IMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...

Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage

Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."

404media.co

🔥🔥🔥🔥 “All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact that the technology isn’t just large language models or agents or data centers. It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation.”

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2d ago

Anyway, I made a reading list in public. I try to avoid doing that. The Twitter “syllabus” wars scarred me. It’s gonna be a touchy few days.

OpenAI is launching a new suite of "education plug-ins" and just look at the amazing pedagogical innovations that are happening now because of AI.

The last bastion of every single VC backed tech is advertising. Phones, fridges, cars, cameras, chatbots, baby monitors… it is all surveillance and it is all, eventually, advertising.

852dude@852dude.bsky.social · yesterday

This sucks ass. When I start my car I want to be able to put my foot on the pedal and drive off. I dont want to watch an ad. A distracting ad. Right in the middle of my console. Again. This sucks ass.

It's always weird and funny knowing that to some I sound like a weird Old person when I point out that doing stuff *without* computers is frequently faster, easier, and way more efficient. (and also usually a lot cheaper / free)

Greg M. Epstein@gregmepstein.bsky.social · 22h ago

While we're focused on big-picture issues like creating AI Gods, banning social media, or regulating a many-trillion-$ industry, have we considered our whole society might lose its damn mind "saving time" emailing/texting about emotionally laden topics that should be CONVERSATIONS. Because it might.

This seems to go with another thing I read recently abt how when you ask LLMs to "justify" or explain their "thinking," much of it is nonsense even if it sounds fine at 1st. That is, asking AI to "explain" how it reaches conclusions is not a safeguard--it's as full of random goo as everything else

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2d ago

Must-read thread on AI and mathematics.

AI "is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation," @tressiemcphd.bsky.social writes, offering a reading list to help us ask better questions in an era of "data politics." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...

Opinion | Want to Fight Back Against Big Tech? Start Here.

A.I. is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.

nytimes.com

If, like me, you love 1990s Web sites, back when the internet wasn't enshittified by Big Tech yet, have a look at Wiby, a Web 1.0 search engine. Click on "Surprise me…" for random discoveries, often personal Web pages about obscure niche subjects, but sometimes you find a hidden gem… wiby.org

We will have seasons for a while longer than most places too

Costa Samaras@costasamaras.com · 3d ago

Late century party in the water belt: Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis.

From the first piece I published about generative AI (in the Boston Globe a couple of weeks before ChatGPT was released in 2022). Full text outside paywall here: writinghacks.substack.com/p/what-we-lo...

Really important to note that in no way shape or form did Anthropic’s models in this incident “escape containment,” and not just in the word-policing sort of way. The model stumbled through an open, misconfigured gap. From Anthropic’s incident report:

New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...

"Students anted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings+complex ideas. They didn’t want to outsource any of this effort to gen AI. They wanted to do the work.” www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...

Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)

We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.

insidehighered.com

I suppose it IS like having Weird Al cover your song.

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 6d ago

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

I was covering education at a previous job during the height of the MOOC boom and it was basically the AI mania in miniature: a management class absolutely frothing at the mouth at the promise that technology would allow them to fire all those pesky workers (teachers).

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · last wk.

Joke‘s on me because MOOCs failed at being remembered and but MOOC politics absolutely won the university.

Just incredibly sad that when I receive a (kind, sincere, legit) note praising one of my books now I spend the first few minutes mentally hazing it to make sure it's not AI. The corrosion of trust created by the mudslide of AI slop inundating our lives is appalling. And getting worse by the day.

AI is a normal tech. That means there are times when it is useful and times when it is pointless or actively harmful. One rule of thumb for chatbots is that they can only provide useful information to experts who have the discernment to ignore the defective output that LLMs *always* emit. 60/

That's the whole point of studying - to acquire knowledge and thus discernment. Asking students to learn via chatbot explanations is both incoherent and dangerous. 45/

Joke‘s on me because MOOCs failed at being remembered and but MOOC politics absolutely won the university.

*whispers* you know we can do this cultural debate about art thing all the time, right? Websites and news organizations used to have culture critics on staff whose entire job was writing about books, movies, and TV. People read them and then discussed them. We have the technology to do this again.

“If we don’t find a way to call this out from an education perspective, I fear that we will lose a generation of kids,” says @rweingarten.bsky.social. “The work of teaching and learning in the earliest grades should be done without AI.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/t...

Teachers’ Union Urges Schools to Curb A.I. Chatbots and Screen Time

The American Federation of Teachers recommended “no screens” at all for those in second grade or younger, and no A.I. chatbots for students in elementary school.

nytimes.com

The goal is to satisfy the *emotions* behind every information need without providing real information.

Matt Seybold@mattseybold.bsky.social · last wk.

The cross-platform enshittification of search functionality is such an infuriating exercise of authoritarian creep. They would like to kill the inclination to find information & enforce satisfaction with be fed information.

Apparently you can also block, lower, default, higher, and pin results in Kagi as well.

Sharon Z@sharonz.bsky.social · last wk.

Learning that Duck Duck Go let's you block specific sites from search results is a game changer for when you are looking for things and you don't want the first 10 results to be Amazon.

A question: does anyone know about communities or groups for scientists who are committed to writing without the use of LLMs / genAI?

It’s nice to see everyone’s textual analysis of The Odyssey It’s almost like the humanities give you entertainment, feelings, pleasure, and fun/interesting stuff to talk about, as well as lenses into both past and current society

Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · last wk.

I look forward to all the reports & coverage about all of the internal problems & mistakes of all of these other institutions, in the same way that universities are constantly blamed (& blaming themselves) for “declining trust.” “Compared to what?” news.gallup.com/poll/712436/...

Students from all 50 states just drafted an #AIBillofRights. They named cheating, bias, privacy mental health, environmental costs and more. The civic grammar of AI rights is traveling and we're fortunate that young people are leading the way and writing it. www.the74million.org/article/stud...

Alondra Nelson@alondra.bsky.social · 3mo ago

AI companies are writing their own constitutions. Meanwhile, a shared vocabulary for contesting algorithmic power has been traveling across red and blue states, from legislatures to civil society. New from me in @science.org: "A Civic Grammar for AI Rights" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧵

I don't think I've ever seen this guy break before. He's trying so hard not to laugh. www.tiktok.com/@huskistaken...

Observe the rank anthropomorphization here. Models don't "conclude" anything, nor do they "hack", "wriggle", or "cheat". You simply can't write clear informative articles about this stuff if you displace agency away from the people (organized into corporations) responsible. /fin for now.