EmilyTav
@emilytav.bsky.social
Policy + design + tech. Angry optimist. Executive Director, Home Screen. Co-Curator of an oral history of the origins of the U.S. Digital Service.
"Anthropic has agreed to brief leading finance ministries and central banks on vulnerabilities in the global financial system’s cyber defences identified by the US technology company’s latest AI model."
Anthropic to brief global financial watchdog on cyber flaws exposed by Mythos
US tech group will discuss capabilities of its new AI model with members of the Financial Stability Board
ft.com
“The truth is that no matter what the POTENTIAL of a technology is, potential breaks down in implementation.” A universal truth! 🙏🏽 It doesn’t mean that technology is bad, or that we should avoid/reject it. But it does mean we shouldn’t allow “potential” to affect our demands for proper governance.
EmilyTav@emilytav.bsky.social · 3mo agoAmen. I recently wrote this, laying out what I think is an important distinction: www.thehomescreen.org/p/we-need-to...
“It’s just frustrating to see them come into our community and run all over us like the citizens don’t matter, and then they’re above the law when they do break it,” resident, James Clifton said. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...
A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure
Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year. The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses.
politico.com
“…reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allow data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.”
Data centers are guzzling California’s water. We have no idea how much.
A new report warns that data center buildout is encroaching on California’s most vulnerable, water-stressed communities. The problem is, no one’s saying how much water they use
calmatters.org
Anthropic is running a continuous research project inside real classrooms at scale and Google DeepMind is doing an RCT of an AI chatbot with 1500 UK schoolkids. Big tech is now all about evidencing AI effects through classroom experiments. The big question is... newsletters.qs.com/6a04954386e7...
🔬 Evidence, education, and EdTech: a new era of outcomes accountability.
Inside the studies, labs, and partnerships shifting how leading institutions compete. Read the EdTech Ecosystem Hubs Report. Innovation events to note in 2026.
newsletters.qs.com
+ education
Victoria Song@vicmsong.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis week in Optimizer, I wanted to talk about this quest for “personalized health” — why tech is chasing it, and how it falls short. Especially if you, like me, are one of the 170 million women worldwide who have PMOS (formerly known as PCOS). tinyurl.com/cbzxrjnt
Welcome to the club. This is every job in tech now besides CEO.
Why did a reputable journal publish such a shoddy meta-analysis? Why did it rack up so many citations? Why did it get reported so widely? I'd guess that the answers to these questions all stem from the US's neoliberal allergy to public goods. 1/🧵 arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/i...
Influential study touting ChatGPT in education retracted over red flags
The retracted study on ChatGPT in education was already cited hundreds of times.
arstechnica.com
And the tech companies wonder why people hate them so much.
Zohran Mamdani inherited a $12 billion budget deficit and brought it down to zero in 6 months without cutting essential services by taxing billionaires. This is why they were in a panic about his candidacy.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 3mo agoWhen we took office, NYC had a $12B deficit. Today it’s zero. And we didn’t close that gap on the backs of working people. We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets, & public housing. Call it Pothole Politics or Democratic Socialism: We are government that delivers for the people.
cool. coolcoolcool. Please yes, then publish the results of synthetic polling as news stories that shape public opinion.
G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com · 3mo agoFebruary: Gallup says that due to cost reasons it will no longer do presidential approval polling May: Gallup says it is exploring "digital twin" technology that replaces human respondents with AI/LLM-generated answers news.gallup.com/opinion/meth...
Amen. This is such a lazy take. My kids ❤️ older movies & even older TV shows… The degree to which they can follow & be absorbed into the plot lines & characters at a young age is incredible. This kind of take imposes a lazy world view on kids & restricts their ability to explore & discover.
Zaki Hasan@zakiscorner.bsky.social · 3mo agoMan, this is such a nihilistic take. Forget Lord of the Rings. My kids have watched The Wizard of Oz. The Godfather. Planet of the Apes. TONS of classics that are quite a bit older than 30 years, and they’ve enjoyed and appreciated them all.
Overheard someone wondering aloud why anyone would want to make it appear that the reflecting pool is filled with the blood of a thousand Smurfs.
Tim Longman 🏳️🌈@timlongman.bsky.social · 3mo agoWe are living through the stupidest time line.
Amen. It is also a reminder of the degree to which educational institutions are now (functionally) entirely dependent on private entities for basic operations. This dependency is invisible until it’s not & exists everywhere, including hospitals & government. www.thehomescreen.org/p/technology...
Technology is the spinal cord of everything... including your kid's school.
Schools globally have outsourced their operational backbone. The Canvas hack just made what has long been an invisible dependency visible.
thehomescreen.org
Craig Newmark@craignewmark.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe Canvas cyberattack is a reminder that educational institutions’ sensitive data can make them especially vulnerable Via @cltcberkeley.bsky.social Director of Public Interest Cybersecurity, Sarah Powazek: www.kqed.org/news/1208289... #CyberCivilDefense #Take9
Aside from the obvious insanity, this is also why I think usage numbers are inflated. These companies desperately need to create the illusion of demand, and this is one way they are doing it.
Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 3mo agoGoogle Chrome is now silently pushing a 4GB AI model (Gemini Nano) to your local disk without asking. No opt-in, no notice, and it re-downloads even if you delete it. Beyond the lack of consent, the estimated climate cost of forcing this on 2B+ users is massive.
Had convos w/ multiple people in the past 4 days who DID NOT KNOW that 1. AI doesn't "think" or know anything; it's a probability machine 2. It was created using massive amounts of work stolen from actual people including me 3. The environmental costs are astronomical Spread the word, every time!
"The list of platforms that now mediate the basic functions of education ... is almost comically long ... most schools are running 10–15 different EdTech products that all promise efficiency, but in reality create confusion, frustration, and complicate what was once much simpler." 🎯
EmilyTav@emilytav.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe Canvas hack that brought campuses globally to a standstill got me thinking about a piece that I wrote in @techpolicypress.bsky.social, about how “technology is the spinal cord of government.” I wrote a few thoughts on what this looks like in schools. www.thehomescreen.org/p/technology...
The Canvas hack that brought campuses globally to a standstill got me thinking about a piece that I wrote in @techpolicypress.bsky.social, about how “technology is the spinal cord of government.” I wrote a few thoughts on what this looks like in schools. www.thehomescreen.org/p/technology...
Technology is the spinal cord of everything... including your kid's school.
Schools globally have outsourced their operational backbone. The Canvas hack just made what has long been an invisible dependency visible.
thehomescreen.org
As surprising as everything right now might feel… I think it’s important to remember that many people have been pretty clearly articulating what was coming. … and the reaction was largely either a shrug, eye roll, or “calm down.”
Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 3mo agoI tried to warn everyone what the Roberts Court was about almost ten years ago www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
This is what I mean by “tech is the spinal cord” of our institutions. I wrote about it in government … but the same thing applies everywhere. techpolicy.press/doge-underst...
DOGE Understands Something the US Policy Establishment Does Not: Technology is the Spinal Cord of Government
For the US Digital Service, tech was a means to an end, writes Emily Tavoulareas. What is technology a means to now?
techpolicy.press
Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 3mo agoKind of surprised that this hasn't been bigger news. It's finals week for a whole lot of universities, and yet, Canvas (a learning/grading platform used by ~9,000 schools globally) is currently inaccessible because of a pay-or-have-your-data-leaked hack. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...
COLBERT: How dumb do you think it is for people to say that I should run for president? OBAMA: Well, you know, the bar has changed. I think you would perform significantly better than some folks we've seen. COLBERT: Is that an endorsement? OBAMA: It was not
Ding ding ding.
Damon Beres@damonberes.com · 3mo ago"Imagine a Sputnik 2.0 moment where the White House decides that American companies need to consolidate resources if the U.S. wants to win the AI race against China. By exerting more control, America becomes more like China in the very race to beat it" @matteowong.bsky.social @lilashroff.bsky.social
