Vedran Sekara
@vedransekara.bsky.social
Assoc professor @ITUkbh. Previously @UNICEFinnovate & @sony Working on AI bias, stupid algorithms, and computational social science More silly things at 👉 https://vedransekara.github.io/ #TechWillNotSaveUs 🍉
A first year above 2C in the mid-2030s now looks plausible. 0.5C was first passed in 1980, 1.0C in 2010 and 1.5C in 2024. The 15-year trend runs at 0.42C per decade. The 2026 and 2027 points for the current El Nino are estimates. We're not remotely ready!
The world is run by the most depressing people who have ever lived.
Veerender Singh Jubbal@veerenderjubbal.bsky.social · 2w ago
Seeding the “maybe our model is exhibiting self-awareness?” narrative to obliterate the “OpenAI is a negligent and potentially criminal actor” narrative is a reputation management move exclusive to this industry. Not a stunt, but a desperate need to control the narrative.
EXCLUSIVE: Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week
The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn't notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to peop...
reuters.com
Wired sets the frame that the model “escaped containment,” but from an accountability perspective, OpenAI left a door open by failing to properly isolate their system. Real headline: “OpenAI’s security failure leads to cyberattack against another AI company.”
Congrats Spain 🇪🇸⚽🏟️! Well-deserved victory! One team showed up to play football tonight, and the other.....well I'm glad they lost. #worldcup
Excuse my language, but what the actual f**k are these people doing
Julie Carpenter, PhD@jgcarpenter.com · 4w agoAs a robotics researcher, learning scientist, and author who has followed Realbotix for years, I'm compelled to do a Bluesky thread on this whole pivot that Realbotix is now trying, turning from humanoid sex robots to classroom "education" robots. Buckle up. nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/n... 🧵
Amnesty International put out a major report documenting the influence of UK based anti trans gender critical organizations and their funding. Within hours, GC groups threatened defamation lawsuits and Amnesty was forced to pull it down. Proving the point they're anti rights. Anyways, here it is.
Did not even last a week. The fact that this made it out the door means the privacy department now works in a basement with no computers and a single stapler. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/t...
Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash
Users and Hollywood agencies raised privacy and copyright concerns about the new tool, Muse Image.
nytimes.com
Kashmir Hill@kashhill.bsky.social · last mo.OpenAI's ill-fated Sora allowed people to make AI-generated videos with other people's likenesses, but those people had to opt in to letting their likenesses being used. Meta is taking a different path, reports @thiccreese.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/meta-n...
📣 There's an open PhD position in Trento/Florence under my supervision. Contact me if you want to know more!
IDDjobs@iddjobs.org · last mo.PhD position (Trento, Italy) Socioeconomic inequalities and the spread of infectious diseases with @mtizzoni.bsky.social at University of Trento More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2564
Imagine things being so bad that your best solution is to cut yourself off from Google Search traffic. I don't think that people realise just how much of a bad actor Google has been, for year. No other company has damaged the web nearly as much. 🧵 www.adweek.com/media/publis...
Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search
The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators
adweek.com
‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...
Ford, Commonwealth Bank, and IBM all start rehiring people after realizing AI can't replace them on quality: www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/e... “If we don’t continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three-five years?..There’s no pipeline; the well simply dries up" IBM HR chief
Employers who laid off workers citing AI are already starting to regret it
Companies are realizing artificial intelligence can't do everything after all, prompting them to rehire employees to grow their businesses
cnbc.com
Unsurprisingly, banning social media for under 16s has no effect on social media usage In addition to pushing users to more fringe platforms underage users have been: "dodging restrictions by using accounts registered to older people, setting up fake accounts, or by logging into private browsers."
Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 2mo agono shit www.rte.ie/news/world/2...
Israel deliberately targeting Gaza children to commit genocide, UN inquiry finds
Israel deliberately targeting Gaza children to commit genocide, UN inquiry finds
Report says by aiming at children Israel is undermining capacity of Palestinian people to exist Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an independent UN inquiry has found. The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of those killed by Israeli forces have been children. Continue reading...
theguardian.com
When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.
Tyre, Lebanon is devastated. Homes, hospitals and shelters are damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes. Ceasefires mean little when fear remains. Hundreds of thousands are still displaced, stuck in uncertainty. This must end.
So apparently KPMG wrote a report describing the successful use of AI by businesses. But the case studies turned out to be AI hallucinations. www.ft.com/content/b382...
KPMG report contained AI hallucinations on benefits of . . . AI
Bogus case studies on UBS and transit systems exaggerated adoption of the technology
ft.com
today in dystopia watch: all your pokemon go scans helped train a system for killer drones
Schera Wyss 💀 SLUG WORLD 2026@scherawyss.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis might be one of the most insane scandals in game history When Pokemon Go players scan PokeStops, theyve been unknowingly building a detailed visual model of the world which is being sold to a military contractor to build a no-GPS positioning for the new generation of unmanned killing machines
I had a realisation Context: In our Reclaiming AI paper we argued that AI systems cannot scale up to human-level cognition without consuming astronomical amounts of resources My realisation: The AI industry is determined to burn through the earth’s resources just to prove us right *empirically*
It is quite revealing that the investments in AI in education contexts are talked about as "bets" and "gambling." This is correct, since there is no evidence that such investments will result in any improvement. Important to note that LEARNERS are the losers when there is no payoff.
Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · 3mo ago"the future of health won't be built by keeping tobacco out of public spaces but by putting it at the centre"
A good cautionary tale for when someone claims that trusting data analysis done with an LLM is good because it’s “objective.” In this example, Copilot apparently decided to ignore the data it was given and just run with all the subconscious biases its (human-made) training data inevitably gave it.
Adam Kucharski@adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Based on the dataset you shared, US and UK responses differ mainly in tone, intensity, and wording style, even though they express similar emotional states" New post on what happened when I got Copilot to do some data analysis: kucharski.substack.com/p/real-signa...
After 15 years of reporting on infectious disease outbreaks, what continues to fascinate me about them is the challenge of making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty. The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius is a perfect example My story in @science.org is here (and a thread to come): 🧪 #IDsky
What to do with the passengers on the cruise ship hit by hantavirus?
Past studies of Andes virus offer scant evidence on transmission risks, and have sparked debate
science.org
Deepfakes are everywhere, but digital forensics investigators are fighting back. Learn more: https://scim.ag/42dMPBg
The best kind of AI literacy for young children? Don't use AI in schools, teach reality first.
Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 3mo agothe biggest tech companies in the world are endorsing a new bill that would shove AI onto kids in school www.404media.co/literacy-in-...
The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...
Ok guys should we use the world's remaining carbon budget to A) power the transition to 100% renewables B) power the plagiarism machines that only a tiny managerial minority wants and aren't profitable even though everyone is being forced to use them?
