Tyler Dukes
@mtdukes.bsky.social
Knight Chair of Journalism & Technology, University of Florida. Former AI innovation in journalism at McClatchy. Former News & Observer I-team. 2017 Nieman Fellow. Powered by gas station coffee and eastern NC barbecue.
I wrote a guide to red teaming AI tools for safety for @indicator.media. It's a combination of simple frameworks and snippets of worked-through examples built from my experience at Google, running a pro bono clinic at Cornell Tech, and doing this kind of work as a journalist.
How to red team an AI tool for safety
Indicator’s no-code and product-agnostic guide to probing for harmful stuff
indicator.media
NEW: The Trump administration's recent banning of a data privacy protection technique that the Census Bureau used for decades has delayed the release of one-year estimates from the American Community Survey, which many local community leaders and researchers rely on www.census.gov/newsroom/pre...
A record eight Pulitzer winners and finalists disclosed AI use this year, the most since the prizes added the requirement in 2024, @andrewdeck.bsky.social writes in @niemanlab.org.
A record-breaking eight Pulitzer awardees disclosed AI use this year
Five winners and three finalists detailed their AI adoption to the judging committee.
niemanlab.org
Laila AnnMarie Stevens documents her family's move from New York City to North Carolina — a kind of reversal of the historic Great Migration of the early 20th century.
The Clayton Sisterhood Project: A photographer captures her family's reverse migration from North to South
Laila AnnMarie Stevens documents her family's move from New York City to North Carolina — a kind of reversal of the historic Great Migration of the early 20th century.
n.pr
"Put simply, there is too much money, some of it too untraceable, giving a small group of unelected people too much power over the people. That’s data politics."
Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2d ago"Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy." connect the dots! Dr. McMillan Cottom has homework! go to the library, host a reading group, organize your neighbors www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/o...
New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo
She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.
Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.
wapo.st
NEW: after our coverage of this company's little scheme to use printed books to train AI, it calls it a "test of the market" and walked the entire thing back: 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
“the boss wants this money" from @wsj.com, a deep dive into the extortion operation run out of the White House gift link: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Exclusive | ‘The Boss Wants This Money’: Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation
Meredith O’Rourke, nicknamed ‘princess of darkness,’ carries out the president’s desire to wring hundreds of millions from companies for his projects.
wsj.com
When a boat hits a wave, the jolt can intensify 10x between the deck and the head of a crew member. That counter-intuitive physics is leaving some of the Coast Guard's most elite rescuers with serious brain injuries that go undiagnosed. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/u...
Rescue Boat Crews Show Signs of Brain Injuries, but Coast Guard Isn’t Looking
Untreated and undiagnosed, the crews that save lives in the roughest seas face the relentless pounding of waves.
nytimes.com
New from Tow: One org requested all syllabuses for 74 courses at UNC Chapel Hill with terms related to DEI. Their mission to “expose and root out corruption in government..." They claim to have filed more than 100,000 FOIA requests and nearly 100 lawsuits since 2022 By @mirandagreen.bsky.social
How a network of pink-slime sites and conservative activists went after campus DEI.
Using FOIA requests and hidden-camera videos, the groups targeted universities, leading to the firing of faculty and staff.
cjr.org
As part of a series of updates to reduce the volume of AI slop on the platform, LinkedIn is introducing an actual button that lets you flag a post as something that “Seems like AI slop.”
LinkedIn actually adds a ‘seems like AI slop’ button
It’s also removing an AI “enhance” feature.
theverge.com
43% of women surveyed said they experienced unwelcome sexual advances or harassment from a colleague or editor (6% of men). I don’t think most of our industry understands how much impact this has on newsgathering. A predator makes editorial decisions like a predator. www.ire.org/2026/07/30/f...
Female investigative journalists still face sexual harassment and bias, new study finds
By Katrina Michalak, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, Arizona State University Erin Orr was at the inception of her journalism career in the 1990s, working the business and real estate beat...
ire.org
My favorite thing about being Executive Director of @transjournalists.org is giving $$ to (trans) journalists to pursue their pro dev goals. Because we deserve investment, too! Applications are rolling through August.
Trans Journalists Association@transjournalists.org · last wk.Level up your journalism career 📈 Apply for Level Up stipends (up to $1,000) to attend conferences, trainings, or leadership programs. Applications close September 1 (9AM PT) Open to journalists eligible for TJA membership. Apply HERE: bit.ly/TJA-LU
We’re pleased to announce that veteran journalist Henry Chu has been named curator of Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. A longtime foreign correspondent and editor who has reported from more than 30 countries, Chu will be Nieman’s ninth curator. hvd.gs/431352
Henry Chu named curator of Nieman Foundation for Journalism — Harvard Gazette
Prize-winning veteran foreign correspondent, editor aims to focus on challenges facing industry, including AI, press freedom, polarization.
hvd.gs
If u missed: Washington and Lee University seeks an experienced business journalist for its Donald W. Reynolds Chair in Business Journalism. It's an endowed professorship w/tenure to teach business journalism, oversee an internship program, more. DETAILS: loom.ly/opz2h7k
Hugging Face just published a highly detailed technical account of OpenAI's accidental cyberattack on their systems - it's wild how sophisticated this was: huggingface.co/blog/agent-i... Wrote up some of my own notes here: simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/28/...
Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the July 2026 Incident
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
huggingface.co
“The Guardian has identified at least 33 instances of people damaging, vandalizing and destroying Flock cameras, across 23 states, that appear to have the explicit message of protesting surveillance.”
Inside the growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras
An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the US
theguardian.com
Great @khari.bsky.social piece on the workplace surveillance of Kaiser triage nurses: "You aren’t calling Comcast. We’re dealing with life here." calmatters.org/economy/tech...
Kaiser nurses say technology is making their jobs — and patient care — worse
Call center nurses at Kaiser Permanente said workplace surveillance tools and AI prioritize speed and cost savings over quality and safety.
calmatters.org
ICE is planning to open a large detention center in North Carolina, the first of its kind in the state, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
ICE Targets ‘Detention Desert’ With New Facility in North Carolina
Even as ICE has retreated from its plan to buy warehouses, the new complex near the Virginia border signals that the agency remains determined to increase its detention capacity.
nyti.ms
"We found that at least 150 institutions of higher ed... are using Flock’s surveillance network.. many campus police departments have facilitated immigration related investigations, even when they are located in sanctuary states and are legally prohibited from doing so" by @torinmonahan.bsky.social
Flock on campus: university police as appendages of a national policing apparatus
Dangerous new forms of networked surveillance are gaining traction with police departments across the United States. One popular example is Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR)...
doi.org
A judge in Florida has ruled President Donald Trump must hand over financial records sought by the BBC as it fights his Panorama defamation lawsuit. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Judge rules Trump must hand over financial records sought by BBC in defamation case
The judge grants a motion to compel the release of files held by the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust.
bbc.co.uk
News Corp is suing Brave AI, alleging the privacy-focused search engine disguises its web crawlers to evade publisher blocks and delivers "verbatim or near verbatim" news summaries to AI companies pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/ne...
Who's suing AI and who's signing: News Corp sues Brave, Microsoft signs Australian Copilot deal
News AI deals revealed: Which publishers are suing and which are signing deal with the tech giants over generative AI.
pressgazette.co.uk
Last summer, I co-organised a small symposium on AI agents which in light of the OpenAI/Hugging face news feels prescient. Some quotes from the symposium report: "Several of those present argued that many of the most pressing risks are systemic."
Good background on that OpenAI/Hugging Face story here
Felix M. Simon@felixsimon.bsky.social · 2w agoLast summer, I co-organised a small symposium on AI agents which in light of the OpenAI/Hugging face news feels prescient. Some quotes from the symposium report: "Several of those present argued that many of the most pressing risks are systemic."
An Instagram post turned one California student newspaper into a free-speech flash point. The students say they were just doing their homework. www.wired.com/story/epstei...
A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out
An Instagram post turned one California student newspaper into a free-speech flash point. The students say they were just doing their homework.
wired.com
I wrote about what's happening to the web now that everything is A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/t...
How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web (Gift Article)
As Google incorporates more artificial intelligence into search, people are spending more time on Google. Some website operators are crying foul.
nytimes.com
Federal lawyers say anti-mask laws would endanger immigration agents, citing an ICE face-recognition art project that doesn’t actually work. www.wired.com/story/states...
States Want ICE Agents to Show Their Faces. The Trump Administration Is Blocking Them
Federal lawyers say anti-mask laws would endanger immigration agents, citing an ICE face-recognition art project that doesn’t actually work.
wired.com
A new toolkit for attorneys in Massachusetts targets the technologies police use—and conceal—to build criminal cases, from facial recognition to AI-written police reports. www.wired.com/story/the-ac...
The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets
A new toolkit for attorneys in Massachusetts targets the technologies police use—and conceal—to build criminal cases, from facial recognition to AI-written police reports.
wired.com
