What an amazing essay from the former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin. I'll share a few sections in the reply but seriously, read the whole thing. It's all insightful and beautifully written. lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

Something I've really noticed among institutional "responses" to generative technologies is that "DO NOT USE THIS TOOL, IT'S COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE" is fudamentally erased from any possibility of ever being an option Often paired with fatalist stuff like "this isn't going away"

one day i will learn that i need to finish my stack of unread books before reserving more from the library but today is not that day

In 2008, a blogger named Curtis Yarvin called for a future president to kill foreign aid programs as part of a plan to replace democracy with dictatorship. Now 600,000 people are dead—and 14 million will die by 2030, according to the Lancet. This is the running death toll of tech fascism.

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵

Also at @mozilla.org Fest, check out this AMAZING interactive installation, a visual database of AGI hype discourse, created by a group of talented students: hype-arenas.xyz It’s beautiful to see how one’s own research can step beyond academic language and become this ⬇️

the question nobody with a soul is asking, answered by people nobody wants to hear from

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you? students: no AI I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

Getting ready to my talk on Artificial General Intelligence as a form of both Deep Hype and as Futures Governance instrument at @mozilla.org Fest. Come by if you around! schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/159

“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life”

finally some good news to wake up to

Thanks for the shout-out, Brian! (and this zine looks amazing. Definitely going to print out some copies for our event) You can still submit today or DM me!

📣 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

"There are more tech lobbyists than MEPs." Live from Brussels: (It's a good study. Check it out.)

I have an article coming out soon in Science & Engineering Ethics which shows how ethics guidelines suppress and background ethical agents. One of the tactics is instrumentalization, which gives agency to AI and hides the true agents. Will update with link to the article once it is published.

*very* excited about @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social’s new book, out next year w/ @uminnpress.bsky.social 🤖 🚫 www.upress.umn.edu/978151791773...

We're going to have people like @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social with us talking about his book. How could I not be excited? there's still time to submit something... www.aanmelder.nl/techrefusal

Every time I see a new submission I get even more excited for this 👇 it's gonna be 🔥

Friends choose your so-called "critics" carefully. Its not a binary. If people do circular citations and happen to never cite the women who laid the groundwork for decades and pay the price, there's a problem.

A frank essay on what sustainability (or lack thereof) looks like in AI research. What is described here by my friend @natolambert.bsky.social, a CS researcher, is true of social researchers of AI as well. Worth reading by anyone thinking about the human costs of the AI race, which are far reaching.

your timely reminder that AGI is neither clearly defined/described nor amenable to scientific or engineering principles... it remains an ideology that is rooted in white supremacy, racism and eugenics

One week left to submit something! What's come in already is 🔥

We're organizing an event on technological refusal in Maastricht, Feb '26 and I'm super excited about it. Details below 👇 Deadline for contributions Oct 31st. Come join us! www.aanmelder.nl/techrefusal

fun fact: you make an entire career out of repeating the work of women of colour tech critics in the full knowledge that you as a white guy will get the big slots and they won't

"That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don't know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won't matter if we don't survive these times." Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)

Welcome to the capitalist innovation museum we got - scam machine - psychosis inducing machine - weapons of mass destruction - button you push that makes the planet hotter - markets that intentionally starve people - clothes that fall apart after washing them 1 time - medicine you can’t afford

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

Ongoing CFP: Heliotrope is seeking submissions on a rolling basis. This a space for short think-&-feel pieces... www.heliotropejournal.net/editors-notes

this!!!

While there is value to foresight and anticipating risks, writes Tech Policy Press fellow @eryk.bsky.social, could the language used by AI risk communities to describe the technology contribute to the very problems it aims to curb?

Here's a video explaining how Chat Control surveillance would work by the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy... fair.tube/w/72DCPMByyS... #speirgorm

every day I wake up and read a headline that sounds like something a concussed writer for The Simpsons would come up with while trying to make an intentionally stupid joke about George Orwell

Oh god, they actually put in the newspaper that I got mad

Yall please go watch @merriam-webster.com’s new AI ad😅 youtu.be/RvQnl3O0D3c?...

Speaking of voices under attack…can we be just as loud about Black journalists and comedians who are silenced, even by our so-called liberal outlets. • Joy Reid • Don Lemon • Melissa Harris-Perry • Tiffany Cross • Jemele Hill • Marc Lamont Hill • Karen Attiah • Amber Ruffin

They've lost the 9yos

I like Jimmy Kimmel. I really do. I have no issues with him. I'm talking about something very different. Kimmel was only suspended. But he's back now. Karen Attiah and all the other Black journalists are still fired. Y'all do know how to fight, when you want to. But you don't really want to. 🤷🏿‍♂️

I was part of a working group on AI and Fraternity assembled by the Vatican. We met in Rome and worked on this over two days. I am happy to share the result of that intense effort: a Declaration we presented to the Pope and other government authorities coexistence.global

apropos of recent posts, I was invited to give a talk to my faculty about "social impacts of AI" on Monday and I have decided to stop being coy about it

"The AI model appears intelligent only because thousands of humans have already evaluated and shaped its outputs ... Their labor produces the value that makes AI systems profitable, yet the “intelligence” is attributed not to workers but to the machine itself." antipodeonline.org/2025/07/30/f...

FWIW, I’ve read a lot of corporate materials on AI for research and I’ve noticed this, too. It may not seem like a big deal that AI sometimes gets stuff wrong, as long as it’s mostly right—but in fact it throws every product into doubt and is therefore close to useless.

If you're in London, check out Breaking the (G)loom, the only event that pokes at (p)doom and references the original luddites all in one title. *Also* wish I could make this one luma.com/9ddl2shi

If you're in New York, join the Silicon Valley tech-rejecting youth, a Palantir whistleblower, activists, writers and critics as they take to the Highline to make some noise. Really wish I could make this.

Protests, mass meetups, conferences—a youth-led movement is reclaiming the Luddite mantle, rejecting a future dominated by Silicon Valley companies, toxic apps, and generative AI. This fall, a "Luddite renaissance" is in full swing. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-luddit...

my friend @nastasiahadjadji.bsky.social has a new book out on techno-fascism. if you’re a french speaker, you should definitely check it out!

Some thoughts on seeing through/beyond the hype surrounding synthetic data. Delighted to share them via @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social! 🙏

"If so-called ‘real’ data is never objective — but rather the product of subjective decisions about what to measure, when to collect, whom to include and how to categorise – synthetic data, voided of any concrete referents, makes this subjectivity more concentrated and less visible."

With a nod to our @hypestudies.bsky.social meeting last week in Barcelona. Thanks Eryk.