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

Join us Tuesday!

The thing that's so difficult in fighting pseudoscience is that its followers fundamentally don't believe in expertise. Exceptional people? Sure. The naturally gifted? of course. But I've talked to people face-to-face who simply don't believe people can get better at things.

I don't usually read dissertations - this will be one I do read (and I've already read excellent parts of it!)

Trans Technologies is available now! My book examines how technology creates new possibilities for transgender people, and how trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology. "An absolute must-read for anyone that cares about technology and trans liberation." - Alex Hanna

Still scratching my head about how US company OpenAI can support building in sovereign AI in the UK, which - last time I checked - was not an American state

🎉 A lovely wedding present from Big Data & Society! I bring together an ethnographic study of AI practitioners with Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, exploring how ambiguity shapes AI practice and ethics journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

✨really enjoyed being a very tiny part of this last week, giving the intro - thanks for organising @velocitygravity.bsky.social!

At STS Italia and immensely excited to hear the first keynote from Ruha Benjamin!

got a room full of people laughing about network graphs last week at the @aies-edinburgh.bsky.social Queer Data Showcase - who knew! Thanks to @kevinguyan.bsky.social @sj-bennett.bsky.social @mystikaglamoor.bsky.social and all my co-presenters for a fantastic evening ☺️ 📸Daniel McGowan Photography

The Queer Data showcase is fantastic. Lots of excellent funny, thought-provoking presentations and my highlight so far has been @katherinewyers.bsky.social with improv sax accompanying her story of the emotional toll of queer fieldwork.

✨inspired and energised by our wonderful speakers at the Queer Data Showcase, hosted by fantastic @mystikaglamoor.bsky.social, supported by @prideinstem.bsky.social, and co-organised by @kevinguyan.bsky.social and yours truly @sj-bennett.bsky.social @velocitygravity.bsky.social @srravya.bsky.social

Super excited for this tomorrow!! ✨

Unsure how to collect gender, sex and sexuality data following the UK Supreme Court ruling? 📝 New writing on how a biology-first approach to diversity data WILL NOT WORK and how we can defend inclusive approaches. kevinguyan.com/2025/05/27/d...

🔥only a week and a half until this, where’s it’s the time to!! We still have a few tickets left, sign up below 👇🏻

I don’t have words for this

"What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians,” [former Prime Minister Olmert] said." www.huffpost.com/entry/israel...

I've created a survey on ethics resources. Anyone in UK who does research with LLMs, in academia or industry, building models or using them as tools, is eligible. Takes 10 mins and there's the chance to win £100 voucher. Survey: lnkd.in/eFRsqpT2 (V1 of the guide is here arxiv.org/abs/2410.19812)

This has been the consensus of every leading AI researcher I know who is serious about the science and the evidence, as opposed to a) trying to push a product or a brand and/or b) viewing the creation of AGI as an article of religious faith and devotion.

Looks fascinating - via @vgoujon.bsky.social : journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Super looking forward to this! June is shaping up to be a month full of exciting talks and events 🕺

The amazon burns so that people can ask an AI to jork it while the AI has a mental breakdown about south africa

Taming Affect: On the Construction of Objectivity in Data Annotation Practices by @benedetta.bsky.social in Digital Society link.springer.com/article/10.1...

this is not an exaggeration

Have you ever felt like the available gender, sex and sexuality boxes don't fully capture your experiences, hopes and desires? Welcome to a Rainbow Trap 🌈 👮 💘 🎥 ✈️ 🏃‍♂️ 💼

✨a truly fantastic and insightful talk from Oksana Dorofeeva, who discussed her findings which highlight areas where machine learning specialists ascribe ethical significance - unpicking ethics, hype, and hierarchies of worth in ML practice

"Trump...has effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit, Israeli officials say...The return to full-fledged war would come after Israel already cut off all supplies of food, water and medicine" this era is so bleak www.axios.com/2025/05/05/i...

Accelerationism. (When they tell you who they are, believe them).

Small flicker of sensible hopefulness visible in this piece on Labour's failure to speak to progressive voters. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

“This self-correcting mechanism within the party failed to operate because the centralised control of the party under Starmer has meant that political debate…is closed down and dissent expressed by Labour MPs is met with threats of the withdrawal of the whip” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Important intervention from @alexcampolo.bsky.social on #benchmarking in #machinelearning How do benchmarks produce certain temporal values and expectations?

It’s slop world, baby! In the new TMK, we get into how the internet—and broader digital economy—is a system driven by the continual capture and recapture of deep fried forms of value, instead of actually producing anything new or useful. soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

✨ and another AIES event - on a topic which brings back some nostalgia for my PhD! We’ll go for drinks afterwards

🔥can’t wait for this in June! Come see the wonderful artists, academics and activists who will be performing and presenting at the Pleasance, hosted by the wonderful Mystika Glamoor Co-organising this has been a beacon of hope in a sea of shitty news - thanks @kevinguyan.bsky.social

📢 interested in how AI (re)enacts norms in medicine? Join this workshop I’m organising with @benedetta.bsky.social, @alexcampolo.bsky.social and @chogberg.bsky.social, supported by @amoorelouise.bsky.social & AlgoSoc - contact us for more info We can help with travel costs for PhD students/ECRs!

More people need to understand the massive negative externalities - and huge bloody bills - imposed on the entire world wide web by LLMs. The sense of entitlement to other people's labour and other organisations's hugely increased monthly overheads of the tech bros is nothing short of depraved.

New publication OA #philsci — where I discuss the epistemic nature of three possible varieties of ‘local knowledges’ and defend their importance for fulfilling human rights — from the right to participate in science to the right to food and right to clean water www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Happy to be quoted in 'Is AI Worth It? A Growing Number of Artificial Intelligence Skeptics Is Raising Doubts About a Utopian Future' archive.ph/gjmCY. The mag is delivered to SF's most exclusive neighborhoods - hope some VC chokes on their Chai Latte while reading it.

Reading the AI Action plan again and having two very conflicting thoughts - 1) I truly despise reading about AI now, and reading more of this bullshit may make me spontaneously combust 2) damn, if I’d just kept working in AI I’d have made a fortunate by now

Some news many years in the making: My book EMPIRE OF AI, out May 20, is ready for pre-order at empireofai.com. It tells the inside story of OpenAI as a lens for understanding the moment we’re in: the tech elite's extraordinary seizure of power and its threat to democracy. 1/

Really excited to chair this event, with BRAID fellows Caroline Sinders and Paula Westenberger, and Richard Combes from ALCS to talk about protecting artists rights and the value of creative labour!

🔥the second panel was a candid conversation about building careers in turbulent times - reflecting on nonlinearity, precarity and the role of values in our career trajectories, with inspiring panellists @kevinguyan.bsky.social, Pushpi Bagchi and @mooseabyte.bsky.social and chaired by Aditi Surana

✨our first panel of the day discussing the messy realities of navigating bureaucracy, funding and ethics as early-career researchers in the academy - with the wonderful @mbarany.com, @velocitygravity.bsky.social and Tara Capel, chaired by @sj-bennett.bsky.social