Meg Doerr

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

The Invention of “Sesame Street” Renata Adler’s 1972 review of the program that revolutionized children’s television.

“Sesame Street” and its sequel, “The Electric Company,” were, “with lapses, the most intelligent and important programs in television,” Renata Adler wrote, in 1972.

OTD in 1796, Moses Cleaveland landed on the shores of the Cuyahoga and spoke the words, “One day, on this very land, a great city will blow a 3-1 NBA Finals lead, and a greater city, by my name but spelled slightly differently, will hold the championship trophy for all the world to see.”

HBD, CLE.

4-panel comic. (1) [Person 1 with ponytail flanked by person with short hair and another person speaking into microphone at podium] PERSON 1: In the early 2010s, researchers found that many major scientific results couldn’t be reproduced. (2) PERSON 1: Over a decade into the replication crisis, we wanted to see if today’s studies have become more robust. (3) PERSON 1: Unfortunately, our replication analysis has found exactly the same problems that those 2010s researchers did. (4) [newspaper with image of speakers from previous panels] Headline: Replication Crisis Solved

Replication Crisis

xkcd.com/3117/

EPA To Drop 'E,' 'P' From Name

EPA To Drop 'E,' 'P' From Name
theonion.com/epa-to-...

the NOVA logo over a whirling black hole.

As a reminder, PBS NOVA is one of the coolest science entertainment platforms that we have today!

If you're thinking of unsubscribing from any other streamers today, or if you have the capacity in your wallet, you can sign up to donate a monthly gift to PBS here: donate.kqed.org/secure/kqedpbs

Graph comparing NSF actual budget for STEM ed ($1.2B in recent years) to CHIP authorizations levels ($2+ billion), asking where is it going to go next year?

🚨 New update on threats to funding for STEM education and training of future scientists 🧪

In past week, early signs from Congress are: "we don't want to destroy NSF".

However, STEM education and training—which are vital to NSF's mission—remain particularly targeted.

Thread 🧵

Paleontologist to lead U.S. national academy The prestigious organization faces funding challenges and political controversies

Neil Shubin has been nominated to be the next head of the National Academy of Sciences. Excellent choice! His research is fascinating, he has a great sense of humor, and he is generous and effective at sharing science with the public (1/4) www.science.org/content/arti...

Hackers unite! We're excited to see some of you wearing this limited NSA Eagle badge at #DEFCON33. Help EFF fight dystopia and grab one for yourself today! nsaeagle.eventbrite.com

Our Theater of Anonymity Ethics review boards are increasingly asked to review big health data research proposals using a regulatory framework written prior to the current era of machine learning and artificial intelligence....

Regulatory expert (and my writing buddy) Sara Meeder and I have a new paper out: Our Theater of Anonymity (doi.org/10.1002/eahr...). We document the ever-escalating, never-winnable privacy arms race in big health data research & explore the shifting balance point between privacy and research benefit

A short blogpost detailing my experience of censorship at the AI for Good Summit with links to both original and censored versions of slides and links to my talk

aial.ie/blog/2025-ai...

Being Too Helpful At Work Can Hurt Your Career—Here’s How To Say No Women are more likely to take on behind-the-scenes duties at work—extra tasks like onboarding or event planning—and it's hurting their careers. Here's how to say no.

In a study of professors, women got 378 new work requests over 4 weeks vs 118 for men. Women spent more time on service, advising & teaching; men on research. Orgs should track who is taking extra duties & ensure they are rewarded and distributed fairly. www.forbes.com/sites/kimels...

Peter Thiel Shows Trump How To Sort Spreadsheet Of Americans By Ethnicity WASHINGTON—Stressing that it would be simplest to troubleshoot now during the onboarding process for his company’s surveillance technology, Palantir founder Peter Thiel reportedly spent Tuesday morning showing President Donald Trump how to sort a spreadsheet of Americans by ethnicity. “So what’s neat is that you can just do command-shift-E and rank every single resident from […]

“So what’s neat is that you can just do command-shift-E and rank every single resident from whitest to least,” said the billionaire libertarian
theonion.com/peter-t...

In today’s episode of What Are They Thinking: “If you don’t see a hurricane coming… does it really exist?”

🚨 The Dept of Defense is shutting down its weather satellite program. No more data. No more updates. Meteorologists are scrambling—and we’re heading into peak storm season.

Brilliant timing.

Birds of the World - BOW Discovery Webinar: Introducing AviList: a unified global avian checklist Save July 31 for this mid-summer webinar! Join four expert taxonomists for a deep discussion about AviList, a unified global avian checklist that provides the most current and authoritative taxonomy o...

Okay, let's all have a sit-down and talk about this AVILIST thing. Experts convene July 31 at 9 am EST. JOIN US!

birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/bow...

Congress Passes Blank Bill For Trump To Write Whatever Law He Wants WASHINGTON—After weeks of eliminating what many lawmakers called “frivolous” and “unnecessary” provisions, Congress reportedly passed a blank bill Thursday in which President Donald Trump can simply write whatever law he wants.  “Today we are sending to the president’s desk 200 completely clean sheets of paper that are hereby codified such that anything he chooses to […]

Congress Passes Blank Bill For Trump To Write Whatever Law He Wants
theonion.com/congres...

RFK Jr.: Vaccines No More Effective Than Drinking Horseshoe Crab Blood Straight WASHINGTON—Citing extensive research he had conducted on the matter, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a statement Friday claiming that vaccines were no more effective than drinking horseshoe crab blood straight. “Despite the lofty promises of pharmaceutical companies, there’s simply no evidence to suggest that vaccines provide more immunological benefit than […]

“Despite the lofty promises of pharmaceutical companies, there’s simply no evidence to suggest that vaccines provide more immunological benefit than punching a few holes in a horseshoe crab’s carapace and slurping its blood directly,” said Kennedy theonion.com/rfk-jr-...

Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day ALTOONA, PA—Saying the pampered 6-year-old seemed to think someone should provide her with a midday meal on a regular basis, sources told reporters Thursday that local entitled child Harper Wiley expected to eat lunch each day of her young life. “Can you imagine? Not just on the odd occasion, but every single day!” said a source […]

Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day
theonion.com/entitle...

As The Byrd Bath Continues, Here’s A Look At What Will Likely Be Out Of The Big Beautiful Bill Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian, has flagged a growing list of provisions that would be prohibited under the Byrd Rule.

Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian, has flagged a growing list of provisions that would be prohibited under the Byrd Rule.

Still recovering from shock of having just read a large grant application with made-up reference list. Familiar authors but most refs don’t exist. ChatGPT written all over it

Must sound familiar to those marking student essays. But, really, in a grant application? Who do they think they’re kidding?

This “big, ugly bill” is dangerous and will destroy rural health care. In Kentucky alone, 35 hospitals are under the threat of closing, stripping care from families, cutting jobs and crippling local economies. 1/2

Masked Terror At this point, we have all seen the videos.

One of our earliest civil rights statutes was designed to protect us against masked gangs who violate our constitutional rights. This particular history makes the masked ICE gangs uniquely repugnant. open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

Sewerdle

saw the NYT movie thing where you pick your top 10 movies of the 21st century, but have you tried our not-NYT thing?

W.E.B. Du Bois on Robert E. Lee:

“Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.”

Federal job watch: May sees single largest monthly loss so far this year In a reversal, women lost more federal jobs than men in April.

In May, 22,000 jobs were cut — the largest drop so far this year. In an unusual reversal, women lost more federal jobs than men in April. And that’s not all.

Our friends at APM Research unpack some of the numbers from the latest Bureau of Labor report.

U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off a Brain Drain

When the Trump administration froze this Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist's research funding, he received an email from China offering to relocate his lab to any city and university of his choice, with guaranteed funding for 20 years.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/u...

Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing LOS ANGELES—Responding to escalating clashes between civilian activists and militarized immigration authorities, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass publicly urged protesters Monday not to give the Trump adm...

Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals” and not a city of immigrants. But like its name, Los Angeles is a city of angels. We protect and look out for one another, especially the most vulnerable.

Media please mind your language. There is a difference between protests and riots. If you need clarity on the difference every news outlet can simply play this tonight. WATCH to the end.
(from the official footage shown by the Jan. 6 Committee)

The Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed Black lives and wealth. What's owed to survivors' descendants? No restitution was ever made to those who lost loved ones or property in the 1921 massacre that razed the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood.

160 years after Emancipation, the median Black household still has only 15% as much wealth as the median white household.

The history of Tulsa exemplifies how Black prosperity has been built up and torn down over a century of racial violence and discrimination.