Super Cool. Dine artist and mathematician weaves computer chip designs and shines a light on indigenous labor in the computing industry which is unrecognized and extractive. forgeproject.com/collection/e...

Researchers w different AGI beliefs agree on pacing agreements, a more palatable pause/stop AI. But the narrative is captured away from power they already have to organize, quit, unionize, whistleblow. Could we coordinate in the pandemic? climate? Depoliticization builds a big tent without stakes

Anna Mills@annamillsoer.bsky.social · last wk.

"They don't realize the debate inside the companies is if AI will be advancing itself past our control in two years or four." www.pacingthefrontier.com

The visual metaphor of this article's book chop video captures the current epistemic trashing by LLMs. I have seen so many book scanners before that are gentle and preserve books. I can't tell if it's real, it ought to be I guess? But unbelievably on the nose www.news.com.au/technology/o...

AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books

If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.

news.com.au

Effective Altruism is ramping up social media influencing for their ideology as... effective use of $ to fear monger for future lives saved in speculative fictitious futures but there is an EA event in SF every 3 days or so: picnics, walks, parties. Imagine the $ once Anthropic stocks are cashed out

A lot of AI enabled violence and harm has come to pass but I have to say I did not expect the public to reject AI at this level nor did I see how fast the momentum against data centers would build. Neither did the companies. Scrambling

Great work by the @brennancenter.org who compiled this resource of DHS surveillance tools and vendors with categorized charts that make it easier to see 2.9 billion in contracts www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

DHS’s Domestic Surveillance, Data Collection, and Analytics Tools

Fueled by a budget boom, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding its technological arsenal, with little oversight or transparency around how these tools are used.

brennancenter.org

open-source project mapping surveillance and you can find routes around cameras. deflock.org

DeFlock

Find license plate readers (LPRs) near you.

deflock.org

Our model escaped and hacked! Unprecedented! Could there be anything incentivizing a nervous company as they lose their lead to a rival to make their tool sound so so naughty that it must be very smart. We can hardly control this monster AI! IPO coming soon! Sci Fi geeks doing PR again.

Twilight Zone Nightmare

ALT: Twilight Zone Nightmare

static.klipy.com

Do you think this was internal sabotage/joke or viral marketing. Cause no way an entire department of marketing chain of command just didn’t pay attention and zero people pointed out the issue. techcrunch.com/2026/07/23/m...

Meta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinction | TechCrunch

David Bowie's song "Five Years," which Meta used in a supposedly inspiring advertisement, is about humans learning that they have five years left to live before the apocalypse.

techcrunch.com

Companies are hiring AI governance people again after having pivoted away from accountability in the wake of LLMs. Why this sudden bloom after the first harvest withered on the vine? Because the public does not trust these companies and their tools and does not want their data centers.

The arts & what culture is and serves is fundamentally being reshaped towards a politically economy that in reality serves the interests of the powerful and decimates the arts. The loss of CCA, this $ direction does not serve artists but is a co-option of our ecosystem www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Nvidia CEO Gives Vanderbilt University $75 Million For San Francisco Campus

Jensen and Lori Huang have given Vanderbilt University $75 million to establish the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design in San Francisco.

forbes.com

"While corporations urge us to embrace their supposedly inevitable tech-driven future, academics must take a principled stand and defend universities by barring toxic, addictive techn from classrooms." www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a... Tide is def shifting: bsky.app/profile/oliv... 9/n

AI Is Hollowing Out Higher Education

Olivia Guest & Iris van Rooij urge teachers and scholars to reject tools that commodify learning, deskill students, and promote illiteracy.

project-syndicate.org

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 10mo ago

“I already ban the use of generative AI in my own courses, and as a promoter of master’s theses. I explicitly tell my students they won’t learn anything by using it. [...] A general ban is necessary, but nobody dares to say so.” 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️ apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Teens annoy a lot of people sure, but what next? Waymo facial recognition identifies immigrants, Waymo calls ICE, Waymo follows activist home, Waymo blocks traffic to aid in mass arrests at pro democracy protest www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/07/w...

Waymo car delivers misbehaving teen passengers to San Mateo police

The 15-year-olds allegedly were drinking alcohol and shooting water beads from a toy gun as they rode in the driverless car.

mercurynews.com

Look to San Francisco, home of the tech booms & AI labs, to see how the febrile AI sector benefits ripple out to communities. My local CVS locks up the frequently shoplifted items: ramen noodles, baby formula, canned food. Rent for a 1bdrm apt nearby is $6500.

Do I have any colleagues with Jackson Mississippi connections or history? Queer community a +

2 signs in the Bay Area capture different kinds of anger at AI tools, consequences & forms of community education. Swanky neighborhood sign's AI is optional, harming others, call to action is read more. The other sign's AI is for jailing, control, fear. It warns for safety. AI hits different.

Well that's a first. Customer Service I called made me prove I was human before helping me. (After the AI agent hung up on me twice)

How can I share in progress work with people if it is work I would not want put in an LLM. What kinds of thinking or creativity are accelerated while what kinds are thwarted? And more interestingly, what kinds of new forms will work need to take pushing new sociotech frictions?

I don't know how visible it is to those wealthy enough to not feel consequences but San Francisco is shifting in its politics towards the right. I don't mean elections, those are one signal among many. What's dominant? What is criminalized and how? Who is leaving? What orgs are out of funds?

Companies are like: Hey teach this AI agent how to do your job! For funsies only, we swear. Heard two stories this week from friends this actually happened to. Its a mess in many ways. AI agents really can't do these jobs, but workers are expected to make it work, so they are in trouble either way.

I'd like to give this talk again. Its even more relevant. But what artists and the orgs that support us want is money. It's a crisis: orgs closing, jobs are few, rent is higher, I know the arts are drowning but that tech hand isn't there to pull us out. We gotta swim in this flood.

according to the spacex filings, their valuation is justified entirely by grok, which will be 90% of enterprise ai, and ai will be 90% of the us economy

Another successful day listening to someone compare AI to a tool in that it's neutral and can be used for good or evil & not ending my disagreement explaining AI political economy with "but you might be a tool, though". 🍦 #punkdiplomacy

Art & critical AI discourse: I see a beam from a lighthouse bright but still, illuminating the ocean as our boat steers right into the rocks of totalitarian AI. Our discourse burns at both ends, But oh what waves! & oh snap, friends, it casts a beautiful light. www.totei.com/story/trevor...

Trevor Paglen and Holly Herndon on Making Art with AI and What the Discourse Is Missing

The artists talk process, slop, and why optimism and pessimism don’t quite cover it.

totei.com

Yes and also this. Scraping and legal action stuff here is a two way st, that can sound like common sense until you get deep in the history of it. Same re harms by social media giants where we might accidentally cheer against encryption cause it may hurt corporate only to find out it hurts us more.

logan koepke@jlkoepke.bsky.social · 2mo ago

i think folks should be very careful in using the term “unlawful web scraping” without being very precise. I appreciate the current political moment, but historically “unlawful web scraping” has been used *against* activists and has been critical for human rights and civil rights investigations.

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

Reading this in context of how "skeptical" of their company anthropic employees must have been finding about Claude use in Venezuela by the US military. They are screened to do so and encourage friction. www.implicator.ai/at-anthropic...

Anthropic's Culture Interview Is Its Top Hiring Gate

Anthropic pays up to $850,000 and just passed OpenAI at a $965 billion valuation. Its toughest interview round involves no code at all. Recruiters say the culture interview is where most strong candid...

implicator.ai

You can put -AI in Google search to get rid of AI search results. I just found out!

Crazy Keyboard Cat Typing on Laptop

ALT: Crazy Keyboard Cat Typing on Laptop

static.klipy.com

Bernie@sanders.senate.gov has surprised many with his shift towards Xrisk speculation. Many policymakers have, perpetuating false AI narratives. These beliefs aren't organic & need to be to contextualized with how much EA lobbying has happened. From 2023: www.politico.com/news/2023/10...

How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington

A sprawling network spread across Congress, federal agencies and think tanks is pushing policymakers to put AI apocalypse at the top of the agenda — potentially boxing out other worries and benefiting...

politico.com

Outcry is a chatbot “designed specifically as a ‘private, on-device AI mentor for activists, organizers and movement builders.’”

Occupy Wall Street Co-Founder Built an AI App to Help Activists Seize the Means of Computation

A chatbot with a library of activist literature in your back pocket.

gizmodo.com