michael

If we are always on the verge of #AI Utopia, why are these tech bros so into building bunkers?

AI and Fraternity, Abeba Birhane, AI Accountability Lab I envision a future where human dignity, justice, peace, kindness, care, respect, accountability, and rights and freedoms serve as the north stars that guide AI development and use. Realising these ideals can’t happen without intentional tireless work, dialogues, and confrontations of ugly realities – even if they are uncomfortable to deal with. This starts with deciphering hype from reality. Pervasive narratives portray AI as a magical, fully autonomous entity approaching a God-like omnipotence and omniscience. In reality, audits of AI systems reveal a consistent failure to deliver on grandiose promises and suffer from all kinds of shortcomings, issues often swept under the rug. AI in general, and GenAI in particular, encodes and exacerbates historical stereotypes, entrenches harmful societal norms, and amplifies injustice. A robust body of evidence demonstrates that — from hiring, welfare allocation, medical care allocation to anything in between — deployment of AI is widening inequity, disproportionately impacting people at the margins of society and concentrating power and influence in the hands of few. Major actors—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI—have willingly aligned with authoritarian regimes and proactively abandoned their pledges to fact-check, prevent misinformation, respect diversity and equity, refrain from using AI for weapons development, while retaliating against critique. The aforementioned vision can’t and won’t happen without confrontation of these uncomfortable facts. This is precisely why we need active resistance and refusal of unreliable and harmful AI systems; clearly laid out regulation and enforcement; and shepherding of the AI industry towards transparency and accountability of responsible bodies. "Machine agency" must be in service of human agency and empowerment, a coexistence that isn't a continuation of modern tech corporations’ inequality-widening,

so I am one of the 12 people (including the “god-fathers of AI”) that will be at the Vatican this September for a two full-day working group on the Future of AI

here is my Vatican approved short provocation on 'AI and Fraternity' for the working group

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Hello friends. A life update is in order. I am now Dr. Andrews. I will spend the next two years at Princeton as a postdoctoral fellow. I am, however, still on the job market for something permanent. Please alert me if you hear of opportunities for which you think I would be a good fit!

Ord: one in six chance of existential catastrophe in the next century (likely from AGI; dismisses global warming). @adambecker.bsky.social: "Why one in six"? Ord: "I don't have a simple recipe for creating my number...live my experiences." Sigh..how does this pass for ethics or science?

If someone asks a question about "AGI", the only reality-based response is to demand a definition of "AGI" before replying. #acl2025

Haha. I thought Anthropic's whole thing was being the "non shitty" "AI" company.

Congrats!!!

New article out today, covering our past two years of research asking US cities how they govern AI ✨

The future of AI governance in public services is being shaped right now, through public procurement

I am once again pitching my romantic comedy:

- two academics start dating
- discover they are each other's terrible reviewer
- hijinks ensue

Working title: Love is Double-Blind

To benefit all of humanity.

This must be part of the “gentle singularity” promised by Sam Altman

Data & Society’s Tamara Kneese asks, “Why are we allowing a handful of tech oligarchs to determine where the Earth’s resources and energy supplies are directed?” Promises of abundance contrast with the real environmental impact of AI infrastructure, she writes:
buff.ly/1xbKSPT

i know it's just advertisement but it still pisses me off when tech CEOs claim AGI will solve humanity's problems with its vast intelligence. for a lot of problems we already know the solutions, what prevents them being solved is not a lack of intelligence, but that the solutions are unprofitable

Could weep this is so good. Thank you @alexhanna.bsky.social @karenhao.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social @datasociety.bsky.social

The world is on fire but this crew is so grounded and fluidly address the pros and cons of tech.

And yes hallelujah stop call it AI ffs

(currently at a book talk for @karenhao.bsky.social's Empire of AI and @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social's The AI Con and it is heartening to hear them and be in community with others who are pushing back against AI. I am so alone in this but now feel energized to keep pushing :))

These people can't stop reinventing phrenology

been trying to start my morning with those little puzzle games everyone likes instead of looking at social media and all it's proven is i actively seek out ways to get pissed off as soon as i'm awake

Would it hurt people in tech to go and *talk* to someone with a degree in education? Most people don't understand what schools do. TL;DR: it's a lot more than info dumping into student's heads and it is certainly a lot more than daycare.

sometimes I think about how much money has been invested into AI companies and Facebook's version of Second Life instead of stuff like women's health or greater access to public transit in the US and I get really sad

BRB, creating an AI refugee who had to leave her home because a data center used up all the water

the transformative benefits and societal advancement of AI that we’ve been promised

“This is no different from using a calculator to do math problems!”

Has everyone my age forgotten that they made us learn to do the problems without the calculators anyway! Like we used to leave our calculators in a basket at the door on test day!

Exclusive: Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away Managing those AI identities will require companies to completely reassess their cybersecurity strategies.

I do wish it was better understood by now—especially by folks in the media—that these "warnings" from large AI corporations in fact function as "advertisements"

www.axios.com/2025/04/22/a...

The alarming consolidation of federal government data and processes into private corporate control threatens democratic oversight, public transparency, and national security – all without adequate safeguards or accountability.

There are great writers of scifi/fantasy who have either expressed support (Tade Thompson) and written sympathetic trans and n-b characters (NK Jemisin, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Robin Hobb) in their works who everyone should read instead. They're way better authors too.

It is tiring to see critical engagements with tech cast as 'techno fearmongering' in an effort to undermine what I see perhaps as 'techno-realism': a theoretically & historically informed effort to situate new technologies within socio-political environments & consider their foreseeable effects.

every day I wake up and check the news and am madder about the Trump administration than I have ever been and then I have to meet the obligations of my daily life and them the next morning I wake up and check the news and am madder about the Trump administration than I have ever been and then I have

It’s pretty staggering that 25 years ago people thought the internet would bring us a utopia, and it brought back measles killing children instead