Thrilled to be off to Copenhagen this week for Sociolinguistics and AI conference! I'll be sharing our CHI work on the social identities indexed in commercially available AI voices, & I'm really excited for the keynotes! one is from the brilliant and very inspiring @mixedlinguist.bsky.social 🤩

Sharing again, the importance of this cannot be overstated. Our brains are shaped by what we do, and that includes the use of technology. We will remain in polycrisis so long as our collective capacities for thinking, imaginaries, and our values are eroded or reshaped by the tech we use.

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · 2w ago

“The effortful mass-production and maintenance of reading circuits in the brains of community members is a necessary precursor to collective conscience and therefore to democratic governance. This mass-production and maintenance is not automatic.”

lads lads lads THE Dr. Nina Markl said I was smart and write beautifully 🥹 (in fact *I* am lucky to be HER friend!) but yeah go read my blog post thx! I have fond memories of working on it in a really lovely office in Berlin exactly 1 year ago, thinking "wow this world is beautiful but doomed" 🌞

Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈@ninamarkl.bsky.social · last wk.

‘We are motivated to improve quality of life for all when we appreciate life’s fragility and death’s finality, including when we come together to share and witness the pain of loss.’ @alice-ross.bsky.social is very smart and writes beautifully and i am lucky to be her friend 💕

Four weeks to go until LAVLANG 32! The programme is UP and it's going to be brilliant! See you in Edinburgh!🪻🗣️🧏🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk

It's always embarrassing to see AI slop anywhere, but it's more embarrassing when it's in a presentation at an academic conference during a stifling heatwave when we know the electricity-associated water footprint of a single AI-generated video is around 4.1 litres 🥵😡🤦 unu.edu/inweh/news/e...

Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land—UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions

By 2030, AI's water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while its power use triples that of 650 million, UN University investigation warns

unu.edu

Proud to present the preprint of our @interspeech.bsky.social accepted paper: exploring the personas invoked by "flirty" and "temptress" (Elevenlabs' labels, not ours!) AI voices with @scariadna.bsky.social @elinkanhov.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social and Éva Székely 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2606.21366

Sexualised synthetic personas encode and amplify gendered power asymmetries through voice

This work examines sexualised AI-generated English-speaking voices offered by a popular commercial platform. New technologies may enable sexual empowerment and greater diversity in gender expression, ...

arxiv.org

"Every individual must act as if the whole history of the world, of humanity itself, depends on them. Anything less [...] is itself a dehumanising force" Joseph Weizenbaum, 1976 vielen Dank @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social für die schöne Versammlung interdisziplinäre Wissenschaftler*innen! ❤️

really good first day at #WIconf26, I particularly enjoyed brilliant contributions from @jkloiber.bsky.social and @rainermuehlhoff.bsky.social in the panel discussion - predatory delay! power-aware (as the only possible) ethics of AI! exploitation as a precondition for techno-fascism! 🔥

that was just luck though, I am mostly here for the @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social conference 🤩 and how timely, given that I think I may be more worried about AI and society than ever before right now? (note "worried about AI and society" has been my default mode for two years or so, obv)

feeling very lucky to have been able to catch the opening concert of poetry & music at the yiddish culture festival in my favourite city! thank you Shtetl Berlin and ב' ה'! ממש א מחיה!!

Shtetl Berlin e.V. | Yiddish Culture & Klezmer in Berlin | Germany

Shtetl Berlin is Berlin's grassroots home for Yiddish music and culture. Join us for year-round klezmer jams, Yiddish community singing, poetry readings, dance events, concerts, and community gatherin...

shtetlberlin.com

"Before anyone can credibly claim that they’ve solved an extraordinarily difficult engineering problem, I need to be confident that they have previously solved the many much simpler problems that precede the difficult problem" 🔥 bro we as a species are making Ted Chiang tap the sign

No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious

Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.

theatlantic.com

ooh also this week I submitted my first proper full peer review (have only reviewed short abstracts before). I just looked back over it and realised I'd said 'thank you' twice. am I the sweetest reviewer or just tragically afflicted by britishness 🥴 (it was genuine though, love to see good work!)

Delighted that our paper's been accepted for Interspeech '26 🐨 We looked at how sexualised TTS (so-called "Voice AI") voices can encode gendered power asymmetries and straight values 😪 it was a wild ride w/ @scariadna.bsky.social, @elinkanhov.bsky.social, @catlai.bsky.social & the great Éva Székely!

a somewhat heartening read for a change (title is misleading, it says "here's Edinburgh's" & I WISH that applied to the whole uni not just Phil) "Using AI not only prevents the acquisition of knowledge and the development of thinking but undermines thinking skills you already have".

Does Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s - Daily Nous

Has your department instituted an AI policy? If so, whom does it govern, and what does it say? What should such a policy say? Has your department considered an AI policy but held off on writing or imp...

dailynous.com

Bis bald bei der Weizenbaum Conference hier in Berlin!! Ich freue mich darauf 🤩 (und gleichzeitig, wie immer, bin sehr besorgt über "KI")

Weizenbaum-Institut@weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Wie lässt sich generative KI nutzen, ohne Verzerrungen, Abhängigkeiten und soziale Risiken zu verstärken? Darüber diskutieren am 10. und 11. Juni mehr als 50 Forschende auf der Weizenbaum Conference 2026. Unser Book of Abstracts bietet einen Einblick in die Beiträge: doi.org/10.34669/WI....

What a fun time to care about gender identity in the UK. Unrelatedly, it was great to be part of GENDER.ED annual research showcase this week. I had a lovely time chatting about my research on trans men's vocal style-shifting with a different audience! Thanks for having me, SPSS!

GENDER.ED's Annual Research Showcase 2026

Join us to explore academic and institutional research, student campaigns and change projects related to gender and sexuality studies.

eventbrite.co.uk

Very happy to announce that I'll be presenting some work on the personas evoked by sexualised text-to-speech/"Voice AI" voices at Lavender Languages and Linguistics 32 in September! See you here in Edinburgh? 💜 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk

NOT GREAT, BOB!!

The Canary@thecanaryuk.bsky.social · 4mo ago

The British press is smearing @zackpolanski.bsky.social as an antisemite while simultaneously depicting him in racist propaganda cartoons By @willem-moore.bsky.social

Ich habe etwas zu feiern! Gotta stop announcing I'm 'delighted' so much on here but I'm umm... thrilled to say I'll be presenting at this year's @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social conference with the timely theme of 'Generative AI and society: What is at Stake'? www.weizenbaum-conference.de/program/

#CHI2026 has been big, busy, occasionally overwhelming, but all worth it for some highlights! I really enjoyed today's session of vital work on Justice, Surveillance and Marginalized Identities. Big thanks to @vaikam.bsky.social and all the presenters ✊

Visibly delighted to be part of this #CHI2026 poster session! In case you're not in Barcelona you can check it out here: alice-ross.github.io/publication/... Thanks for the photo @mxeddie.bsky.social!

🎉Publication day🎉 for our #CHI2026 extended abstract! I wanted to find out whose voices are commonly reproduced (and whose aren't) in a popular commercial TTS system. Read all about it! w @ninamarkl.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @chi.acm.org alice-ross.github.io/publication/...

I made it! I'm at #CHI2026 this week in beautiful Barcelona. Come say hi if you're around 🤗 My poster session is Tuesday afternoon, I'm also really excited for the Speech AI for All workshop on Thurs sites.google.com/andrew.cmu.e... and to see everybody's brilliant HCI work!

Delighted to share our work on some of the sociophonetic cues reproduced in commercial TTS with @lhlew.bsky.social last week at BAAP (the Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians) - thanks for having me! Really enjoyed some fantastic talks 🗣️🎙️

🔔 final reminder! I promise! 🔔 LavLang 32 abstract submission deadline is THIS SATURDAY - get scribbling, come join us in Edinburgh in September for a brilliant conference ft. Dr. Nikki Lane, Dr. @kevinguyan.bsky.social, Prof. Erez Levon, Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli, Dr. @mxeddie.bsky.social and YOU? 🤩

Alice Ross@alice-ross.bsky.social · 5mo ago

CFP REMINDER: you like linguistics? you like queer stuff? then get your LavLang abstracts in (please)! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻💬🗣️ Submissions are due by 28 March, that's almost two weeks, you got this! See you in Edinburgh in September 💜 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231

My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So a great thing about contracts is that they usually have and end date and/or means of ending them. If your university or other organization bent the knee to OpenAI or any of the other chatbot providers, when a contract is up, there is an opportunity for pressure: forms.gle/ZGn5brEGU4t9...

CFP REMINDER: you like linguistics? you like queer stuff? then get your LavLang abstracts in (please)! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻💬🗣️ Submissions are due by 28 March, that's almost two weeks, you got this! See you in Edinburgh in September 💜 lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231

this is unrelated but I think Charli xcx has produced the definitive party album AND the definitive gothic yearning album of the last few years essentially back to back and we don't talk about that enough 💅

well, one good thing is, I'm delighted to say I'll be sharing my work on "The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech" with wonderful collaborators @ninamarkl.bsky.social @catlai.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social as a poster at @chi.acm.org 2026! ⛱️

Politely asking my university to divest from war crimes, an approach which hasn't always worked in the past if we're honest