Oxford pretends AI benchmarks are science, not marketing How could all these benchmarks be fake, it’s a mystery www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcYZ... - video pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251106-oxf... - podcast time: 6 min 16 sec

When deception’s more profitable than honesty, users lose. Internal documents suggest that Meta earns $3.5B(!) every 6 mo. from scam ads, revealing a deeper systemic problem: the economic incentive to tolerate “higher legal risk” content still outweighs any penalty. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

This is huge news in @cameronwilson.bsky.social's @thesizzle.com.au- Microsoft is being forced by the Aus regulator refund all the ultra-dodgy AI plan pushing it was doing for Office 365 Wild that other regions aren't also using regulatory power to punish Microsoft thesizzle.com.au/p/google-sur...

"Common Crawl has opened a back door for AI companies to train their models with paywalled articles from major news websites. And the foundation appears to be lying to publishers about this—as well as masking the actual contents of its archives" I hate these people so much

The FBI has subpoenaed the domain registrar of archive.today, demanding information about the owner.

“authors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages… discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset… A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletion” futurism.com/artificial-i...

Microsoft apologizes for not explaining cheaper no-AI M365 plans, and all it took was a government lawsuit

😢 "Perhaps the most striking findings is that the British public vastly overestimates the cost getting to net zero by almost 14,000%, fueling scepticism & a reluctance to pay. On average, they estimate it will need 28% of GDP by 2050, compared to @thecccuk.bsky.social forecast of just 0.2%"

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

Good bit of analysis here. 'Putting lay-offs down to AI sounds better than saying “we need to keep margins high so we’re sacking some low performers” and politically safer than saying “unpredictable Trump tariff policy means we are hiring less young people.”'

This quote is set to be on the intro slide of an undergraduate lecture, soon.

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

Apropos of nothing, this piece by @anildash.com is very, very good (and accurately reflects my views and those of many of my colleagues) www.anildash.com/2025/10/17/t...

On this Halloween, a reminder that a sculptor included a Xenomorph gargoyle during the 1990s restoration of Paisley Abbey

Wow. I’m not sure if this acid review will increase or decrease visitor numbers… www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I can answer this. I interviewed Peterson's tailor a few years ago, although the interview was never published because I fell behind on work. Here is the story of this suit. 🧵

“We write as 416 experienced qualitative researchers from 38 countries, to reject the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications for Big Q Qualitative approaches…” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"Big Tech is facing increasing pressure to show returns on the massive AI investments they're making, against a backdrop of soaring valuations and limited evidence of productivity gains." news.sky.com/story/micros...

“To leave our students to their own devices — which is to say, to the devices of A.I. companies — is to deprive them of indispensable opportunities to develop their linguistic mastery, and with it their most elementary powers of thought” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o... #AI #reading #writing #philsky

This is for Trump. A recent study reveals that energy costs in Britain has been reduced by 104 billon pounds the last 15 years because of wind power. The Biden administration knew this and introduced the IRA which Trump rolled back to make Americans pay more. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

A stat we don't talk about enough: Newspapers have lost 77% of their jobs over the last 20 year, more than any of the 532 other industries tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The state of our surveillance dystopia is such that a major glasses retailer is advertising anti-facial recognition features as a selling point as if it was normal.”

Part of this story is expertise & intent. ChatGPT is being used by many as “therapy” unable to afford a therapist. The gap between a tool's intent and use is a public health crisis. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I didn’t know he went to U. Glasgow … www.gla.ac.uk/explore/aven...

NEW: we tested Zenni's anti-facial recognition glasses coating. "ID Guard" adds a pink sheen to the surface of the glasses that reflects the infrared light used by some facial recognition cameras. www.404media.co/zennis-anti-...

Autumn in Rothiemurchus #Scotland #Rothiemurchus #Kinrara #Aviemore www.damianshields.com

Am curious if IT departments would be keen just to ban these services from Uni compute resources. Y’all can run it on your personal rig but will not be wasting our shared compute on this slop.

Everything in this story is infuriating apart from (a) the quotes from students who analogize AI efforts to sitting through a timeshare presentation, or Black Mirror episode, and (b) recognizing resistance efforts by @olivia.science & @irisvanrooij.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/t...

If only everyone could have predicted this www.thegamer.com/ea-generativ...

NEW: an a16z-backed startup called Doublespeed promises clients can “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.” Essentially an AI-powered bot service in violation of all major social media platforms www.404media.co/a16z-backed-...

dear US friends, when a sitting president (re)builds the seat of government, it almost always means the president has no intention of leaving at the end of term. your African friends with decades of experience

ACM TOCHI is creating a Distinguished Reviewer Board, we hope that you will apply to help us improve the papers we curate. You will get training in reviewing, experience with high-quality papers, and a bit of recognition. Apply at forms.gle/BWUbgHBddiro.... Please RT or DM to interested folks.

The question of this moment is whether Europe will be a bastion of democratic resilience or a vassal. My piece in Tech Policy Press. www.techpolicy.press/europe-isnt-...

⚖️ No Rules for AI? AI is evolving faster than our laws. Maribeth Rauh (ex–Google DeepMind, now at AI Accountability Lab @aial.ie ) explains how weak regulation—and seeing AI as “human”—can lead to real harm. 🎧 Listen now: youtu.be/uAaYSIPsxCI?... #AI #TechPolicy #Podcast #AIRegulation #Ethics

> Computing has always been a seesawing discipline. We had the AI winters of the 1970s and the 1990s, and we had the dot. com crash and the ensuing “Image Crisis.” It seems another crisis is upon us. Will we ever learn? It is time for some serious thinking! cacm.acm.org/opinion/comp...

Universities across the world seeing this: "its only wrong 45% of the time!! Lets buy free licenses for our students, staff and faculty!! Lets lock into contracts with rapacious predatory AI companies with shitty technofascist politics, sucking up water and jacking up electricity prices!!"

The dark truth behind FormatMyPaper.com

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv. There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗟𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 – 𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗮 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆. 𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗸 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗯𝗮𝘂𝗺, 𝗘𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗡𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗻, 𝗠𝗲𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝘀𝗵𝗿𝗮𝗳, 𝗚𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗜𝘀𝗹𝗮𝗺, 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗲𝗹 𝗙. 𝗥𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗿𝗲𝘇 doi.org/10.1177/0170...

Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses usually include an LED that lights up when the user is recording other people. One hobbyist is charging a $60 to disable that light, and has a growing list of customers around the country. 🔗 www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

This is HUGE A court has ruled that TotalEnergies has misled consumers by presenting itself as a “major player in the energy transition”. It is the first judgement in the world ruling an Oil & Gas major has misled the public by greenwashing its image. www.clientearth.org/latest/press...

A small Lofoten tourism group announces they're shutting down their guides and possibly going bankrupt thanks to the loss in revenue from chatbots that steal and rephrase their content None of this shit is inevitable. Fuck the slimy tech bros. www.instagram.com/p/DPyRB-tDBf...

the latest letter against ai superintelligence is just further evidence we live in one of the dumbest possible timelines. all these people who think they’re so smart getting totally hoodwinked by some skilled grifters already tearing the social fabric to shreds.

Luc Steels!

"A market in which behavioural data about users are rare rather than the default will reset prices for all forms of advertising. To achieve this, users must be protected against coercion into RTB via ‘consent or pay’." Make consumer surveillance rare again. www.iccl.ie/digital-data...