"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.

🎙️ Research beyond the page! Join our Introduction to Podcasting workshop on 18 May (online). Learn to shape ideas, find your voice, and start podcasting. Only 12 spots—hands-on & supportive. Book here:https://buff.ly/Ks6Y236 #Podcasting #PublicEngagement #ECRs #Research

Here's the link to the free pdf of my new book The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet. Access is so important and I'm grateful that the press is platforming it as one file that is easy to download. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

@commonnotions.bsky.social presents: Raging Against the Machine: A Popular School Against AI! Thanks to @danmcquillan.bsky.social, @zeerak.bsky.social, @ali-alkhatib.com, @melhogan.bsky.social, @tamigraph.bsky.social, @olivia.science, @irisvanrooij.bsky.social, and @notnaughtknot.bsky.social!

some writing on AI as a war issue and war as a workers issue, and how the middle term does not simply cancel out

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

We are hiring! The Department of Inequality, Transformation and Conflict is looking for Postdoc & Doc Researchers (m/f/d). Find out more & apply via www.ips.mpg.de #MaxPlanck #Postdoc #PhD #Sociology #SocialScience #PoliticalScience #Inequality #Conflict www.ips.mpg.de/13135/stelle...

"Councillors agreed that no further data centres should be approved until the Scottish Government defines what qualifies as a “green” data centre."

“In exchange for a few dollars, its trainers are fueling an industry that may eventually render their skills obsolete, while leaving some of them vulnerable to a future of deepfakes, identity theft & digital exploitation” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

“About 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health professionals were striking Wednesday in Northern California over concerns that the health care giant is replacing therapists with artificial intelligence.”

Among the 1600 employees laid off (~ 10% of Atlassian's workforce), some were on the frontline of building AI into the company’s products. Some who had worked there for more than a decade. Others were on leave when they found out they were without a job.

Three years into the AI era, educators say they face a major crisis. Bosses and clients replacing tutoring jobs with AI. Replacing *athletic coaching* with AI. Many students now cannot grasp why they would *not* use AI for schoolwork. And worse. The 5th installment of AI Killed My Job—educators:

“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.” www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Grammarly's AI-fueled edits -- using my name - suggested making up sources and writing vague insinuations. In my latest for @nytopinion.nytimes.com (gift link) I describe Grammarly's terrible edits in my name -- and call for a federal right of publicity. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/o...

The @starlingcentre.bsky.social @westernufims.bsky.social is delighted to co-sponsor an online lecture by @danmcquillan.bsky.social next Friday, March 20 at 1pm ET. Registration is free, and you can tune in from anywhere on Al Gore's Internet! Register here: westernuniversity.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

This is not good. Read this article. ⬇️ nymag.com/intelligence...

Reporting back from a timely conversation on building careers in a changing academia. Grateful to @karengregory.bsky.social, Nelson Oppong and Adam Badger for the candid and thoughtful discussion.

New to me: Dirty Data, a collaborative project featuring 40 journalists across Asia, Latin America, and Europe investigating data centers, their impacts, and how communities are fighting back against data center construction. The website includes original reporting and an interactive map.

CFP, AI Resistance, Refusal, Reclamation & Reimagining: Ethical Imperatives and Emerging Practices! Note "This collection is focused ...on the strategies & actions of individuals, communities, organisations & collectives to actively resist, refuse, reimagine & reclaim 'artificial intelligence."

“It is much easier to quantify and qualify the immediate, case-by-case impacts of a set of data centers on the ground, but grasping the full picture of data center impacts requires contending with the entangled, ever-changing, and fundamentally unseeable global flows of materials, capital and power”

Call for Abstracts for EASST2026 conference which takes place in September, in beautiful Krakow, will close on 9 March 2026 [23:59 CET]. Please submit your abstracts to our panel below welcoming submissions on topics across #STS #environmental #climate #socialscience #affect #planetary thinking.

For those at @uoe-sps.bsky.social: Feb 17th: CAHSS Network for the Study of Work www.sps.ed.ac.uk/news-events/...

We’re dropping the final four interventions with @meredithmeredith.bsky.social @grohmannrafael.bsky.social, Chenai Chair, and @chinasa.bsky.social. In Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, we’re reframing the narratives that shape AI discourse, policy, and power today. 🧵

Genealogies aren’t nostalgia, they’re accountability tools. Panel 2 asks how historical continuities can inform more critical approaches to data politics. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105 #DataGovernance #STS

🚲 Are you a delivery rider in Edinburgh? Come to the next ROOM´s monthly gathering! 📩 Any questions? Just drop a message: [email protected]

CONTROVERSIES in the DATA SOCIETY Seminar Series Rethinking sustainable AI Labour and environmental perspectives from the Global South Friday, Feb 13 3:10pm - 5:30 pm Srravya Chandhiramowuli and Dr Beatrice Bonami Booking: edin.ac/4tejumk

Working at the University of Edinburgh? Researching work & labour (including labour markets, employment policy, ethnographies of work, digital tech, AI & automation, etc), and want to meet others? Well you're in luck! Feb 17th 10am: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cahss-netw...

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What does it mean to build a career in research and academia when the two seem to be in flux and under strain? We will discuss this in detail at this panel discussion in a couple of weeks. Please come along, February 18, 2.30PM! registration link below 👇

🎯 Getting Gig Work on Scotland's Political Agenda Food delivery workers joined the Workers' Observatory workshop this week to build political momentum towards fair and safe gig work in Scotland. You can read the workers' principles and policy demands here: workersobservatory.org/documents/WO...

"Starbucks announced the rapid rollout of a tool called 'automated counting' that... aimed to replace hand-counts of some products with automated ones that are faster and more accurate... But the app frequently miscounts and mislabels items" www.reuters.com/legal/legali...

are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a... pls repost

In the most desolate, American techno-fascist story one can imagine: ICE descends on a data center construction site in Louisiana to abduct workers. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In making work visible (1995), Lucy Suchman writes: "Work has a tendency to disappear at a distance, such that the further removed we are from the work of others, the more simplified, often stereotypes, our view of their work becomes"

Found in the children's section of a book store, alongside ABCs of nature, animals, action words,etc. Why, just why!

“We call it the ‘Love Boat,’” he said. “We spend more time with each other than with our own families, so we have formed strong bonds. We look out for one another.” A glimpse of life on Africa’s only undersea internet cable repair ship https://restofworld.org/2025/africa-internet-cable-repair-ship

🎓🇪🇸 Fully funded PhD in Digital Humanities at King’s College London The King’s–Ramón Areces Foundation scholarship supports Spanish nationals with full tuition, an annual stipend (£22,780), and research funding. 📅 Deadline: 13 February 2026 #PhDFunding #DigitalHumanities www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...

Returning from the most fantastic @stsindianetwork.bsky.social conference this week! An engaging set of panels and discussions that showed the rich histories of STS in India, that I'm now eager to dig deeper into! It was equally refreshing to be in discussions that barely mentioned any AI.

Data work companies hire “white-collar professionals rocked by mass layoffs & hiring freezes, forcing them to make the same cryptic tradeoff: take a volatile job that will temporarily help pay bills to train the next gen of AI that could one day replace them.” financialpost.com/technology/b...

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...

Call for PhD Student! I'm recruiting a PhD student to work with me on a project related to my Future Fellowship at Monash University on the political economy of insurance, risk technology, climate governance, and the crisis of uninsurability. Here's the overview of my fellowship.

If you are someone — citizen, scholars, journalist, activist, etc — fighting against AI data center development anywhere in Canada, can you ping me? Would like to coordinate something…

✨exploring empirical encounters with computational 'intelligence' - an in-person event with Edinburgh’s DARE project researchers @nicolasugden.bsky.social, Abby King and Max Perry, looking at how data is being used in UK healthcare and biomedical research. ⬇️ sign up below! shorturl.at/Yj91W

while I'm at it, also sharing this 5 year postdoc at ANU (Australia) mostly because I find the project - the cultures of the cryosphere - fascinating & a really #histSTM coded theme... www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/list...

📣 I am hiring a postdoc! aial.ie/hiring/postd... applications from suitable candidates that are passionate about investigating the use of genAI in public service operations with the aim of keeping governments transparent and accountable are welcome pls share with your networks

Want to add your voice to UK discussions around responsible AI? We @braiduk.bsky.social are looking for people interested in joining our stakeholder forum.

NOTES TOWARD A DIGITAL WORKERS' INQUIRY by The Capacitor Collective delivers first-hand accounts from the tech sector’s burgeoning labor movement. Preorders save a couple bucks and get a free zine on the history of workers' inquiries! Checkout with coupon code DIGITALWORKERS: buff.ly/9Li5A3U