I have so much admiration for @alondra.bsky.social's integrity and leadership here. time.com/7285045/resi...

If you’re like me and feeling increasingly hopeless and powerless about rising fascism, here is something you can do about it ⬇️

So appalling. I hope she sues.

I wrote a response to Thomas Friedman's "magical thinking" on AI here: aiguide.substack.com/p/magical-th...

Eliezer Yudkowsky, quoted in the NY Times. For anyone who has followed the "AI Safety" / "Less Wrong" discussions, this is...well, something.

We need new rules for publishing AI-generated research. The teams developing automated AI scientists have customarily submitted their papers to standard refereed venues (journals and conferences) and to arXiv. Often, acceptance has been treated as the dependent variable. 1/

⬇️ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🧵 The summer of 2025 has been AI's "cruel summer"—wrongful deaths, dangerous therapy chatbots, medical misinformation, facial recognition failures. These aren't isolated glitches but predictable harms from systems deployed without adequate oversight. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

wrote about the “national conservative” vision for america

Proud to have Teresa Leger Fernández as my congressional rep!

Just reading the Friedman AI articles in the NYT. There is *a lot* of magical thinking in them. E.g.: "We discovered in the early 2020s that if you built a neural network big enough, combined it with strong enough A.I. software and enough electricity, A.I. would just emerge." (1/2)

I was profoundly saddened to hear that my friend Brian Cantwell Smith has passed away after a long illness. Brian's work on on the foundations of computing and intelligence was deep and insightful. He was a remarkable person & overall mensch. May his memory be a blessing. tinyurl.com/2u3fh42m

Yudkowsky says he will die from "an AI-launched object the size of a dust mite." Would that object be, by chance.....a miniature paperclip?

Very cool postdoc opportunity (at intersection of physics, philosophy, and complex systems) ⬇️

RFK Jr. is a danger to public health. He should resign.

Yesterday the president demanded that evidence about Covid vaccines be shown to the public. Today @apoorvanyt.bsky.social & I run through some of the studies made public over the past 4+ years that show that the vaccines work. Gift link: nyti.ms/46k17Tq

If your state hasn't done this yet, call your governor's office as well as top public health official in your state, and request that they do this. If enough people start calling, they will hear us loud and clear!

New Mexico FTW!

Important 🔥🔥 must-read from @beenwrekt.bsky.social ⬇️ www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-...

Massive walkout underway at CDC. RFK jr. must resign so that we can be safe.

Revealing total ignorance of how long PhD takes -- or is it actual malice? Or desire to destroy US-based higher education and science? Why?? www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Sen Patty Murray (D-WA): “If there are any adults left in the White House, it’s well past time they face reality… We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired.”

It’s official. September 6th. From all across this nation. We march in D.C. Join us.

Time to revisit Joseph Weizenbaum's 1976 "Computer Power and Human Reason.

Terrifying insanity. What can be done to stop this?

My new piece in the @thebulletin.org is out. To my surprise, I ended up in a more pessimistic place than I thought I would, about the threats to democracy. thebulletin.org/2025/08/how-...

As a UM alum, my question is, wtaf ⁉️

ICE getting routed in my old DC Columbia Heights hood. Public, viral, resistance is the only way to prevent them from selling the idea that we love our red state military occupation are it’s a solution to urban ills Trump/Bondi/drunk Pirro are lying. Here’s how to expose the lie.

Let them know you're filming them and keep asking the key questions: "Do you have a warrant signed by a judge? Show me." "Do you have a badge? Show me." "Do you know how pathetic you are? You showed me."

I always appreciate @cwarzel.bsky.social's takes on AI! 👀

TIL that you can get Google's AI overview to say anything you want, just by asking.

Don't trust phone numbers given in Google AI overviews, #1 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Here's his GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/f/help-suppo...

👀 Deeper look the source at Hierarchical Reasoning Model's performance on ARC-AGI: arcprize.org/blog/hrm-ana...

New position paper! We argue that symbolic and neural network models are not in opposition to each other, but occupy different levels of analysis, and also outline a new research agenda for better understanding the relationship between them. Please check out the paper / thread for more details!

A fun and fascinating read from @bcmerchant.bsky.social on an AI "existential threat" meeting. I recommend it (and Brian's Substack newsletter in general) ⬇️ www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-disagre...

On this week's @science.org podcast: Why chatbots lie to us w/ Melanie Mitchell and can synthetic organs and AI replace animal testing? w/ @sarareardon.bsky.social & @meagancantwell.bsky.social Listen here: www.science.org/content/podc...

This is what happens to successful authors. Caveat emptor. Something similar happened (on much smaller scale) w/ one of my books. Amazon did nothing. Then a journalist reported on it. Amazon took down offending title. I hope someone will report on this happening (much more blatantly) to Eric!

Good news for Ireland and Austria....

Vibe deleting. arstechnica.com/information-...

When is the mass protest outside the HHS headquarters?

OMG. One of this century's most important advances in medicine and public health thrown out the window. For what end?

Depressing but important article on how GenAI is destroying the publishing industry. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Worth reading. What universities will the government extort / blackmail next?

Lovely obit of Tom Lehrer: momentmag.com/tom-lehrer-a... Before reading this I didn't know that, in 2020, he relinquished copyright and put all his songs in the public domain.

PSA: Just trotting out the aphorism that “all models are wrong, but some are useful” doesn’t mean *your* model is among the latter…

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Maybe Meta can hire the National Science Foundation. I hear there is some science expertise there, and they are short by $1B+

I'm thrilled to be part of this project with Ellie Pavlick, @geomblog.bsky.social and many others.

The GOAT of comedic song writing (and performing)! May his memory be a blessing and a reminder of the joy of brilliant silliness (e.g., my personal favorite: "Lobachevsky" www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4v...)