"The questions we are litigating now are less ‘is this AI product good or bad’ and more ‘we have seen what it can do, and do we want AI to exist in this space at all?’" writes @bcmerchant.bsky.social on the shift from rejection to refusal of AI that he documents across different domains.

"all AI will do is require that we work more, harder, and on the parts of our job that shouldn’t even be our job"

This is why I increasingly believe that librarians should use our limited time and resources to lobby for proper regulation and governance and not on developing 'literacy' or 'ethical use' policies after adoption, when it's far too late. It's like teaching victims of crime to be more 'ethical'.

Good news: not just one open job, but two! Both are postdocs in philosophy of science/ML working with my @technomoralfutures.bsky.social co-Director Dr Emily Sullivan on issues in ML scientific understanding and explanation. Ads for a 3 year post and 2 year post are linked below, apply by 20 April

My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.

Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social

✨really looking forward to Ben’s online talk next Wednesday!

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. www.404media.co/this-app-war...

If you want to defeat the far right, you need a real alternative, not a more moderate version that panders & parrots but offers nothing to address real issues. Congratulations @greenparty.org.uk, Hannah Spencer, @zackpolanski.bsky.social & the people of Gorton & Denton www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp...

Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records. Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'. Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

📣our next event “Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-led dialogue”, is happening in Edinburgh Feb 18th - a panel discussion featuring @karengregory.bsky.social, Nelson Oppong and Adam Badger, and chaired by @srravya.bsky.social 👀 sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/navigating...

Everything old being new again all at once is not a coincidence

Reminder that years ago it was found out that the FBI straight up made up a whole bunch of fake forensic sciences, plural. People have gone to jail and been executed due to literally pseudoscience. Hair forensics, for instance, is totally nonsense. They admitted it. slate.com/news-and-pol...

When I led local 'EA' groups, I used to half-jokingly say that effective altruism is a cult. I still like many of the well-intentioned people there. But I've left. Over time, I've come to understand how it's actually a cult. My forum bio now says this:

I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...

“This was the system that let Epstein in and kept him in. It is also the system now steering the most consequential technologies of the coming century. The convergence of Silicon Valley’s elite, the techno-authoritarian right and the labs coding AI and crypto, has only intensified since his death.”

“As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

❔Does anyone know of groups where disabled people/people w chronic conditions and working in Critical Data Studies/AI can meet up? Like a Queer in AI but for disabled folks? I constantly think about how helpful it might be to talk to other people navigating disability, who are doing similar work

In newly leaked audio, Peter Thiel admits he urged JD Vance to ignore Pope Leo XIV on moral questions — including the ethical development of AI. He goes even further, branding Leo “the woke American pope” and suggesting he’s a tool of the Antichrist.

I'm officially a Doctor. I'm very proud of the work I did on the harms of language technologies, my thesis here: lnkd.in/eh6FqZkZ It is a privilege to graduate, when not a single university still stands in Gaza. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, in particular @bjoernross.bsky.social.

📣 Last few tickets left now!!

My student Arlene Lo has a paper on the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's attempts to integrate Indigenous groups into its environmental impact assessments. It's now out in (appropriately enough!) the Canadian journal of philosophy. It's good, check it out! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world And by design LLMs destroy shared context

Our final event of the semester is happening on December 3rd! Interested in critical health data studies? Come along to High School Yards :)

🔔new paper alert🔔 I argue that language technologies are usefully understood as a type of language management (i.e., ways of changing how people use and think about language) -- especially in the workplace -- connecting critical work on AI with language policy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Heading to Edinburgh next week for this exciting event on 🤖🏳️‍⚧️Gender and the Machine🧟‍♀️🧑‍💻, where @naz-andalibi.bsky.social and I will be talking about our research! Thanks to @sj-bennett.bsky.social and @kevinguyan.bsky.social for organizing! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-and...

🥰🥰🔴⭐️

Can’t wait for this!! Only a few weeks away now🕺

'Resisting AI' foreshadowed much of our technofascist moment, but a lot has happened since publication. Why does a broken tech attract such huge commitments? How can it burn so much energy yet claim to save the planet? And can decomputing offer an escape from AI-drive nihilism?

hear me talk about how AI is *really* ruining your job, not by taking it but by undermining your autonomy, enabling (nay, encouraging) your boss to monitor and assess you all the time, and removing everything that sparks joy in your working day Edinburgh (🥰), 28/11!

"UN refugee agency official Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said that the new arrivals told stories of widespread ethnic and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities shot dead because they were unable to flee" this keeps getting worse www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...

"If de Waal is anywhere close to right, this conflict will have killed 7.5 percent of the prewar population of Gaza in just two years." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...

Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Our second event of the semester is next week! 🎉

✨excited to start my UKRI AI Metascience fellowship, where I’ll examine how AI-generated synthetic data is (re)shaping medical research cultures and knowledge practices. Super happy to be staying at Durham University with @amoorelouise.bsky.social as my mentor! www.ukri.org/news/interna...

New article from the Algorithmic Societies group at Durham where theorize prompting as "a mutation in the exercise of political power, beyond the direct command and even the more indirect ‘action at a distance’ characteristic of liberal governmentality...." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“Computation has now been reconfigured by machine learning…” Looks awesome: events.humanitix.com/1000platform...

This is going to be a really engaging and interesting workshop! If you’re around in Edinburgh next Friday, you should come along :)

"A Luddite is someone who is against the *abuse* - not the use - of technology." The kids get it.

Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

this exists it is called thinking

The key problem with what Ezra Klein says here is that he fails – or is unwilling – to grapple with the fundamental reality of the political conflict: The movement that dominates today’s Right fully rejects the very idea of “living here with each other” as equals. That’s their defining position.

Interested in environmental justice & how gender inequalities are embedded in technology infrastructure? Join us for the 4th Gender & Tech webinar, Sept. 29 11am EDT, with Paz Peña Ochoa & @tamigraph.bsky.social. Free & open. Registration: virginia.zoom.us/webinar/regi... Co-org w/ @yasmincurzi.com

📣 NEW -- In The Economist, discussing the privacy perils of AI agents and what AI companies and operating systems need to do--NOW--to protect Signal and much else! www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

Since surely we are taking an evidence-based approach to assessing AI’s value, and in light of last week’s MIT study showing similar results for businesses, we will now be halting the ‘put AI into everything everywhere always’ campaign? *listens in earpiece* oh no

Philosophy is structurally unable to acknowledge that "I dunno, man, maybe?" is objectively speaking the correct answer to most of our questions.

Four journalists were killed by an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital today, including Mariam Dagga, a freelancer with the @apnews.com. She has a 12-year-old son, who was evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war. She was a true hero, like all of our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza. tinyurl.com/3cn5c9vb