Honestly this weekend was when OpenAI jumped the shark for me. I was willing to extend them benefit of the doubt right up to the point where they signed a contract with the government that allows autonomous weapons, while telling everyone that it prohibits them.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing in OpenAI’s new contract that prevents the Department of War from building fully autonomous killer robots with their tech. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/openai-jus...

At the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI) conference in Paris, listening to French electronica. Seems appropriate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65s...

Since purchasing X, Elon Musk has shaped the platform to satisfy his own interests. But what can we observe about how his interventions have favored one set of politics over another? Asking this question may help us identify where bias may emerge across all platforms, writes Jonathan Stray.

This is why I work on AI & political conflict. Or one reason why.

Update: I met Joanna. She's a real person! Who really did comment on every single paper! And had trouble downloading the PDFs. I stand corrected. Sorry Joanna!

Has Twitter/X gone right wing? Let's answer this with data! First post of a three part series on auditing the politics of a platform from the outside. In part 1, I look at shifts in X's user base. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/what-are-t...

I kinda like that someone wrote a bot that commented semi-sensibly on EVERY SINGLE paper at #IASEAI.

The digital services act - an EU transparency law - might actually be working to give researchers access to the data they need to understand platform effects.

Look, they're not called Tweets anymore. And they're not even called posts. From now on, they're SpaceXeets. Violators will be demonetized.

The arc of history bends towards justice, but only because millions of people are working the problem.

Open Social Web Series 🌐 Building on the AT Protocol means we don't have to build alone 🙌🏽 Mentions: @jonathanstray.bsky.social @graze.social @stream.place @gandersocial.bsky.social @transrights.northsky.social @skylight.social #OpenSocialWeb #SkylightSocial #BuildWithTori

I just rejected a paper about AI slop because it was AI slop. I suppose one day AI will write good papers, but today is not that day.

Either ICE has started cruelly arresting beloved community members, or ICE is merely enforcing existing laws to remove murderers and rapists. Both of these are only half-right. Whatever side you’re on, you probably have something to learn. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/annoying-f...

Media is fiction when everything is recorded first, selected later. Media literacy is understanding that the popular is extreme. Trustworthy sources are better at modeling and communicating the true distribution of events. Narratives define what counts as an event.

I'm reverse engineering the Twitter algorithm from the source code and experiments. On my own For You feed, only 16% (1 in 6) of posts are from people I follow. This used to be set at 50% in old Twitter. So that's one reason it feels like we've lost our communities there.

I RTed this this morning before reading it (my partner hates that I bookmark that way!), because I hadn’t seen anyone else talking about solutions/ what’s next. I’ve read it now and think solution 2 is both a good and a plausible next step — states choose & perform their own migration strategy. 1/

What's the endgame for ICE protests? As far as I can tell, I'm the only one who has publicly proposed the use of targeted civil resistance to force negotiation of an immigration policy compromise that might appeal to all Americans. Here's my analysis... www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/what-would...

I am thinking a lot today, like many days but more so, about what information an algorithm should show you during a crisis. What will inform, calm, show us all a way through regardless of where each of us stands?

Math Sky, I just learned about Robinson's infinitesimals and I am shook, just shook to learn that you can do calculus entirely without taking limits. Newton and Leibniz were right, they just couldn't prove it.

Ah crap they asked me to area chair.

Become ungovernable

Optimizing for engagement alone can lead to bad results for social media and LLMs. So what's the alternative? You can just ask your users what you actually want to know! Here's Pinterest explaining how they did just that... medium.com/pinterest-en...

Anyone got a take on this study suggesting COVID vaccines (both mRNA and other) increase the risk for some types on cancer? It seems well designed and plausible, but it does have an editor's note saying "concerns have been raised." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Sagrada Familia is every bit as awe inspiring as you’ve heard.

I’ve just discovered King Tubby and my understanding of music history is changed forever. He invented dub and pioneered the producer-as-creator… in the 1970s

Ok. I love this conference but my first and probably biggest criticism of #buildpeace2025 is that, although “plurality” is a recurring theme, pretty much everyone here has strongly progressive politics. A lot of talking *about* the other, not *with* them.

Ola! I’m here in Barcelona for #buildpeace26 Who else is here? I see @loreleikelly.bsky.social

Reviewing papers for IASEAI 26 is exciting! Lots of groundbreaking AI safety work! But I can’t help shake a certain imposter syndrome… I am now literally a gatekeeper in my field.

I saw Bugonia and wow. Not for the faint of heart, but incredible.

So I met this guy who’s meditated 4000 conversations between Israelis and Palestinians since October 7th. And he’s building an AI powered platform for difficult conversations. Here’s what he’s learned. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/what-you-c...

This date could have been a sext.

ATProto is just a 21st century NNTP, amirite?

@lawfaremedia.org where are you on this? I need expert Sandwich Guy legal analysis. The fate of our nation depends upon it.

I've been saying that putting AI in charge of business will immediately result in fraud from the optimization pressure to make money, and lo! the experimenters have found the effect. www.lesswrong.com/posts/LMwkQL...

I've said that newsrooms should engage in internal "adversarial collaboration" to figure out how to report on contentious political issues. Here's @tanglenews.bsky.social actually doing that, with a conservative staffer grappling with the editor's opinions. www.readtangle.com/things-are-s...

I'm really trying to figure out why I dislike TRON Legacy so much. I am a big TRON fan and I just blotted it from my memory. I thought Ares was actually much better as a TRON film. Legacy's design language just feels too much like an iMac commercial. It's not the inside of a computer anymore.

I grew up in Toronto. I could be a Jays fan again, sure.

Writing R code like it's 2014.

Great quote: Most people who like BJJ really like BJJ, but most people who enjoy running only “kind of” like it. So if you are optimizing for “engagement,” videos about BJJ is a stronger signal...than videos about running! This has nothing to do with content; it is all about co-viewership patterns

GreenEarth is creating open source AI-driven recommender infrastructure for BlueSky. Type a prompt, see your feed change. We are here for the users, the builders, the dreamers. Join us. greenearthsocial.substack.com/p/introducin...

tl;dr we live among intersectional bigotry, so any electorally winning political alliance has to include some bigots. I'm sure many folks here will disagree 😛 Feel free to argue on principle, but can you dispute the numbers? www.theargumentmag.com/p/bigots-in-...

The Portland Naked Bicycle Ride succeeded in shifting the media narrative from "violence" to "naked" for a week, even (especially) in right-leaning sources. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/the-strate...

New analysis finds TikTok "systematically boosts" Mamdami over Cuomo medium.com/@dodeles/bey... Last time someone looked at this, TikTok was found to "boost" Republican content. But what does it mean for an algorithm to "boost" content anyway? doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/does-tikto...

Why did links get downranked on Twitter? My best guess (with slight inside info) is: a) Link posts do less well naturally because of UI, which Twitter now confirms b) so link posts were formerly *boosted* c) ranking greatly simplified after Elon, including removing link boost x.com/nikitabier/s...

Seeing lots of "did those protests matter?" chatter. Please see my FAQ. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/does-prote...

Our team is building open algorithmic feeds for ATProto. The big bet here is not that we can make something radically better than the platforms, but radically more collaborative. We're building tools for everyone to experiment with the problem. And choose what they like best from the results.

TIL the Apollo 13 astronauts were on team "hotdogs are sandwiches" and I might never be the same.

What people believe about immigration, what the relevant facts are about economics, demographics and crime, who's pushing what narratives, what policies poll well, and what the humane ways out of this disaster might be. www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/we-have-to...

80 degrees out so I’m still working on campus but outside, reading papers, drinking a boba tea, touching grass.