricate Evidence: "Misinformation in the Age of 'AI' with Dr Damien Williams" www.youtube.com/watch?v=THE5...

*stage whispers* All "Generative AI" Systems Do Is Fabricate Evidence

We have no money. You know this. Why do you keep asking why we’re not doing things we used to do? It’s because we have no money. We. Have. No. Money. We have no money. There is no money left. It’s all gone. None of us have it. No money. Nope. Money gone. We don’t have it. No.

Listened to an NPR story this morning about mass child starvation in Senegal without a single mention of Elon Musk, the guy who gleefully created the conditions for the mass starvation

Haiti had the best uniforms for the world cup (pictured below), but FIFA-who issued Donald Trump the FIFA peace prize-vetoed them because they didn't want to appear political 🫠

#FIFA: enslavers, much?! Preventing Team #Haiti from wearing uniforms depicting the emancipation of their enslaved ancestors is totally consistent with your fascist history. (Free article)

The world's first trillionaire did this

This is accurate & not hyperbole from @jfallows.bsky.social With support from USAID, the DRC had built an outbreak preparedness & response system “ready to go,” e.g., surveillance, labs, health workers, & stockpiles of personal protective equipment When Musk killed USAID, that system collapsed 😢

Sharp thinking by the world’s most brilliant baby boys to create the biggest billboard projection opportunity in D.C. with the Kennedy Center tarp.

Any Democrat who drags their feet on aggressively undoing everything this guy did, should immediately be primaried into the Sun.

Just in case Dems wonder if they should include tearing down the ballroom and the arch

For decades, Dan Patrick has sold out the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable to enrich his donors. Love feels like blasphemy when you worship power.

"Love feels like blasphemy when you worship power” damn ok James get his ass

What's so insidious about this is that it's cloaked in the language of reestablishing academic rigor and standards even as they do not feel beholden to these things. Is their report peer-reviewed? No. Is it rigorously factual? Also no. Are its methods clear and accessible? Haha. No.

BREAKING: Judge Angel Kelly blocks Interior Sec. Doug Burgum's “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” Order as "a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization" and orders DOI to "restore and reinstall" removed materials "forthwith." ORDER: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

People are cheering as they’re removing the mark of the beast from the Kennedy Center.

NYT visual investigative journalist Christiaan Triebert with a vital fact check of Palantir CEO Alex Karp:

I mean… let ‘em. Let’s see how that goes for them.

Pixar Screenwriters: In our movie we invented the Lilypad as a cautionary tale Disney Company: At long last, we have created the Lilypad from upcoming Pixar movie Don’t Play with the Lilypad

This whole genAI thing is just the most boring hustle. Absolutely embarrassing to have to deal with people (especially bosses) who have fallen for it.