📻 New episode of #ComputerSaysMaybe Who Knows? Independent Researchers in a Platform Era w/ @geurkink.bsky.social www.themaybe.org/podcast/who-...

Trump's pardon of Honduras' drug trafficker president is raising awareness of Prospera, the weird tech-ruled city he helped to create. Prospera is #NetworkState, a scary cult of tech billionaires who plan to replace nation-states with privatized dystopias. More: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iHl...

What was ChatGPT? Now nearly three years old, we can look at OpenAI's LLM as a product of its time, optimized ever since to its earliest uses. While this period of deep disorientation and social isolation has been obscured from public memory, it remains embedded within the interface.

The chaos monkey on my shoulder really wants him to veto it.

Dirty Money #Econsky

New in @theverge.com - half of US scams originate on a Meta property. The company must do more. @lanalanalana.bsky.social and I weigh in www.theverge.com/tech/820906/...

This week Open AI walked back a call for the govt to backstop financing for its trillion dollar investments in data centers. This was only the tip of the iceberg; a slow bailout for AI firms is already underway. Read more from @ambakak.bsky.social and I in @wsj.com: www.wsj.com/opinion/you-...

New Report: Fission for Algorithms. We draw on our nuclear expertise to dissect the risky fast-tracking initiatives hastening nuclear development in service of AI. This includes proposals to use Gen AI for nuclear licensing, whilst lowering well-established nuclear thresholds.

Many news orgs are "all-in" on AI, fearful of repeating the errors of the early digital era, but what if the real risk lies in handing chunks of our business, our civic function, and our values to a handful of hyperscalers? @alixdunn.com prodded me to think that through with her for @themaybe.org

This is so good!

Computer Says Maybe is taking the stage at @mozilla.org Festival! This weekend, @alixdunn.com will be leading discussions on reclaiming scale in tech, tackling the role of AI in war, exposing the global footprint of data centers, and more.

My 'o' key is making an oo all the time and now all my typoos look Dutch.

Can a chatbot therapist really replace a human one? The simple answer is, no of course not. But as always, it’s a little more complicated than that. Access to (real, human-to-human) therapy is limited. You need money, and probably have to jump through a lot of hoops.

This week on the show, I talk to Stevie Chancellor, a co-author on a banger of a paper introducing new evaluation frameworks and some shocking findings on the use of chat bots for mental health support.

To be this smug and corrupt while selling out your constituents in a public forum is a sight to behold.

I’m always surprised we don’t talk more about AWS as a single point of failure — and hence of vulnerability to censorship pressure.

Showing generative AI videos to a gullible narcissist with dementia to manipulate him was...not a threat vector I had considered.

Pyrrhic processing.

There’s nothing sweet about Project Sucre. Curious about this huge project with a euphemistic name? All you get is a fully redacted proposal from the parish. That’s what organizers like @kadeeja.blacksky.app are up against in Louisiana, a state with one of the most strained energy grids in the US.

Pumped about the ceasefire, hostages, aid to a starved people but still feeling a bit confused. Israel has been committing genocide. When do we start talking about what they owe the Palestinian people for two years of savage collective punishment and mass civilian murder? And who goes to jail?

Super fun to have Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy) on the show! Non-stop, rapid fire quips about everything from 'chickenised reverse centaurs' to beefs with platforms that do egregious things with power. Listen to the man, the myth, the ~24-time book author on the pod this week!

The banking executives who drove the global economy off a cliff in 2008 should be in jail. At least then we wouldn't have to listen to their 'feelings' about AI paying off.

Here is just a sample of the secrecy involved in the infrastructure demands in these data center proposals. It’s literally my job to read this stuff and I CAN’T!

The real economy is already in a deep recession. The fake AI economy is a smokescreen. And now I'm afraid that the government will throw any amount of money at it to keep it from popping.

This is a great resource if folks haven’t seen it already and would like more background and context! bsky.app/profile/alix...

AI is the wrong tool to tackle complex societal & systemic problems. AI4SG is more about PR victories, boosting AI adoption (regardless of merit/usefulness) & laundering accountability for harmful tech, extractive practices, abetting atrocities. yours truly www.project-syndicate.org/magazine/ai-...

How is AI changing the nature of scams? @lanalanalana.bsky.social & @alicetiara.bsky.social spoke to @alixdunn.com on @themaybe.org to explain how AI automates & scales the work already being done in massive, exploitative “cybercrime compounds” around the world. www.themaybe.org/podcast/gotc...

Just got home from a whirlwind 10 days in New York and Nebraska (don't ask). There were a lot of highs, but one still has me buzzing.

Just had my first experience with the now mandatory facial recognition at international departure out of the US. I hate it so much.

I've been feeling a little bit crazy reading the news lately about what's going on in the AI market and what it means for the economy at large. So I'm grateful I got to knit the threads together with @alixdunn.com last week.

I've started to read Musk quotes with a Napoleon Dynamite affect in my head. Recommended.

I don’t want AI companies to get a bailout. I said this to @smw.bsky.social of @ainowinstitute.bsky.social last week, and she said they already were being bailed out. We sat down to talk about it in our first full-form video interview here: youtu.be/WvN1wQ_CBlY?...

I don't understand how restaurant billing and tipping work in the US. What is this?

1/6 Want to be your own boss? Work from home and achieve financial freedom? This week, we're talking about the original "innovation" that perfected that pitch: the Multi-Level Marketing scheme.

Premium newsletter: Based on my estimates and analysis, OpenAI needs one trillion dollars in the next four years to build 17GW of data centers and other commitments, with at least $500 billion needed for company operations. There is not enough capital to do this. www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

Over in Brooklyn for a live @themaybe.org podcast - Let Them Eat Compute: Computer Says Maybe Climate Week Livestream - @ambakak.bsky.social and @alixdunn.com setting the scene for a conversation 'rooted in the material, in the current context, in activism'..

🔴 NEW: Larry Ellison’s £257m bet on Tony Blair Our investigation with @lighthousereports.com reveals how the Tony Blair Institute has been accused of pushing the interests of tech tycoon Ellison — Trump’s “CEO of everything” — and his company Oracle democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-the...

Finally some thorough reporting on the relationship between MAGA database man turned media magnate Larry Ellison and the Tony Blair Institute. www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

SOME GREAT NEWS!!

1/6 They promise you'll get rich quick. They promise it'll change the world. They promise you're getting in early. Sound familiar? First up in our look at scams: crypto. www.themaybe.org/podcast/gotc...

The Overton Window on free speech is on the 20th floor of a building. And we're about to jump out.

"What this system produces isn’t errors, it’s terror." Preach. Great piece challenging the critique of hype as insufficiently political to capture the structural impacts / motivations of AI boosters.

So excited for this Computer Says Maybe live show next week in NYC!

Hey @alixdunn.com , Ty for this! I think you might be interested in this paper we wrote on the AI Commons: oneproject.org/ai-commons/

listened to this on the way to the pool the other day, @alixdunn.com interviewing @iamtrask.bsky.social about "broad listening" (vs "broadcasting"), and how so far strategies reduce to: • literary canon • sampling • statistics and how he's trying to make a fourth www.themaybe.org/podcast/node...

Can someone explain regulated garbage to me?

When I think about decentralisation, my mind usually goes to social media. But given the concentration of power and technical consolidation in Al, what might decentralisation offer that field?

Join us for “Setting a ‘Tech Agenda’ for Climate Week.” From Sept 21–28, leaders will gather in NYC for Climate Week. Tech Policy Press will record a live podcast asking: What should a tech agenda for Climate Week include? Register via the link below!

Just watched 2 small children face recc'ed while boarding a flight and it was a disturbing sight.