If you're following this story in the NYT by @kashhill.bsky.social, I recommend @schancellor.bsky.social's post that breaks down why AI is bad at therapy. Pretty much everything she she warns about shows up in this story, which is heartbreaking notatechdemo.substack.com/p/why-ai-can...

Why AI Can’t Replace Your Therapist

What happens when people turn to chatbots instead of humans for healing?

notatechdemo.substack.com

Stevie Chancellor@schancellor.bsky.social · 11mo ago

What is it going to take to get companies to care about this and do something? It's been a tough day reading this great report by @kashhill.bsky.social on the risks of chatbots. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

What is it going to take to get companies to care about this and do something? It's been a tough day reading this great report by @kashhill.bsky.social on the risks of chatbots. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.

nytimes.com

Hi friends! I've been writing about AI safety and mental health. Two articles up lately - What data about screen timers tell us about chatbot timers, and - Why chatbots can't replace your therapist. Brief 🧵to summarize, find both here - notatechdemo.substack.com

This Is Not a Tech Demo | Stevie Chancellor | Substack

Honest takes on AI, mental health, social media, and what it means to live well. From a CS professor who studies the intersection professionally and navigates it personally. Click to read This Is Not ...

notatechdemo.substack.com

"We have Trivial Pursuit now, so if you’d just give it a try, maybe you’d realize that this vacation can still be saved. So sit down, shut up, and tell me who Gerald Ford’s vice president was."

Can You Believe This Cabin Has Trivial Pursuit?

Kids, come quick! While this little cabin may not have Wi-Fi, TV, or even bathrooms, you know what it does have? A well-worn copy of Trivial Pursui...

buff.ly

#birdbot

The best place to find me now is on Substack for long-form writing! ✨📬👋 (insert self-promo emojis here) Seriously though. I started a Substack. It’s called This Is Not a Tech Demo. I'm writing about AI, mental health, social media, and how to live better with tech. 🔗 notatechdemo.substack.com

This Is Not a Tech Demo | Stevie Chancellor | Substack

Honest takes on AI, mental health, social media, and what it means to live well. From a CS professor who studies the intersection professionally and navigates it personally. Click to read This Is Not ...

notatechdemo.substack.com

The thing about interdisciplinary work is everyone gets to misunderstand you from a unique angle

I've been working on something! It's not nearly done yet, but I thought no need to gatekeep the work in progress. This is an AI ethics "syllabus" based on a post-hoc curation of hundreds of short form videos I've made for social media, to make the content more accessible. bit.ly/ai-ethics-sy...

AI Ethics with Professor Casey

AI Ethics with Professor Casey bit.ly/ai-ethics-syllabus For nearly five years, I've (Casey Fiesler aka Professor Casey) been creating social media content (largely on TikTok and Instagram) about art...

bit.ly

New blog (by me!) finding research identity with Agre's Critical Technical Practice: medium.com/@stevie-chan... CTP taught me my interdisciplinary #hcai work was a powerful strategy to build socially-relevant AI. I hope others embrace the cross-cutting identity as much as Agre helped me to.

From Magic 8 Ball to Prism: Phil Agre and Critical Technical Practice

Why AI research needs people who can both build systems and critique them — a lesson from 1997 that’s still relevant

medium.com

Tip for PhD applicants reaching out to prospective advisors: Don’t use an LLM to write these emails. It’s not a great first impression to express your admiration for a recent paper the faculty member published if that paper does not exist.

"It just really comes as a shock that such accomplished intellectuals, who’ve spent their entire careers pushing the upper bounds of human achievement, could be judgy about a machine that runs the entirety of human imagination through a shredder and glues together what comes out."

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine

Hey team. It’s your CEO. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase: It’s come to my attention that some of you have been bad-mou...

buff.ly

Another week, another research ethics controversy. TL;DR Researchers released a public dataset of 2B+ messages from 4M+ users on 3k+ "public" Discord servers. Usernames/IDs are anonymized. But let's unpack this one... 🧵 www.404media.co/researchers-...

Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online

A Brazilian team used Discord’s API to scrape 10% of its open servers.

404media.co

ICE Deports Mariner Moose Back to Canada: tinyurl.com/vswvxhrr

"Finally—finally!—we can reroute those dangerous funds from writing workshops and elementary school jazz ensembles into more important things. Like tax breaks for billionaires. And tanks."

Phew, for a Minute There, I Thought the Arts Were Going to Get Too Much Funding

“Dozens of US arts organizations have been notified that offers of government grants have been terminated, hours after Donald Trump proposed elimin...

buff.ly

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

🧵I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be going to @facct.bsky.social this June to present timely work on why current LLMs cannot safely **replace** therapists. We find...⤵️

I wrote up a take about how the Trump Administration's pressure on NIH to cute indirect costs to 15% will stifle American scientific leadership and hurt American jobs. Please share this broadly - this issue transcends my normal scientist friends. medium.com/@stevie-chan...

Cutting Indirect Costs for Universities Hurts Americans

Or why the NIH’s proposed cut on indirect costs to 15% will cost American jobs and hamper the US’s scientific leadership.

medium.com

"You want to stop, but the amount of time and energy you’ve put into this makes it hard to quit."

Elden Ring or Tenure-Track Professor?

1. You’ve invested an enormous amount of time and energy, and you still have no idea what is happening. 2. Everybody you meet speaks in half riddle...

buff.ly

Breaking news: 22 states are suing to block NIH’s cutting of indirect costs. See our updated story on the Friday night news and its aftermath. scim.ag/4hTJQ6v

NIH slashes overhead payments for research, sparking outrage and lawsuit

Move to cut indirect cost rate to 15% could cost universities billions of dollars

scim.ag

Vought is giving big banks and giant corporations the green light to scam families. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street. Republicans have failed to gut it in Congress and in the courts. They will fail again.

Here are some facts about "facilities and administrative" (F&A) costs, what we in the business call "indirects" and what Musk is calling "overhead" as he tries to convince Americans with being ok with cutting billions on dollars from medical and public health research at universities & hospitals 1/

Idea for GenAI app: rewrite click bait headlines to normal headlines in the browser. Input: you’ll never guess this one company organizing the best deals of the year Output: Amazon has a modest sale on phone chargers

An absolutely shocking timeline showing how an Alaska sexual assault defendant has been able to prevent his case from going to trial since 2014 by getting judges to approve more than 70 delays so far. @propublica.org @adn.com

A “Horrendous” Alaska Sexual Assault Case, Delayed for a Decade

Four different judges have agreed to delay the trial more than 70 times in total. We pieced together a timeline of the delays using audio recordings and logs from every hearing.

projects.propublica.org

same vibe

I'm looking forward to doing my annual review in the next two weeks - this is still the way I reflect on and set goals for the year ahead! medium.com/@stevie-chan...

My TEDx talk about people-centered AI and mental health is finally live! This was a really big accomplishment with a lot of work, and I'm proud of it, esp in light of conversations on social media and mental health we're having today - www.youtube.com/watch?v=H30b...

How to create AI to improve mental health | Stevie Chancellor | TEDxMinneapolis

YouTube video by TEDx Talks

youtube.com

Springer wrapped just dropped. My top artist is "log in via an institution to check access."

Two stages of writing: 1) This shouldn't take too long 2) Oh no

Sick day means I get to play with S3 and torrents. Feels like a middle school throwbacks, minus the homemade CD with a Sharpie title