Kristen Thomasen

Right up there with deleting Orwell’s 1984 off of everyone’s kindle 🏆

Cool :)

Thinking of AI as a Social Problem No need to know the unknowable. The knowable is bad enough.

It takes no special technical expertise to know that
1) AI's main value proposition today is automating labor,
2) AI is going to supercharge economic inequality, and
3) If we do not get out in front of that policy-wise, we are fools.

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/thinking-o...

Greta Thunberg On Her Detention: I'm "Not The Story" — It's Israel Violating International Humanitarian Law “I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me. But that is not the story.”

Greta Thunberg, deported to Greece, says the targeting of the Sumud Flotilla is "not the story" @teenvogue.com — instead, she says:

"Israel once again violated international humanitarian law by preventing aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved.”

and beyond consent, much like colonial/imperial expansion, publics will be conscripted into training and testing the systems for ever wider use 🤮

Others have drawn these links already, but: colonialism, rape culture, and AI /big tech are intertwined. It all comes down to a deliberate unwillingness to respect consent. Whether land, sex/bodies, or data—if those driven by white supremacist patriarchy want it, doesn't matter if someone says no.

The consultation is structured to a pre-determined outcome: yes, more AI. Very much agree with @anabrandusescu.bsky.social 👇🏻

(I‘m also offended by how much effort so many stakeholders put into trying to make the AIDA process better only to be ignored again. As Ana says, it’s no way to build trust)

Something is sparking in gen A, I hope it can materialize to its best potential.

Queen

i would read the thought piece on the through line between western society’s lack of urgency/denial around climate catastrophe, genocide, fascism, and Italian Brainrot as a philosophical aesthetic.

“Absurdism is the philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. It states that trying to find meaning leads people into conflict with a seemingly meaningless world.” (Wikipedia)

My kid explained 6-7 to me: it means nothing. It just means 6 7 (🤷🏼‍♀️). It’s just a vibe. Like life. What does life mean?

This kid is Gen-A, and the A is for Absurdism.

Analysis | Amazon’s Ring plans to scan everyone’s face at the door For the first time, the company is putting facial recognition into its home security doorbells and video cameras.

I think often about the Amazon engineer who wrote in an open letter to the company that Ring was “incompatible” with a free society.

Putting aside the question of AI personhood, a slur requires a history of dehumanization.

In order to fuction, the slur has to call into being that history of dehumanization for its injurious force. There is no such history for LLMs, regardless of claims otherwise.

No one ever suspects the butterfly.

Abolish the Border, Abolish the Police Reading List In solidarity with all those standing up for our communities against the brutality of immigrant detention and police repression, we offer an extensive reading list about border and police ab...

We made a reading list for you.

The momcologist in me is having trouble holding back my full nsfw opinion.

But this administration does not give a f*** about helping kids with cancer.

Hear ye, man who has spent 9 months kidnapping kids with cancer and throwing them in detention centres or deporting them away from their care teams, while cancelling funding to real cancer research, will now cure childhood cancer with the ~*~secret power of A.I.~*~

For Eva Jewell, the public and political indifference to the dignity of Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people is rooted in a specific problem: Canadian exceptionalism that touts progressive feminist politics except if you’re Indigenous. thewalrus.ca/trc-gender/

Authors Alliance Files Amicus Brief in Thomson Reuters v. Ross Yesterday Authors Alliance filed an amicus brief in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, the long-running lawsuit between Thomson Reuters, owner of Westlaw (a legal research platform) and ROSS Int…

Yesterday we filed an amicus brief in Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence. Though the suit is different in many ways from other AI lawsuits, this one is significant because it is the first time a US Circuit Court will have the opportunity to directly address the applicability of fair use to AI training.

True test of reconciliation: Respect the Indigenous right to say No The right to say no is the core of any future relationship with the Canadian state and its citizens. It’s a basic right — one which is grounded in our sovereignty as individuals and Nations to decide ...

Reconciliation isn’t about token gestures, museum visits, or diversity training, writes @pampalmater.com. True reconciliation means respecting Indigenous peoples’ right to say 'No'—to development on their lands, to discriminatory laws, and to ongoing abuse.

“Full AI.” All male AI. Very muscular male AI.

*”throw" blame at

All these excuses, but please do not blame your assistant when you could blame at the AI boosters who oversell their products.

. @courtniewolfgang.bsky.social's "WTF is the Radical Indoctrination EO?: Supporting and Affirming Queer and Trans Students and Their Teachers" shows how zines empower rapid writing+sharing info as realtime crisis response (here, same day as the Exec Order/EO) zinebakery.com/redistro/sup... +

Canada Post workers on nationwide strike after government demands reforms | CBC News The union representing Canada's postal workers has called for a cross-country strike in the wake of the federal government clearing the way for major reforms to Canada Post.

"In response to the government's attack on our postal service and workers, effective immediately, all CUPW members at Canada Post are on a nationwide strike," CUPW said in a statement.

A tech bro will soon pitch an app through which people can request a delivery drone pick up and transport their physical message to another recipient and billions will be poured into R&D because it’s going to solve data privacy.

Ya know what else isn’t profitable? Large language models. But cool cool cool to hook our economy to those amiright? Who needs basic services when we can have hypothetical future ~*~innovation~*~

♥️

Liberal government frees Canada Post to end home delivery, close some post offices | CBC News With Canada Post on track to lose $1.5 billion in 2025 and contract discussions between the union and the corporation stalled, the federal government is embarking on a modernization plan it says will ...

The government is reducing service standards and Canada Post’s biggest advantage: its nationwide network.

This plan is about cutting back the postal service instead of investing to give it new revenue tools through things like postal banking. It’s shameful.