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Sarah Klein

@saklein.bsky.social

Assistant Professor in Communication Arts, University of Waterloo experiment | people studying people | performance | collaboration | knitting | feminist sts | fungi |

26 Posts111 Follower98 Folgt
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project@ncaaupgip.bsky.social · last mo.

I agree that many faculty at my university seem reluctant to openly call bullshit in relation to "AI" because they feel they don't have the expertise to speak up. One of the goals of our project is to address this. We want to help faculty gain the confidence and expertise to voice their concerns.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · last mo.

So many conversations where otherwise serious people throw around the term "AI" without defining it, despite it being notoriously ill-defined. Thinking about why this might be >>

Teresa Heffernan@tjheffernan.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Very basic...stop using error-ridden disinformation machines. Academics, researchers, journalists, students, universities, governments, politicians etc that use them should be called out. "As you can see from this story, all it does is take a sledgehammer to the foundations of shared reality."

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 2mo ago

The viral fake quote attributed to Jeff Bezos got me thinking about how, in contrast to the fossil industry's disinfo campaigns, big tech is just destroying our shared reality from the inside out Inside media outlets, inside academia and yes, inside climate organisations and institutions as well ->

Sarah Klein@saklein.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Seriously this is so good, and one of a few recent academic pieces that actually offers me hope

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 2mo ago

I wrote a very short piece on models & modelling in part because we need to protect our scientific praxis damage caused by AI in terms of addictive frictionless thinking, esp since it harms society broadly too. "Models" doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Thanks @carvalhais.org for inviting me to write this.

Models in cognitive and related sciences are part of an overarching methodology, computational or broadly formal modelling, that aims to test, refine, and showcase our understandings of brain, cognition, and behaviour.1 In their foundational book Models as Mediators, Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison (1999)2 make the case that models play a mediatory role in science between what we observe and what we want to build to house our understandings, theories. Under this conception of models, known as the pragmatic view,3 we can carve out not only their unique role, but also why and how they must be protected from forces that do not prize understanding. Taking a broad perspective that sees all human activity that strives towards understanding as scientific or as under our purview as modellers, allows for this characterisation of models as mediators to be more generally fruitful.4 In the context of human-centred design, for example, our theories may be anything from our understanding of users’ behaviours in a specific context to our understanding of what a user expects from a product or system a priori. Importantly, scientific modelling is apart from other scientific praxis, such as concocting a verbal or formal theory or designing and running experiments.5 Models, as described by Morrison and Morgan,6 have the following characteristics: a. construction — models are neither directly derived from theory nor from data, but through an effortful friction between the modeller and the medium (e.g. their favourite programming language, mathematics, natural language) through which they are building their model;7
Elaine Burke@elaineburke.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Anthropic Institute, the research arm of Anthropic, published a report speculating on what it sees as potential future trends in AI development, and media literacy took an absolute beating from it. A thread: (1/22)

Anthropic When AI builds itself Our progress toward recursive self-improvement, and its implications.
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 10mo ago

Enjoyed writing this short but sweet [altho not necessarily in message] piece for @projectsyndicate.bsky.social w @irisvanrooij.bsky.social: > While the AI industry claims its models can “think,” “reason,” and “learn,” their supposed achievements rest on marketing hype & stolen intellectual labor 🧵

Project Syndicate@projectsyndicate.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Tech companies want us to outsource all cognitive labor to their models. Instead, academics must defend universities by barring toxic, addictive AI technologies from classrooms, argue @olivia.science and @irisvanrooij.bsky.social . bit.ly/48FNcJj

Void in a Cardigan@jumbledcardigan.bsky.social · 12mo ago

“How can we expect our students & mentees to navigate AI slop if we do not take a clear stand against it as teachers, researchers, and academic institutions? How can we prevent the destruction of knowledge, violations of scientific integrity, scientific deskilling & displacement by AI technologies?”

Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 12mo ago

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

Dana Stevens@thehighsign.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.

Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.
Sarah Klein@saklein.bsky.social · last yr.

I know I have almost zero followers so I’m sure this will reach almost no one but friends frenemies, countrymen and humans of fabricated enemy states, it might be time to start moving our actual conversations off the platforms. Even this one.

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈@whysharksmatter.bsky.social · last yr.

This pride flag made out of NASA imagery was, for several weeks, the most-liked image on Bluesky. Then the Trump administration made NASA take it down.

The story of the pride flag made from NASA imagery: Bluesky’s most-liked image

Last June, a striking image of a pride flag made up of NASA imagery became the most-liked post on the new social media network Bluesky, a post it held for 2 months. I spoke with its creator Rachel …

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