Mike Ananny

+1

Our uni recently partnered w/ OpenAI (www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/11/12/u...) to “empower” us, increase our “productivity”, etc, encouraging us to rethink teaching, be responsible, etc.

We adapt.

OpenAI doesn’t change.

Uni leaders follow tech, shrink their missions, mistake PR with vision.

Ugh. But not surprising.

And maybe this latest sponcon could finally show celebrity intellectual types that such lists & titles (Forbes, Tech Review, etc) that mythologize individualism are distracting & performative flotsam?

"Insofar as LLMs are used to avoid reading, thinking, & writing, their use is incompatible with liberal education...

I also find the idea of anything even vaguely punitive in the university classroom embarrassing at best, & against the very idea of education at worst."

Abstract of article: “ABSTRACT Governing Artificial Intelligence (Al) is difficult, in part, because Al systems never stand still in any one place. They are usually made by private companies, hidden within proprietary infrastructures, spanning jurisdictions, behaving in ways that are difficult to predict, and talked about in messy discourses of hype and panic. I suggest here that all this dynamism and uncertainty could be tackled by understanding Al and its governance as multi-scalar phenomena. Drawing on DiCaglio's idea of a 'scalar view,' defining Al as a scalar media technology, and tracing journalism's encounters with Generative Al as scalar collisions - across practices, organizations, data, audiences, and engineering - I argue that Al governance is 'scale work', and that multi-scalar governance offers new ways to understand Generative Al and its stakes.”

New paper!

In @icsjournal.bsky.social I argue that governing #AI means “scale work” — the labour of stabilizing AI *across* relationships that are usually tackled in isolation.

I use journalism’s GenAI encounters as a case study, connecting siloed AI collisions

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/T7WWF...

Foreign tourists could be required to disclose 5 years of social media histories under Trump administration plan The Customs and Border Protection proposal would apply even to countries that don't require visas to enter.

Requiring temporary visitors to surrender five years of social media to the U.S. sends the message that the American commitment to free speech is pretense. This simply is not the behavior of a country confident in its freedoms.

It's a threat to free speech around the world and must be opposed.

The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants - and family members who would be traveling with them - to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.

Holy shit.

Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa.

www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

To Root Out Wokeness in the Course Catalog, This Texas University Is Turning to AI “The AI was upset with my use of the phrase ‘women's rights movement.’”

“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’”

Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”

Lawsuit or license? A new tool to keep track of disputes and deals between publishers and AI companies. Announcing a new tool to keep track of disputes and deals between news publishers and AI companies.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism is releasing a tracker, created by Tow Researchers @klaudia.bsky.social and @aisvarya17.bsky.social, that monitors lawsuits, deals, and grants between news publishers and AI companies

www.cjr.org/analysis/law...

tow.cjr.org/ai-deals-law...

(Free eprint currently at that link but email me if paywalled.)

And huge thanks to @joannekuai.bsky.social & @fabianlferrari.bsky.social for including me in their incredibly thoughtful @icsjournal.bsky.social AI governance special issue — full issue to come but individual papers at journal site.

Abstract of article: “ABSTRACT Governing Artificial Intelligence (Al) is difficult, in part, because Al systems never stand still in any one place. They are usually made by private companies, hidden within proprietary infrastructures, spanning jurisdictions, behaving in ways that are difficult to predict, and talked about in messy discourses of hype and panic. I suggest here that all this dynamism and uncertainty could be tackled by understanding Al and its governance as multi-scalar phenomena. Drawing on DiCaglio's idea of a 'scalar view,' defining Al as a scalar media technology, and tracing journalism's encounters with Generative Al as scalar collisions - across practices, organizations, data, audiences, and engineering - I argue that Al governance is 'scale work', and that multi-scalar governance offers new ways to understand Generative Al and its stakes.”

New paper!

In @icsjournal.bsky.social I argue that governing #AI means “scale work” — the labour of stabilizing AI *across* relationships that are usually tackled in isolation.

I use journalism’s GenAI encounters as a case study, connecting siloed AI collisions

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/T7WWF...

“Far from ‘innovating’ education, as AI proponents claim, the algorithmic turn has made public education more vulnerable to corporate capture.” www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-161

(h/t @melhogan.bsky.social)

Fight On, indeed…

Announcing USC's Adoption of ChatGPT Edu At USC’s recent AI Summit, we shared an exciting announcement:  As part of our commitment to expanding equitable and responsible AI, ChatGPT Edu will be available for our university use in 2026. All a...

If you talk to students about GenAI (ChatGPT, Gemini, ever-creeping Grammerly, etc) you find they are also:

- annoyed by its incursion into classes

- suspicious of & ambivalent about its value

- unimpressed with universities forcing them into tech company relations

we-are.usc.edu/2025/12/03/a...

White background, red ribbon. Text says “World AIDS Day”.

My wife has been HIV+ for 34 years. She’s alive today b/c work of activists who destigmatized the virus, pushed medical science to adapt & find ways to treat it, & advocated for gov health programs that helped fund her care. The current U.S. regime may want to go back in time, but we won’t let them.

List of headlines from media covering FDA, most emphasizing the claim that covid killed children

News media has to do better with headlines that present false and unverified public health claims.

'Cultural break': U.S. senators say relations with Canadian neighbours are suffering | CBC News The tariffs imposed on Canada by U.S. President Donald Trump have clearly caused economic pain for Canada, but a U.S. senator from Maine says he's more worried about how Canadians are reacting on a pe...

“‘But the deeper problem is the cultural break; the idea that Canadians don't think of Americans as their friends and neighbours, but as adversaries.’” — US Senator Angus King

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Opinion | How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails

“The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called ‘life among the lucrative & louche’& Mr. Epstein needed to wash his name using blue-chip people who could be forgiving about infractions against the less powerful” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...

Ah, the Generativjugend…

(But mostly upset at how this preys not just on younger students, but the under-resourced teachers who are working their a**es off trying to do right by their kids, and have been conned into thinking that this is the future.)

I suspect it will be framed less obviously, but I fear the answer to this is “yes”?

Ugh, tech company certifications for kids.

The credentials economy is particularly insidious corporate takeover of learning & knowing.

This bounds tech as “just neutral tools”, builds brand loyalties at young ages, & dampens critical thinking about, eg, the politics & environmental harms of tech.

Canadians are taking a big step back from the U.S. — and here's the data to prove it | CBC News In the weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump sparked a trade war with his punishing tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada’s "old relationship" with the U.S. would be "over" soon — and now ...

“I can't expect Canadians to change their minds if they aren't getting anything in return—not even a gesture. Trump hasn't done anything to suggest that he gets he's gone too far with Canada”

Across travel, trade, shopping, & media, Canada’s pullback from the US deepens.

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Thank you, all, this looks excellent & super useful!

I have been feeling depressed and discouraged that this man has the power and influence he does at my school and in my profession

And I am a tenured professor at Harvard! How much more protected can I be?

Imagine how STUDENTS feel. Junior faculty. This quote nails it

Always watching: How ICE’s plan to monitor social media 24/7 threatens privacy and civic participation ICE’s dragnet is expanding across social media, putting everyone’s digital lives into the realm of border and immigration enforcement.

ICE is building a 24/7 social media monitoring program that would scan Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and dozens of other platforms. Private contractors would turn public posts into enforcement leads fed directly into government databases.

buff.ly/qJjcqIx

I recently reviewed journal submissions that I’m sure were AI-made.

I started reviews in good faith, tried to see author’s POV, phrased feedback to be critical, constructive, encouraging.

Realizing it was AI slop left me angry, disappointed.

We need to talk more abt this feeling of being duped.

Opinion | I Worked All Over Silicon Valley. This Is How It Lost Its Spine.

Instead of reading that NYT oped ( www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o... ) with a headline that promises a deeper analysis than the article delivers (another NYT tech coverage misfire), read Fred Turner’s new @thebaffler.com piece “The Texan Ideology”: thebaffler.com/salvos/the-t... . It’s smart.

A US citizen filmed federal agents smashing his car window, as authorities begin a surge of immigration enforcement operations in North Carolina.

The Honduran-born Charlotte resident filed a police report after the officers let him go.

I wanted to share probably the most important sermon I’ve given and it’s while I’m being arrested. It’s torture pure and simple what happens at #Broadview. I’m ok, though I was thrown to the ground and choked with my pectoral cross. A review of the video shows I was peaceful - did I deserve this?

I was in a meeting last week where someone said that they’re “incentivizing democratized ecosystems” — 3/3 on ick words.

Becoming the News | Columbia University Press What does it feel like to be featured, quoted, or just named in a news story? A refugee family, the survivor of a shooting, a primary voter in Iowa—the vie... | CUP

@ruthiepalmer.bsky.social wrote v smart book on phenomenon of “ordinary” people appearing in news stories—victim not only to sites & events that journalists deem newsworthy, but also to journalists’ depictions & understandings of privacy & personhood.

It’s a banger: cup.columbia.edu/book/becomin...