tbc by "critique" I mean specifically the kind of work that Dr Bender is doing, and not the sealioning that she regularly encounters
(sometimes-computational) linguist, AI/ML unenthusiast, Luddite, they/he https://linktr.ee/abstract_tesseract
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tbc by "critique" I mean specifically the kind of work that Dr Bender is doing, and not the sealioning that she regularly encounters
I'm not the first person to say this, but I sure am tired of "nuance" being used to mean "refusal to engage in critique and/or take a principled side on an issue based on one's values"
"The idea of putting chatbots into the classroom is disrespectful to both students and teachers, because the form of a tutoring session is not a tutoring session. To say otherwise is to flatten the work of teaching and learning into just the words that are exchanged between teachers and students"
Liberals are starting to say shit like, "trans people asked for too much too fast," and I'll remind your souless asses that we actually didn't ask for anything. we were minding our own business and quietly improving our healthcare and you (cis) decided to do a pogrom against us for no reason.
The response to this piece has been incredible. Huge thanks to all the translators and localizers who shared their stories. I'm now planning the next two editions: First, if you're a healthcare workerâa nurse, therapist, tech, admin, doctorâand AI has impacted your job, I'd love to hear from you.
Maybe they toss a few head-scratchers in there just to throw us off
Do you have any hunches for why tech product teams continue to think that it is feasible or desirable for people to talk at their devices? I'm genuinely curious, because my entire time in tech I've been surrounded by people who seem to sincerely believe this
I really appreciate this point. This an opportunity for institutions like UNESCO to demonstrate that they've learned how to promote community self-determination, rather than just promoting tools and approaches from a few powerful actors in the global north
I am organizing multiple workshops this week for Chicago activists and organizers as we prepare for a possible military occupation of our city. I am tired but moving fast.
Yes absolutely! There is something especially ignorant about tech bros in particular framing "the market" as an entity which exists somehow separately from state intervention. Like, my guy, do you know literally anything at all about the history of your own industry???
Stop, you're turning off the normie democrats with defund police & not brutalizing homeless people & letting trans people live their lives. You know better, we're supposed to accept nothing because it's better than the alternative nothing.
Mic drop from @abeba.bsky.social at UNESCO Digital Learning Week
wow
AI may be the first anti-automation tool in that it has automated the thing devs like to do (write code) and stuck them with more of what they don't like to do (fix someone else's bad code)
Fellas is it sabotage to refuse to use tools that don't work as advertised and also make life noticeably worse for people who interact with the tools or their outputs
I know it's probably too much to hope that we have a reckoning where we rethink how we solve economic/political/social problems, so that tech doesn't get to set the agenda. But failing that, I hope we at least get a list of all the clueless shit that tech CEOs have said over the past few years
"Eugenics was rooted in rational modern science then" needs re-stating. Far too many people describe eugenics as a "pseudoscience", but it wasn't to those who studied it, wrote books and papers, formed societies and argued its benefits.
some folks were using Paris as proof and an excuse to start or stay on Substack and I'm very happy that Paris can't be used as an excuse to support nazis any more :)
hmmm if I were the digital media director of a brand whose goal was to "celebrate and reflect our differences, while using our platform to unite and bring women together", I would simply reconsider using the Data-Stealing Slop Machine, but what do I know
What unity means is that you stop telling people to sit down and wait their turn, when itâs never their turn, and when they are the ones who need it the most. It certainly doesnât mean âeveryone agrees.â It will never mean that.
I appreciated the chance to talk with Kathryn Jezer-Morton for this article. It's unfortunate that we have to deal with Big Tech's messes everywhere, including in our own families, but given that, I'm glad for a chance to help people think this through. www.thecut.com/article/broo... >>
I have an opinion piece in the New York Times today on how the labor movement has failed to step up to the moment in countering Trump, even as Trump unilaterally strips public sector workers of collective bargaining. Labor will die as a movement if this continues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
Yeah exactly. I also wonder if the weird inconsistent stereophonic thing that's happening in e.g. track 3 is anachronistic, but in any case it's annoying as hell
I'm sure someone will say that badly produced music can do that even if there's no synthetic audio extrusion going on, which is true as far as it goes, I guess. But it's a high concentration of "off" things
I'm not an *expert* expert, but it seems to do the thing where the tone color of each instrument changes between musical phrases and even the same phrase. Plus if you know a genre you pick up instrumentation and phrasing cuesâparticular musical things that artists doâand those are all over the place
My latest must-reads list and my final thoughts for the week. Here, I talk about the first AI-involved murder in the US (that we know of), how the guardrails of reality are being tampered with or removed, and the need to anchor ourselves to each other if we're going to survive these times.
If you're in tech, what discourages you from the idea of unions? Or even some sector-wide guild/committee?
Some people choose parties or positions because they believe itâs the best avenue for their particular career rather than any principle or belief and those are probably the most dangerous people around right now.
With no due respect to The Guardian and the author, where is the Big Idea in this article? These are the same shallow talking points that AI bros have been making for the past couple of years
Trombone Shorty releases new album from New Orleans, a tribute to the city's soul, marking the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
ooooooh thank you!!!
so say we all!
Yes, this is a much more forensic account www.freiheit.org/north-and-so...
I don't agree with the framing in the article ("The bigger question is, how do you make sure the students are ready to add economic value in the labor market?" đ¤Ž), but I'm encouraged by the organized refusal
this list is strengthening my theory that the queers do this best
Reading stuff by"AI" booster devs is so fascinating because the entire time they're either dropping hints that the tools don't actually work all that well, or that they have a narrow view of what software dev work is. Or both. Usually both.
Interdisciplinary scholar here to say that researching across expertises and methodologies is extremely difficult, and STEM folks need to learn to email their humanities colleagues for consultations before spouting off about areas theyâre not trained in.
To be clear, I am not angry with people who are in desperate or vulnerable situations and are trying to keep themselves alive. I'm angry at companies and their supporters who are preying on people who deserve genuine help, not whatever the fuck this is
It makes me so furious and also sad every time I hear "AI" boosters weaponize the language of social justice to support this shit: "if you oppose therapy chatbots, you're erasing people's positive experiences and denying their autonomy to choose the care that works for them", etc.
Yeah I'm pissed about this. For software that's all about freedom, they seem to have forgotten about respecting our freedom to refuse "AI" slop and be left the fuck alone about it
if you're a guy and your partner is also a guy, you have a gay chap relationship
youtu.be/kJVd-v97oxc?...
Me: "the market" is not the appropriate place to decide who gets access to what they need for a safe and fulfilling and dignified life Dems: yeah! that's what elections are for Me: wait what
the "i" in "ai" is purely aspirational. i don't call things "artificial intelligence X", i just call it "artificial X" "artificial generated text" "artificial code" "artificial art" "artificial comments"
Regarding the tragic death of Adam Raine, there are already narratives forming that blame vague "dangers of AI" or a broader moral panic. But this is not a story about the faceless perils of superintelligence. It's about a $500 billion tech company's core software product encouraging child suicide.
People I talk to get defensive when I say that devs who use "AI" "agents" are doing their jobs badly. AND YET
ChatGPT is not engaged in expressive conduct any more than a lawn dart is
idk why but feels the same
In early July, I had the opporunity to discuss The AI Con with @kobotic.bsky.social at RMIT. ABC is presenting part of that conversation in their programme "Big Ideas" on Tuesday Sept 2: www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
I knew it was the beginning of the end of my time at a tech company when product teams asked "how can we encourage users to trust an AI Assistant?" and my answer was "first of all we don't, second of all everything you just said is a bad idea predicated on other bad ideas"
InfoSec news is calling it an "AI-enabled supply chain attack", which is technically true but misses the point that "a build tools company vibe-coded a change that would execute a shell command if it was in the title of the PR, and somehow nobody involved thought that was a big deal"
This is encouraging though!
ooooooof yeah
This book desperately needs a reprint. Not every book about computing ages well, but this one really holds up.
More than this is that they have been actively antagonistic.
Yeah I wondered about this too. The announcement (www.anthropic.com/news/updates...) sounds like "now we're giving people a choice!". I feel like if they meant "we've never used your data without your opt-in", they would say that. And the plans where this policy doesn't apply are, uh, concerning.
Then why are you partnering with AI companies? Why are you taking their money to bring AI into classrooms? Iâve been a union member since I was five. AI companies have stolen my work. This is a workersâ rights issue.
hey this makes my week, thank you for sharing
OpenAI could have done any of the better solutions, but instead it has decided to farm the solution off to the least qualified group to deal with it. This isn't a solution, it's liability reduction.
Check out my new article published @distinktionjournal.bsky.social on contrarianism as a cultural practice enabled by the institutional logic of Silicon Valley VC. Read it here (open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
lol same. when someone at work tries some ridiculous "AI" booster shit, people look at me worried that I'm judging them. which is good because I am and I want them to feel guilty about it!
"Thereâs just one problem. You can use ChatGPT right now, and it is astonishing." Sounds like the NYT have once again failed to Resist the Urge to be Impressed (medium.com/@emilymenonb...)
I know this is the NYT we're talking about, but the thought that multiple sets of eyes passed over that specific passage and thought "yes, lgtm, ship it"
This company is simply not able to behave ethically, and the best thing for everyone (including OpenAI workers themselves) is to shut the whole thing down
[+vibes] [+luck]
Matt Yglesias keeps making excuses for fascism because he is a reactionary creep with a bootlicking fetish who gets off on empty contrarianism.
Tom Clancy's Holes
She was brought to the US as an 8yo, worked hard, studied, earned a scholarship, planned to become a nurse. ICE kidnapped her. Held her for 6 MONTHS in a detention facility with conditions so miserable that she finally agreed to voluntarily move to Honduras, which her family left at gunpoint.
I tell my friends I love them all the time and don't guard my emotions, I've teared up recording the show even if it's just about the computer because I give a shit about the work and how people are treated. You don't have to hide how you feel and those who try to make you stop are weak
Thank you for this! Lately I've had some people admonish me that my attitude towards AI makes some people feel bad about their choices. I'm going to send them this because they *should* feel bad about their choices, and, more crucially, they should make better choices
"But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."
The TL;DR is that if respectability politics was going to work, we wouldn't be here right now. I know you may have doubts about that, but the primary strategy of the major LGBTQ+ and trans groups has been respectability politics for decades.
seeing more law enforcement types taking credit for the drop in fent overdose deaths even though what finally turned the tide was a public health response that liberally distributed narcan to anybody who asked for it
I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.
"We are deeply aware that safeguards are strongest when every element works as intended." What a bunch of fucking ghouls
turning the national guard into a insanely expensive Americorps
This is true. There are individual tools that some creative workers need to use that there's no adequate substitute for (but IME they tend to use Macs snyway). But for 99% of stuff Linux Just Works now, while Windows has been taken over by the ghost of Clippy.
So nothing is as funny as bitcoin milk but was very happy to hear granola Nazis mentioned in one of my fave podcasts
"What happens when the creation of that sense of failure, of the complete ineffectiveness of political action against the system, becomes the chief objective of those in power?" Fascinating piece by the dearly departed David Graeber.
an appropriate response to your product killing a child after months of psychological manipulation and torture is to take the product off the market before it kills again and the fact that this isnât universally accepted right now is incredibly frightening
oh shit this fuckin rules
i did literally nothing to bring this together except lend them an essay that i already wrote, but i'm totally geeking out about this zine. just go look at the collection of art in the first couple of pages, i'm so enthralled right now, i love it. i desperately want to buy a physical copy.
Isaac Chotiner interviewed Biden's close friend and last ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and in the interview Jack Lew explicitly defends Israel killing children. Lew's defense of this is so offensive that Isaac Chotiner interrupts him twice and then says outright that he's wrong.
I've been seeing "AI" boosters take victory laps saying "see? companies are disclosing and the data isn't bad". Glad to see people highlighting what these companies are still hiding, and why.
"We are deeply aware that safeguards are strongest when every element works as intended." man shut the FUCK up and unplug the goddamn thing already
Great essay from @frank.computer! "A chair orders you to sit and sit in a particular way, by its design. Your being is intended through the tool: you are intended to sit still, face forward, and behave. Artificial intelligence works in exactly the same way."
You need to go no further than user stories to illustrate this idea. "As a user, I want to log in." Fuck no I don't! I'm forced to log in, to so many things, all day long. I will avoid it whenever I can, even if I it means I don't get "personalization" or whatever bullshit you have for me.
Indistinguishable, in tone and content, from an interview with Evan Solomon, Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.
Wistfully remembering the brief BERTological period where the community was coming around to the idea that "a machine learning system can score well on a given test set by relying on heuristics that are effective for frequent example types but break down in more challenging cases" (McCoy et al 2019)
Online age verification is not like "showing ID to buy alcohol" because a) the liquor store doesn't get to scan your ID and store a digital copy of it forever in a database that will inevitably get hacked b) you don't have to show ID to go to the library because they have cocktail recipe books
not really interested in any take on What Happened to Music Criticism that doesnât take into account the labor conditions of the interlocking music and journalism industries
this phenomenon very much frustrates me as well â when my journalistic work gets cited, I'm very often a "commentator" or a "critic" not a "journalist," a designation that apparently belongs to those with sunnier outlooks
Acknowledging that we are living under a fascist regime at the Federal level is essential for figuring out how to fight. And I'm sorry but burying one's head in the sand at this moment is actually allowing fascism to be further entrenched & authority more easily consolidated.
Bout to sample this chime and turn it into a late summer banger
kitchen table issue: stop kidnapping my neighbors!
The EU/Latin American's shouldn't focus on winning the AI race, but should be focused on solving people's problems. As simple as THAT. We (all) need a different game to win in đ˛â¨ A great episode of @techwontsave.us by @parismarx.com interviewing @ceciliarikap.bsky.social at techwontsave.us
People who have been and continue to downplay what's currently happening in this country simply do not want to take the necessary action(s) to stop what's happening. It's not that they don't "understand" or are "cautious" etc... It's either that they agree with the objectives or they have no answers
Q for speculative fiction fans & history of tech specialists: What are some early examples of depictions of AI in fiction that are actually called "AI"? (Asimov's robot stories start before McCarthy & Minsky coined the phrase, for example.)
Sneak peak of the next #DataSittersClub, "Dawn of the Coasting AI", with @anasalter.bsky.social & @readywriting.bsky.social! "Dawn on the Coast" is a weird BSC book and not for everyone, and we know this one won't be, too. But we'll have a little survey about AI & DH at the end for your feedback!
Hereâs my new song spray paint without all the boygenius style production. Iâll be playing this at Dream A Better World fest in Somerville in an hour or so