Tanya Augsburg

Holy crap Kara Walker chopped up a Stonewall Jackson statue and revealed a monster

Sex is a big market for the AI industry. ChatGPT won't be the first to try to profit from it OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will soon engage in "erotica for verified adults." CEO Sam Altman says the company aims to allow more user freedom for adults while setting limits for teens.

The California State University System currently has campuses that are in severe financial exigency, such as SF State. Do the right thing, CSU and demand its $17 million back!
apnews.com/article/ai-e...

If you're having virtual sex with a chatbot that is a product of a corporation aren't you in some sense having sex with the corporation and giving it this tremendous hold on you/dependency on their protection of your privacy (but they know all your secrets). Who wants to have sex with OpenAI?

Jerk-GPT.

Sam Altman @sama · 7h We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right. Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases. In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing). In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults. Christopher Hale @chrisjollyhale I'm asking in good faith here as a premium user — what's the difference between adult erotica and the sexbots you said you wouldn't introduce to the platform this past July?

So much for all the noble missions and transformations; Altman's AI is down to talking dirty now. Pretty sure it's a massive lie that they've "mitigated the serious mental health issues" and seems likely this new porn feature will generate lots more of them. Bubble, please pop.

Sexual violence, torture and betrayal: Life under Putin's occupation Evidence gathered by The Telegraph reveals Russia is using rape as a weapon of war in occupied Ukraine

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

Tatsumi Orimoto, ‘Bread Man’, 1946–2025 The Japanese artist went on to collaborate with his mother

Today, World Bread Day, I learned that the Bread Man has died.
artreview.com/tatsumi-orim...

There should be mandatory Terminator movie screenings for all these AI obsessives. SkyNet is watching!!!!

My husband had a great time asking ChatGPT what kind of research I do. ChatGPT gave a rather accurate summary of my main ideas, but could not find most of the bibliography I've published. Book chapters in particular were missing.
Imagine... and we're taking AI seriously.
#AcademicSky

The CSU can no longer justify its status as the “largest AI-driven university system” while squeezing faculty, students, and staff (one of my colleagues who had been driven to despair & illness basically dropped dead over the summer, btw) to their absolute limits and even beyond.

It’s obvious that Open AI wants to replace the education sector. It cannot expect partnerships with public ed/govts while simultaneously promoting its involvement in the commercial sex industry. Taxpayers will raise hell. College students are adults. They are part of the sexting market.

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults ChatGPT is about to get flirty.

The California State University system entered an initial $17 million partnership with Open AI for its Chat GPT .edu product that has plenty of gender and racial bias, as my students & I have documented. Now this: www.theverge.com/news/799312/...

Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.

▫️ #AcademicSky ▫️
Universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year, new analysis from the UCU suggests.

Good lord. The MMWR is a hallmark of public health practice. Firing its editors will impact you and how your local health department functions.

The thread is required reading and no surprise to me!

Photo of square orange tiles, set into the ground, across one of which several cats footprints are clearly visible.

One day, nearly 2000 years ago, a cat dashed across some drying tiles, somewhere near Hadrian's Wall.

It's immortality of a kind, isn't it?

Like many Never Trumpers and other people with a public profile, I have been on the receiving end of death threats for years just for speaking my mind.
No one in America should risk being killed for exercising their right to speak, no matter how despicable you think their views might be.

Chris Murphy: "Our entire democratic experiment is going crumble if people don't believe they are safe when they express their political views."

So wonderful for Alex Winter, whom I will always remember as a fellow teenager in NYC back in the day.

Bravo, Alex! It was wonderful to learn what you have been up to and the incredible research you both did together!

What are the key purposes of human writing? How we name AI-generated text confuses things As another school year returns, large language models (LLMs) present difficult questions around learning, thinking, plagiarism and authorship for educators.

“Writing is a technology that helps us understand our own ideas better. Where people are involved in thinking and invention — including at universities — it needs to be taught in that spirit.” #AcademicSky

You cannot listen to the Epstein survivors talk about their horrific ordeals and not feel waves of heartbreak, shame and anger.

Furious fucking anger.

They want to keep releasing the same Epstein documents and hope we’re too stupid to notice.

Jia Tolentino writes some really funny lines. " On social media, many of the most chaotic and emotionally lawless people you’ve ever known are posting on a regular basis about having at long last achieved inner peace."

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

National Guard is now tasked with picking up garbage in DC

Here’s what was NOT released today:

- the proffer agreement between Maxwell and the DoJ

- the agreement transferring Maxwell to club fed

- communications showing who waived Maxwell’s sex offender status allowing her transfer and possible work assignments outside prison

- the Epstein files

Least surprising headline ever.

Newsom, when I first saw him had the best skin I’ve ever seen on anyone. Looks like he‘s been in the sun too much recently! Sunscreen is your friend!

Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.