I've always found the AI obsession with "general intelligence" frustratingly incoherent and uncomfortable...I'm realizing that a large part of that stems from a eugenics fueled human obsession with "general intelligence" that is equally incoherent and uncomfortable...

angela zhou@angelamczhou.bsky.social · 3w ago

Man I got so much stuff to do I dont have the time to write a "Eugenics is bad. Factor analysis is useful sometimes. We shouldn't write papers that celebrate eugenics in the second paragraph, even if the rest of the paper is about something else"

This ended up being such an excellent event! Big congrats to all the organizers and so grateful that I could attend + participate!

Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing@simonsinstitute.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Join us for a special workshop on Governance at the Technological Frontier: Translating Research into Policy for AI Oversight. Keynotes by California State Senator Jerry McNerney and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. Thursday, 4/30, 1–5:30 p.m. Registration required. simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/go...

This is great reporting, as usual, but this is so far from a *new* strategy! The FTC has been leveraging the consumer product safety framing to remove and challenge commercial "AI" products since 2015!!

Kashmir Hill@kashhill.bsky.social · 3mo ago

OpenAI was sued this week over a mass shooting in Florida and the overdose death of a college student in California. They are among two dozen cases filed in the last year that claim ChatGPT should be subject to consumer product safety laws: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/t...

We also have a fantastic keynote panel on regulating AI with Tony Batalla (@cityofoakland.bsky.social), Jennifer King (@stanfordhai.bsky.social), and @rajiinio.bsky.social (UC Berkeley)! #ConPro26 [14/15]

Thrilled that this workshop is coming together. We have an amazing line-up of speakers, including @rajiinio.bsky.social, Manon Revel, @senmcnerney.bsky.social, @geomblog.bsky.social blog.bsky.social, and Henriette Canino & Héctor Corzo. Come join us!

Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing@simonsinstitute.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Join us for a special workshop on Governance at the Technological Frontier: Translating Research into Policy for AI Oversight. Keynotes by California State Senator Jerry McNerney and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. Thursday, 4/30, 1–5:30 p.m. Registration required. simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/go...

📣 Registration is open for #ConPro26, the 10th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection, on May 21 in SF! We're excited about this year's program, which includes [thread, 1/15]: conpro26.ieee-security.org

10th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '26)

The Tenth Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '26) will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers.

conpro26.ieee-security.org

Also common in policy circles. I once attended a legislative caucus event on the topic of "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI). I was shocked lol - when I asked them where they'd learnt that word, the response was "we were talking to Anthropic, and that's what they told us they were building".

Karl Bode@karlbode.com · 4mo ago

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the unholy scourge that is "CEO said a thing!" journalism:

This is a challenging legal problem for NeurIPS (and other conference participants)! You might be wondering how this is possible given the First Amendment? I wrote a quick explainer on the current status quo of relevant First Amendment cases & law to get you up to speed. 🔗👇

NeurIPS Conference@neuripsconf.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NeurIPS is aware of the community's concerns regarding the list of sanctions. NeurIPS is an inclusive community focused on free scientific discourse. We deeply value the research that comes from everyone in our community.

I've come to seriously value any opportunity I get to create a safe space for those coming up behind me. It's incredibly important - and I know this because I'm here, able to do this work, precisely because of those that chose to endure who knows what in order to create the right space for me ❣️

Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 5mo ago

If we're not in academia to create safe spaces, Black graduate students get pushed out. If they, by some miracle, finish their PhDs despite the hurdles, it's accompanied by trauma and health issues.

This annoys me. We do have federal procurement guidelines for AI - even under Vought & the Biden EO repeal. Reporting about this should note that this is not a normative "AI in govt" situation. The pentagon is (& always has been) asking for *special treatment* here! techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/o...

No one has a good plan for how AI companies should work with the government | TechCrunch

As OpenAI transitions from a wildly successful consumer startup into a piece of national security infrastructure, the company seems unequipped to manage its new responsibilities.

techcrunch.com

Love this! And very much the anti-thesis of the current "AI maximalist" corporate ethos at Spotify, Amazon, etc, and some public organizations (schools, hospitals, govt) where AI use is forced upon workers and pushed out in as many use cases as is conceivable, without reason & to disastrous results.

blair@blairaf.com · 5mo ago

Has anyone written on a concept like data minimization but for AI? Thinking about the idea of "AI minimization" as a principle of governance, prioritizing questions about the purpose & contextual necessity of AI use over questions of best practice

Interesting - I agree that simple proxies should not be the only way to get to predictable model outcomes. Tho I worry this criteria won't be well operationalized (ie "aligned"?). My pet theory is that model predictability is likely a byproduct of training *data* properties more than anything else.

Lindsay Popowski@popowski.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Is the only way we can create algorithms that people understand to make them trivially simple? We argue, no. People can predict the behavior of algorithms that are arbitrarily complex, if and only if they are available, compact and aligned. arxiv.org/abs/2601.18966

Interviewed for this doc years ago & have yet to see the final cut. Most of what I recall is how much Daniel had truly riled himself up - the confusion & chaos of this exaggerated boogyman version of "AI" had excited a genuine emotional response, despite successfully disguising AI's real terrors.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 6mo ago

And despite an early clip of @rajiinio.bsky.social appropriately problematizing the term "AI", it's immediately followed by a long series of tech bros spouting their fantasies about thinking machines and literally nothing else in the film disaggregates the various technologies sold as AI. >>

Co-chairing this workshop at Simons this week & it's been amazing so far! Brought together folks from ML, stats, law, sociology & beyond to discuss the messy middle between individual predictions & the actions/policy change individuals/orgs take in response to those predictions

A fascinating recent development is that the ML research community -- as the earliest adopters of "AI for research" -- are at the frontlines of dealing with all the problems that come with that (ie. reduced trust in results & reviewers, increased submission load etc). Every other field is next! 😭

EAs love malaria nets because it's supposedly the intervention where we have the "most statistical evidence" of it's effectiveness. One kind of silly fact about this tho is that if you read Duflo's actual paper, the choice to do the experiments on bed nets as an intervention is pretty much arbitrary

ali alkhatib@ali-alkhatib.com · 7mo ago

can someone who's not a weirdo catch me up on why effective altruists are uniquely obsessed with malaria nets?

The Trump administration is now barring 5 Europeans working on countering disinformation from the US — including initiating deportation proceedings against 2 of them, including a former EU commissioner. All in the name of free speech. www.state.gov/releases/off...

Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship-Industrial Complex - United States Department of State

The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose....

state.gov

"He took every Advanced Placement class he could, earned a scholarship to Brown and worked at Wawa over the summer to make enough money to buy a laptop, according to his two sisters."

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 8mo ago

Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a freshman at Brown, had a condition as a child that required brain surgery. The experience created an unshakable ambition to become a brain surgeon, his sister said. He died after being shot on campus on Saturday.

One of my very early essays explored a paper by @rajiinio.bsky.social & others that centers the story of Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. It is striking to me that AI hyperscalers today really believe we can encapsulate all of human experience in data. I mean, good luck.

What Grover and Good Will Hunting can tell us about the limits of artificial intelligence

First, a quick thank you to all the new subscribers to the Cognitive Resonance Substack!

buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com

Just a stream of unfortunate news this week. My heart goes out to anyone impacted by this - truly tragic. 🤍

WPRI 12@wpri12.bsky.social · 8mo ago

A Brown University student from Alabama was shot and killed on campus Saturday afternoon, according to a church in Birmingham. https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/providence/student-killed-in-brown-shooting-parishoner-at-alabama-church/ 

It's always so funny to me when people frame this kind of AI "distrust" as an unfortunate PR issue... in actuality people have very legitimate and materially supported reasons to be skeptical - trust is earned! We shouldn't strongarm people into trusting institutions & tech that doesn't serve them 😳

Alondra Nelson@alondra.bsky.social · 8mo ago

"For those asking the public to trust their AIs, it doesn’t help that systems based on related technology are causing harm in ways all of us hear about daily, from suicide-encouraging chatbots to image generators that devour jobs and intellectual property." www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-d...

Lots of new roles just went up at Code for America! codeforamerica.org/jobs/

Careers — Code for America

Our team is made up of empathetic people working side by side with communities and government to solve society's toughest problems

codeforamerica.org

And we have lots of open roles at ACLU, including roles on our Technology Team: www.aclu.org/careers/

Careers at ACLU

Join our team! We’re looking for committed, passionate people for open roles at the ACLU.

aclu.org

Trump doing this just weeks before Colorado is set to push out final amendments to SB 205 is so annoying. Just another performative roadblock to push negotiations further down the line -- and given that Colorado is named explicitly in the EO, not likely to be a coincidence either

We have some pretty cool roles open at @aspendigital.bsky.social! www.aspeninstitute.org/about/our-ca...

Explore Our Job Openings

aspeninstitute.org

US CAISI is hiring -- the internal govt name for the role is "IT Specialist" but it is effectively a research scientist role! Salary is $120,579 to - $195,200 per year, and you get to work on AI evaluation within government agencies! Job posting (**closes EOD 12/28/2025**): lnkd.in/exJgkqr5

Also, our team is hiring an AI Research Scientist! www.usajobs.gov/job/851528400

USAJOBS connects job seekers with federal jobs across the United States and around the world as the official employment site for the federal government

<p>NIST works with industry and science to advance innovation and improve quality of life. We're looking for an IT Specialist (AI) to join our team!<br> <br> <a href="https://www.nist.gov/caisi">CAISI...

usajobs.gov

Ryan Steed@rbsteed.com · 8mo ago

Our team at NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) just released a blog post with open questions for AI measurement science: www.nist.gov/blogs/caisi-...

US CAISI (the equivalent of the US "AI Safety Institute") just put out their approach to AI measurement & there's such a significant portion on construct validity (nist.gov/blogs/caisi-...). Great to see this after ongoing advocating about this issue (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04703)!

I'm spending my PhD researching just this question of what careers in tech "for good" or "in the public interest" look like. Just published an op-ed this weekend about one option: go do tech and/or data work for a non-profit! localnewsmatters.org/2025/11/30/b...

Beyond Big Tech: Why 'advocacy technology' will be the next hot career in AI-driven world - Local News Matters

RECENTLY, IBM ANNOUNCED it will lay off thousands of employees; Amazon announced over 14,000 layoffs. Companies like Google and Microsoft have also faced

localnewsmatters.org

Deb Raji@rajiinio.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Started a thread in the other place and bringing it over here - I really think we should be more vocal about the opportunities that lay at the intersection of these two options! So I'm starting a live thread of new roles as I become aware of them - feel free to add / extend / share :

Interested in working for Bellingcat? Bellingcat US is hiring a Director of Development and Partnerships, details here: www.on-ramps.com/jobs/3518

Bellingcat US | Director of Development and Partnerships

Bellingcat is an independent community of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists who pioneered open source investigations tools. With precision and perseverance, Bellingcat exposes everyt...

on-ramps.com