💫only a couple of weeks until the showcase!! still a few spots free if you want to come along

AI Ethics & Society@aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 4mo ago

✨Are you interested in exploring how artists, activists and academics work with queer data as material, concept, process and problem? 🌈 Come join us on June 10th at HOME Manchester for an evening of talks and performances ⬇️ sign up below www.eventbrite.com/e/queer-data...

This is going to be a fun, engaging showcase, happening in Manchester in June! It's a great excuse to plan a trip to Manchester this summer! Read about the first queer data showcase held last year in Edinburgh: www.gender.ed.ac.uk/blog/2025/qu...

The Queer Data Showcase: queer data as an adjective and as a verb | GENDER.ED

Kaveri Qureshi reflects on how the Queer Data Showcase organised by the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab, AI Ethics & Society and Pride in STEM addressed queer data as an adjective and as a verb.

gender.ed.ac.uk

AI Ethics & Society@aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 4mo ago

✨Are you interested in exploring how artists, activists and academics work with queer data as material, concept, process and problem? 🌈 Come join us on June 10th at HOME Manchester for an evening of talks and performances ⬇️ sign up below www.eventbrite.com/e/queer-data...

📣 Postdoc opportunity with Dr Nayha Sethi, CTMF Affiliate 📣 The Medicine without Doctors Project is recruiting a postdoc fellow with a background in law/regulation/socio-legal studies to work on a case-study exploring socio-legal elements of AI. Closing date: 8 May Info & apply 👇 edin.ac/3Qf8VQX

"The questions we are litigating now are less ‘is this AI product good or bad’ and more ‘we have seen what it can do, and do we want AI to exist in this space at all?’" writes @bcmerchant.bsky.social on the shift from rejection to refusal of AI that he documents across different domains.

It's open season for refusing AI

There's been a wave of successful efforts to ban, reject and shut down AI.

bloodinthemachine.com

"all AI will do is require that we work more, harder, and on the parts of our job that shouldn’t even be our job"

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Mark Watkins of the Chronicle of Higher Ed says faculty should spend 90 mins a week to teach ourselves about AI & unis are now sending out emails w his recommendation. I write here about the gift of having someone admit that automation intensifies labor sonja-drimmer.squarespace.com/blog-1/2026/...

This is why I increasingly believe that librarians should use our limited time and resources to lobby for proper regulation and governance and not on developing 'literacy' or 'ethical use' policies after adoption, when it's far too late. It's like teaching victims of crime to be more 'ethical'.

Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 5mo ago

New paper from @aial.ie! @harshp.com, Dick Blankvoort, Adel Shaaban, @sashamtl.bsky.social & me We analysed 6 GenAI ToS--finding missing info, major power imbalances & user obligations that are impossible to meet without violating the terms arxiv.org/abs/2603.18964 & aial.ie/research/ter... 1/

Good news: not just one open job, but two! Both are postdocs in philosophy of science/ML working with my @technomoralfutures.bsky.social co-Director Dr Emily Sullivan on issues in ML scientific understanding and explanation. Ads for a 3 year post and 2 year post are linked below, apply by 20 April

My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So a great thing about contracts is that they usually have and end date and/or means of ending them. If your university or other organization bent the knee to OpenAI or any of the other chatbot providers, when a contract is up, there is an opportunity for pressure: forms.gle/ZGn5brEGU4t9...

Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social

Signal or noise? Evaluating commonly used attribution methods for explaining deep neural networks in electrocardiogram classification

AbstractAims. Attribution-based explainability methods are widely used in electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis to interpret predictions from ‘black-box’ deep n

academic.oup.com

✨really looking forward to Ben’s online talk next Wednesday!

AI Ethics & Society@aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 5mo ago

✨ How can model collapse help us make sense of the emergent risks of synthetic data? And how might it perpetuate notions of real data as 'gold standard'? @bnjacobsen.bsky.social will discuss this in his talk on March 18th - sign up ⬇️ www.eventbrite.com/e/trash-in-t...

A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. www.404media.co/this-app-war...

This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby

The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to…

404media.co

If you want to defeat the far right, you need a real alternative, not a more moderate version that panders & parrots but offers nothing to address real issues. Congratulations @greenparty.org.uk, Hannah Spencer, @zackpolanski.bsky.social & the people of Gorton & Denton www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp...

Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform

Hannah Spencer, a 34-year-old plumber, also becomes the first Green Party candidate to win a Westminster by-election.

bbc.co.uk

Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records. Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'. Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Stop Palantir taking over our public services!

Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir.

you.38degrees.org.uk

📣our next event “Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-led dialogue”, is happening in Edinburgh Feb 18th - a panel discussion featuring @karengregory.bsky.social, Nelson Oppong and Adam Badger, and chaired by @srravya.bsky.social 👀 sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/navigating...

Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-Led Dialogue

A wide-ranging discussion about moving between disciplines, publishing cross-disciplinary research, and responding to funding uncertainties

eventbrite.co.uk

Everything old being new again all at once is not a coincidence

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

nytimes.com

Reminder that years ago it was found out that the FBI straight up made up a whole bunch of fake forensic sciences, plural. People have gone to jail and been executed due to literally pseudoscience. Hair forensics, for instance, is totally nonsense. They admitted it. slate.com/news-and-pol...

The FBI Faked an Entire Field of Forensic Science

For more stories like this, like Slate on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

slate.com

When I led local 'EA' groups, I used to half-jokingly say that effective altruism is a cult. I still like many of the well-intentioned people there. But I've left. Over time, I've come to understand how it's actually a cult. My forum bio now says this:

Dr. Émile P. Torres@xriskology.bsky.social · 8mo ago

New article explains why Effective Altruism is a cult. I'll post a long thread about this tomorrow. Here's the article, which is about 8,400 words long! I hope you find it interesting and useful. www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/effective-...

I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...

“This was the system that let Epstein in and kept him in. It is also the system now steering the most consequential technologies of the coming century. The convergence of Silicon Valley’s elite, the techno-authoritarian right and the labs coding AI and crypto, has only intensified since his death.”

How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley’s AI Elite

The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles

bylinetimes.com

“As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

RSF massacres left Sudanese city ‘a slaughterhouse’, satellite images show

Up to 150,000 residents of El Fasher are missing since North Darfur capital fell to paramilitary Rapid Support Forces

theguardian.com

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

❔Does anyone know of groups where disabled people/people w chronic conditions and working in Critical Data Studies/AI can meet up? Like a Queer in AI but for disabled folks? I constantly think about how helpful it might be to talk to other people navigating disability, who are doing similar work

In newly leaked audio, Peter Thiel admits he urged JD Vance to ignore Pope Leo XIV on moral questions — including the ethical development of AI. He goes even further, branding Leo “the woke American pope” and suggesting he’s a tool of the Antichrist.

NEW: JD Vance’s Top Donor Suggests Pope Leo XIV is Antichrist

In a leaked lecture, Peter Thiel says he’s urged Vance to ignore the pope on moral questions — and simply pray for him.

thelettersfromleo.com

I'm officially a Doctor. I'm very proud of the work I did on the harms of language technologies, my thesis here: lnkd.in/eh6FqZkZ It is a privilege to graduate, when not a single university still stands in Gaza. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, in particular @bjoernross.bsky.social.

📣 Last few tickets left now!!

AI Ethics & Society@aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 9mo ago

✨exploring empirical encounters with computational 'intelligence' - an in-person event with Edinburgh’s DARE project researchers @nicolasugden.bsky.social, Abby King and Max Perry, looking at how data is being used in UK healthcare and biomedical research. ⬇️ sign up below! shorturl.at/Yj91W

My student Arlene Lo has a paper on the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's attempts to integrate Indigenous groups into its environmental impact assessments. It's now out in (appropriately enough!) the Canadian journal of philosophy. It's good, check it out! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world And by design LLMs destroy shared context

Our final event of the semester is happening on December 3rd! Interested in critical health data studies? Come along to High School Yards :)

AI Ethics & Society@aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 9mo ago

✨exploring empirical encounters with computational 'intelligence' - an in-person event with Edinburgh’s DARE project researchers @nicolasugden.bsky.social, Abby King and Max Perry, looking at how data is being used in UK healthcare and biomedical research. ⬇️ sign up below! shorturl.at/Yj91W

🔔new paper alert🔔 I argue that language technologies are usefully understood as a type of language management (i.e., ways of changing how people use and think about language) -- especially in the workplace -- connecting critical work on AI with language policy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Defining language and managing its use: Language technology as language management

Language technologies such as voice user interfaces, large language models and machine translation tools are embedded in an ever-growing range of digi…

sciencedirect.com

Heading to Edinburgh next week for this exciting event on 🤖🏳️‍⚧️Gender and the Machine🧟‍♀️🧑‍💻, where @naz-andalibi.bsky.social and I will be talking about our research! Thanks to @sj-bennett.bsky.social and @kevinguyan.bsky.social for organizing! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-and...

Gender and the Machine: Trans Tech, Emotion and AI

Join us for this afternoon of events discussing gender, marginalisation and emotion in AI and digital technologies

eventbrite.co.uk