"Our role as academics is to protect this one institution. This is why we receive tax money; why we're basically civil servants. The role of the university is even lost on many, so bears repeating: produce knowledge and educate at the highest level. AI destroys both at their core"

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3d ago

If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?

“Millions and millions of people use Amazon every single day, and that would suggest that, at some point, there's going to be thousands and thousands of drones in the sky in the future.”

Drones bring packages, plus noise and privacy concerns in Michigan

Amazon says its flying delivery devices are safe and don't make noise beyond normal neighborhood sounds. Cities say their hands are tied by FAA rules.

detroitnews.com

“so we are still living in the fallout of the industrial revolution. While we're on the precipice of the AI era, if we don't do something drastically different, we are not only going to perpetuate the same harms, we are going to entrench generations into something devastatingly more difficult.” 1/

The Colossus Crossroads: Fighting for the Future of Memphis w/ KeShaun Pearson

Podcast Episode · Computer Says Maybe · 24 July · 32min

podcasts.apple.com

Also, such a simple statement but not one we see from those who tell us why every inch of the planet should be covered with data centers to bring utopia 🙄 "As mathematicians, and also as inhabitants of a shared world, we have a duty to care for other people and our environment."

“Some of the ingredients to the antidote to Silicon Valley’s antisocial AI age are to be found around here. Robust communal spaces, culture that places unambiguous value on human arts, & policy that’s unafraid to pull punches in regulating—or banning—toxic & exploitative commercial tech.“

Brian Merchant@bcmerchant.bsky.social · 2w ago

I'm in Paris, and the entire time I've been here I've seen advertisements for Le Monde's special issue TOUT LE MONDE DETESTE L'IA (All the World Hates AI). I've seen graffiti on metro ads marking them as AI SLOP, and a big scrawl at one stop that read F*CK IA.

annie’s billionaire sibling sam altman (yes that sam altman) has spent nearly a decade interfering in annie receiving her inheritance after her father’s death in 2018. after years of housing insecurity & survival sex work, she’s suing for breach of fiduciary duty please help support her here!

Annie Altman@anniealtman108.bsky.social · 2mo ago

❤️ #rememberjerryaltman gofund.me/8c01c0ca0

“…EHE had its affiliated activists install the mock advert at a bus stop near Meta’s London headquarters as a sardonic confrontation of the company’s encroaching surveillance mechanisms.”

Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner’s Meta Glasses Campaign

“Billionaires could fund cures for cancer — so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?" asked the protest group Everyone Hates Elon.

hyperallergic.com

All while you are sleeping!

a small sacrifice to pay for access to suicide-instructing machines

Dr. Jack Brown@drjackbrown.bsky.social · 4w ago

Meta is contaminating public water supplies with deadly bacteria. Cupriavidus gilardii is resistant to multiple antibiotic agents (even Carbapenems) and can cause fatal human infections.

It’s kind of amusing the amount of money they are spending trying to make us think surveillance specs are cool and meanwhile a bunch of celebs are just like “hey these things fucking suck.”

Stereogum@stereogum.com · 4w ago

Lorde spoke out against “fucked up” AI glasses during her set at Mad Cool. Ray-Ban is a sponsor of the Madrid festival, and Ray-Ban Meta AI ambassador Jennie took the stage directly after her. [📷: Javier Bragado]

Not surprising. We've seen paid pro-Flock "protesters" turn up at various council meetings...

Remmelt 🛑@artificialbodies.net · 4mo ago

Guy is protesting *for* Flock. At the Berkeley council meeting, just now.

“Cheyenne's Board of Public Utilities said in recent public notices that water discharged by Goat Systems, a Meta contractor at the site, contaminated the city's wastewater treatment facility with a rare bacterium.”

A Wyoming city found a rare bacterium in wastewater tied to a Meta data center

Officials in Cheyenne, Wyoming, say a nearby Meta data center campus is responsible for contaminating part of its water recycling irrigation system.

businessinsider.com

“As part of this update, public Instagram profiles are now automatically opted into being fodder for generative AI remixes. All someone has to do is tag your account’s profile in a prompt—if it’s public—and they can use Meta AI to generate an image using your likeness.”

Meta Now Lets Anyone Use Your Instagram Photos in AI Images—Unless You Opt Out

As part of Meta’s Muse Image model rollout, Instagram users with public accounts need to opt out to block AI generations of their content.

wired.com

REMINDER trying to stay calm and do work in a fascist world is itself a radical action a world that wants to destroy independent knowledge, universities, education, still contains people who want to gently think and teach without dehumanisation and destruction

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 5mo ago

some resources for cognitive scientists — especially for junior scholars who ask me wonderful questions and want to learn more — on theorising and metatheorising olivia.science/theory/ (not 100% finished & more to come, but all my work is freely available here: olivia.science#publications as usual)

Both Ezra Klein and Sam Harris were invited by Thiel’s Dialog. Names I’ve grown to distrust…. Also, catch the guy who opposes all tax increases (particularly on the billionaires who get taxed less, I suppose)

maia arson crimew 🏴@crimew.gay · 2mo ago

Here are all 113 alleged members we were able to successfully extract. This data can also be verified via versions of the site captured by the Wayback Machine, even if it doesn't properly render the website.

Great stuff

dell cameron@dell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: A trove of internal records from Dialog, the secret society cofounded by Peter Thiel, was left exposed online. WIRED obtained a second cache of records that reveal who's really attending, how they're screened, and what personal details they were promised would stay private.

Some have argued that Elon Musk is a mass murderer for having terminated USAID. I examine this claim and conclude that if Hitler—who never personally killed anyone in his life—is a mass murderer, then so is Musk. Indeed, Musk is a mass murderer of world-historical proportions.

Is Elon Musk a Mass Murderer On Par with the Worst Dictators in History?

Yes, and this shouldn’t be controversial. He intentionally cut aid to the world’s poorest people. 1.6 million have already died and 14 million will die by 2030. (1,000 words)

realtimetechpocalypse.com

I don’t have the tears to express how much this hurts my soul. The guy who just became a trillionaire cut aid to the poorest people in the world, resulting in 14 million tragic, horrendous, avoidable deaths by 2030. This world fucking sucks. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis

USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

thelancet.com

the AI industry, specifically openai and google (since their tools are by far the most widely used, at least according to this survey), has unleashed and pushed tools down children’s throats that are not safe for kids

Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 2mo ago

One in six kids who have used AI chatbots say an AI has shown or said something they felt “wasn’t OK or wasn’t meant for someone their age”—and most never told a trusted adult about it. 6/

“Generative AI to me feels like a corporate DDoS on society” — Alix Dunn

Remmelt 🛑@artificialbodies.net · 2mo ago

Dr. Khlaaf on how redefining ‘safety’ to be about global risks or about ‘alignment’ with users has degraded rigorous risk assessment approaches.

Dr. Khlaaf on how redefining ‘safety’ to be about global risks or about ‘alignment’ with users has degraded rigorous risk assessment approaches.

Computer Says Kill: The AI Safety Circus w/ Heidy Khlaaf

Podcast Episode · Computer Says Maybe · 12 June · 48min

podcasts.apple.com

llms don't and can't love, hate, feel, care, think, imagine, dream, hope, fear, believe, reflect, aspire, wonder, empathize,... fix your your anthropomorphising language

Let’s check in on the “ethical” ai company….

Anthropic CEO Doesn’t Know If Claude Used in Iran School Strike

Anthropic PBC’s boss said he doesn’t know what role his artificial intelligence model played in a missile strike that killed an estimated 120 children at an elementary school in Iran, reflecting a bro...

bloomberg.com

“Despite the outcry from the public and the multiple lawsuits it faces, SpaceX has continued adding unpermitted turbines to its data center sites.”

People Living Near xAI’s Dirty Data Centers Are Pissed About the SpaceX IPO

Elon Musk is set to make hundreds of billions even as communities in Mississippi and Tennessee are fighting to stop the gas turbines powering xAI's supercomputers.

wired.com

From the mouth of tech giants. No notes. 😅 source: x.com/awscloud/sta...

707Kat@707kat.bsky.social · 2mo ago

He mentions this report and goes through it. It's some pretty insane and grim stats, and it's getting worse. Models have overtaken humans in output (no surprise) 🐞+54% bugs per developer vs 9% in 2025 report. 🐞+28.7% bugs per pull request. 🗑️+861% lines deleted to lines added in merges, per quarter

this is what consequential journalism looks like

dell cameron@dell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: One day after we revealed Meta was quietly building face recognition into its smart glasses, the latest version deletes it. Meta execs, who called our reporting "dishonest" and "misleading," continue to dodge our questions.

Dystopian AF www.businessinsider.com/instawork-in...

In Mississippi, lawyers on both sides of a court case were caught using AI, essentially two LLMs arguing against each other. The judge dismissed all lawyers from the case and canceled the trial: www.404media.co/judge-learns...

Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case

When two AIs argue against each other, the legal system loses.

404media.co

safety evaluation research the past year or two: "we use llms to ideate & define “harm”, then use llms to generate prompts about it, which we then feed to llms to generate responses, we then use an llm-as-a-judge to classify the responses, we then use an llm to evaluate the accuracy…"

The world offers endless opportunities. Why would anyone abandon their agency and let AI chart their path based on inferences drawn from statistical probabilities? Find your own beach…metaphorically, & possibly literally too.