why aren't they just "asking the AI"?

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 5d ago

Anthropic AI research fund offers $5m - $30m for social science research on themes of AI impact on workers; transition initiatives; income support; building worker stakes; and wider evidence on public investments. Total fund of $200m available www.anthropic.com/news/economi...

if you are doing human* centred research on/with technology (e.g. HCI), funding frequently becomes entangled with big tech in one way or another - this interview is a nice reminder of what we're up against (*person, social, more-than-human, etc.)

Tech Won’t Save Us@techwontsave.us · 6d ago

Cloud giants wield influence in so many ways that we don’t even consider — including shaping and capturing research. This week @ceciliarikap.bsky.social joins @parismarx.com to discuss how major tech companies shape society and why we need to push back. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/339_...

long thread on how HCI, HRI, etc. (and "AI" ofc) use ideas of "embodiment" and "embodied X" in ways that often end up constructing the very barriers they were supposedly breaking by referring to "embodiment" and "embodied X" analytically, embodiment is conceptually highly suspect

without commenting on the value or otherwise of the research in question, it seems obvious to me this is largely a mechanism for offering continuity funding for various existing parts of the UK AI research base

Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · last wk.

Earlier this year UKRI launched a funding call to invest £40M in ONE AI lab. www.ukri.org/opportunity/... For some unknown reason they decided to fund TWO AI labs at the cost of £60M. An extra £20M. Just found. That's the equivalent of 7 more years of Jodrell Bank. www.ukri.org/news/ukri-la...

this is also known as a horoscope I also refer everyone back to Garfinkel's documentary method of interpretation (thread worth reading btw)

it is strange seeing some of the more-than-human design people essentially doing the work of technology companies in arguing for commensurability with stuff like plants or snails or whatever

genuinely, does *anyone* besides the conference chairs actually pay attention to a conference "theme"? never seen it done, except perhaps for snide references to their general irrelevance * my experiences are, as ever, research community specific - YMMV!

Des Fitzgerald@desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 2w ago

A hill I will die on is that it makes no sense for big disciplinary conferences to have a theme. Either you exclude loads of people pointlessly (because they don't work on 'utopias' or whatever) or people awkwardly shove the keyword into whatever they actually work on, or they just ignore it.

i started my PhD in robotics in 2003. 23 years later, the main real-world use of humanoid robotics research continues to be "extremely expensive ways to generate viral video clips"

Rav@rvbdrm.com · 2w ago

Quick thinking having a tablecloth handy. I didn’t even notice the twitching from that dead robot.

"I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them about it." AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

our paper "Handling troubles with discretion: Transforming informings into announcements in a control room behind a mixed-reality performance" (w/Christian Greiffenhagen) is finally online www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Over on linkedin, I heard from Jeanna Matthews, co-chairing an ACM taskforce on Responsible AI use (saving commentary on that framing for later…) that this decision does *not* come from ACM leadership & that community input really matters. Make your voice heard here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is the weirdest request for input that I've seen in a while. It's almost like the ACM is sitting at the table with the "change my mind" sign. So, let's do it. Short thread with the input I gave them:

just also to say the latest ACM "request for comment" is clearly generated by an LLM "Now is the Time to Give LLMS Access to the ACM Digital Library - Why ACM Believes the benefits outweigh the risks in opening up the ACM Digital Library to large language models"

Association for Computing Machinery@acm.org · 3w ago

If you would like to share your thoughts, please use this link (buff.ly/fnANR1x). ACM leadership will take your feedback into account while we develop and implement our AI content strategy over the coming months.

responding to this request for input with a copy of Emily's thread given the way the @acm.org has been integrating GenAI slop into the digital library (AI "summaries" and "podcasts" - yuk) it seems clear to me they have trouble working from a basis of scholars' actual needs

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is the weirdest request for input that I've seen in a while. It's almost like the ACM is sitting at the table with the "change my mind" sign. So, let's do it. Short thread with the input I gave them:

I was an event yesterday, about "AI" in academic life how easy the university as an institution comes to adopt AI companies' (false) narratives, imbibing notions like "agentic AI", or sentiments like "it's improving all the time" and "we'll get left behind" without any further analysis

I do strongly deprecate the disaster at Exeter Uni, and oppose its ludicrous ham-fisted cuts, but I'm afraid the furore about it is just so on the nose about Britain's class system it cannot be ignored. Oh no, not a university I think of as good and important! www.newstatesman.com/politics/edu...

How to kill a university's reputation

After Exeter’s announcement that it will cut 150 academic jobs, is there any hope for higher education?

newstatesman.com

an idea driving this is that if we collect more data about people then we will "understand" more about them because computers can process the data and that is the same as "understanding"

404 Media@404media.co · 4w ago

Many LLMs have already scanned the entire internet and are still hungry for more. Meta’s patented system would give it unprecedented access to the movements, moods, and interactions of its users. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. @mjgault.bsky.social story: www.404media.co/meta-patents...

apropo this thread, a reminder of Eisenmann et al. (2024) on Garfinkel's early research on ELIZA and LYRIC, and the importance of studies that respecify phenomena that are now simply taken for granted in the AI discourse link.springer.com/article/10.1...

M.J. Crockett@mjcrockett.bsky.social · last mo.

Joseph Weizenbaum's 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, has long been out of print - used copies sell for hundreds of dollars. It's wild that this is not more widely available given how much his ideas still apply to the world we're in now. 🧵/

Oh, now suddenly people notice! Absurd, pathetic. It's been going on for years. Wait until the Big Names suddenly piling in see what happens next - and where it happens. Serious failure of journalism on almost every front of the university crisis. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Fury over Exeter University plan to scrap dozens of humanities posts

Rowan Williams and Mark Kermode join campaign against proposed cuts for arts and social sciences

theguardian.com

another conference I wish I had been able to go to #ecscw2026

ECSCW 2026@ecscw.eusset.eu · last mo.

🎵 _I’m packing my bags for ECSCW, what should I bring?_ 🎵 Less than a week until the start of ECSCW 2026, last chance to register! Looks like the weather will stay hot. ☀️ Consider bringing a refillable water bottle! 💦

thought about posting on the latest UK universities disasters but how do you keep up with it?

extremely on-brand for universities to be going steam ahead *now* on GenAI-infested edutech, just at the very moment of the shift to token-based billing because these services are financially unviable and OpenAI et al need more suckers universities are full of willing marks (aka senior management)

Daniel Bellingradt@dbellingradt.bsky.social · last mo.

“This collaboration is a result of the University of Oxford’s participation in NextGenAI, a consortium with OpenAI and 15 leading research institutions dedicated to using AI to accelerate research breakthroughs and transform education.” www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/media/...

feel like I'm missing out on #icca2026 (yes, I am)

fingers in ears

Jim Dickinson@jimdickinson.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"UK minister defends changes to student loans as criticism mounts"

another procurement "success story" www.nottinghampost.com/news/notting... www.infosys.com/services/ora... www.infosys.com/newsroom/pre...

there's absolutely no connection between these stories about PA(rasite) Consulting and the current UoN Future Nottingham 2 plans; the coincident mention of all items is purely happenstance and nothing should be read into this www.paconsulting.com/client-story... schoolsweek.co.uk/gagged-pa-co...

How we were stopped from revealing SEND consultants’ pay

Transparency campaigners cry foul as threat of injunction prevents public interest reporting

schoolsweek.co.uk

you can be certain that "one of the largest transformation projects of any university in the country" will be exactly how the university executives sell themselves to their next employer when they look to jump from the burning ship archive.is/yJyQF

turns out a University Pro-Vice Chancellor in Australia has slim-to-zero basic understanding of the technologies they are simultaneously cautioning students against using, while also then using themselves to generate a supercilious essay I am absolutely shocked by this revelation

Kaia Vintr@kaiavintr.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It's not possible to do that with an LLM. Her 40,000 words is swamped by the billions of words in its training database. It may output a plausible summary of the 40,000 words, but it's still drawing from other sources.

when it comes to procuring digital systems, university managements frequently act as willing marks for the tech confidence trickster... just because this one has "AI" on the label is merely coincidental tbh

May-lee Chai (she/her)@mayleechai.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Subhed from the NYT article on CSU adoption of ChatGPT: “California’s public universities spent $16.9 million on A.I. during a financial crisis, and the result has been chaos.” Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/m...

🎉 my employer in the news 🎉 1. narrative being peddled by the university mgmt - "do nothing" vs "do our cuts" - is a false choice that rests on (ahem) "unusual" modelling reverse engineered from surplus targets 2. they need better PR people ("DISAPPOINTED!" youtu.be/y6EDlD_fWn0?...)

Hercules - DISAPPOINTED! (High Quality)

YouTube video by OddTomato

youtu.be

Channel 4 News@channel4news.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Nottingham university staff strike over plans to cut jobs and programmes www.channel4.com/news/notting...