Jonathan W. Gray

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

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

It’s sad that the best reporting on Harvard and Columbia is coming from their campus newspapers and not the NYT & Boston Globe.

64 nations.

Thousands of supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have demonstrated on the streets of several Brazilian cities.

They called for the removal of President Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, labelling them as threats to democracy.

Newswire : Black man is found hanging from a tree in upstate New York Earl D. Smith   By Blackmansstreet Today Earl D. Smith, 58, a Black man, was found hanging from a tree in the middle of the day in Albany, New York, the capital city of the state of New York. His b…

earl smith was lynched

I'm teasing. Glad you found it helpful.

the joker is sitting in front of a brick wall and saying `` i 'm a man of my word '' Alt: the joker--Heath Ledger!! not the other one, ugh--sitting in front of a brick wall, saying ``I'm a man of my word''

Of course it does!

DOJ Seeking Voter And Election Information From At Least 19 States The move's alarmed states, which have the constitutional authority to run elections and are protected from sharing individual data with the government.

In an alarming move, the Department of Justice has demanded voter and election information from at least 19 states

Co-sign

I just want people to understand that this kind of person doesn't mean any good to anyone. The willful ignorance isn't just him not seeing himself. It's an act to disarm the people. It's good that it's not working here.

I think in these times, properly naming the threats and acting according are key and very important. He knows how to get people riled up and uses plausible deniability quite well in his arguments. I am glad folks are putting their foot down here and I am not trying to rile too much myself.

He has a dangerous obsession with harassment and he should not be given any other opportunities to be in community with people.

It would take the rest of his life serving his victims honorably on a daily basis for him to make up for what he has done to them. And that is not going to happen. Sometimes the best solution is separation. Folks like him should never be a part of community building as they show to be a danger to it

Sometimes some folks are so eager to forgive celebrities for doing some heinous shit as long as they own up to it. That man put a Black woman's life and her family's life in danger. He killed another Black woman's career and constantly harassed her. Owning up to it is not enough here.

While I do agree with this point, I want to point something out about eehhh a general trend I see (not so much here though which is refreshing)

thread incoming

Ah! See I didn't know about that! I'll have to familiarize myself with it.

Your monthly reminder that if you type from:me [thing you wrote about] into the search bar it will pull up all your skeets on that topic. So from:me Beyonce will surface ALL your posts about Queen B.

All good! Sharing is caring!

If you put Blacksky Moderation into the search bar, you'll see an account w/ a bunch of options to auto block folks. Blacksky Moderation is run by Rudy & his team, and folks who feel they were labeled incorrectly can appeal to them. It works well, I miss a lot of foolishness.

Men. I was talking about a bunch of Black men who currently keep their distance because of his refusal to acknowledge any fault whatsoever. He can't even PERFORM contrition, and it continues to bite him in the ass.

Lemme also say, as a real nigga, Rudy is the REALEST NIGGA to ever do it!!!

We knew he was gon come here and try to rewrite the narrative to fit his own delusions.
People stopped him before he could start and he's pissed.
Tuh.

So for folks who weren't there, here's what happened with Talib:

1. A Black women, Maya, made a comment about rappers (PLURAL, I don't even think he was named) patterns of having light skin wives in I think a larger convo about colorism. It was an observation, not an insult.

If Talib was capable of taking responsibility for his toxic actions a LOT of people would immediately forgive him. It's a serious 🔺that he's proven incapable of doing so. And now he's attacking the people who build community here rather than reflect on why he's on the outside looking in. 4/4

Full transparency--Rudy hosts the #Blackademics community that I moderate on the Blacksky servers. I work with him directly & I can tell you that all @rudyfraser.com wants is to uplift Black voices, in a responsible way. For someone who raps about reparations, TK doesn't get the need for repair.

So now, SEVEN MONTHS after he joined, Talib has decided to try to discredit Rudy & the misogynoir label. But all Rudy was doing was respecting users who labeled Talib based on his documented history. There's no conspiracy, Rudy is an incredibly even handed moderator as all Blacksky users know.

Everything Naima says below is correct. But to add: Talib joined Bluesky following Black users fleeing Musk. Rudy had already set up Blacksky by that point, along with a labeler that allows us to designate an account as misogynoir. A bunch of people did that, severely limiting Talib's reach here. 1/

Suddenly, Jamaica | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jamaica Kincaid’s commanding, irreverent work immerses her readers in a black world without explaining or defining its blackness. This seems to be a major departure in the history of African American ...

A fantastic HLG essay. See below this illustration. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

and remember, DO NOT STOP CALLING.

ive updated the phone call cheat sheet one more time!

imgur: imgur.com/a/sC2YqPA

more comprehensive info can be found here:
stop-paypros.neocities.org
yellat.money