Morgan Thompson

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:

The deadline for the Society for Study of Measurement conference has been extended to January 31st! 👇
#philsci #histsci

I've put together a list of the most helpful activities/visualizations/tools I've found for introducing students to the mechanics of LLMs (which I do every year). miriamposner.com/blog/introdu...

Google Caught Manually Taking Down Bizarre AI Answers Google manually removed AI-powered search results from pages where it was caught giving bizarre and incorrect information to search users.

As I've said before, "just don't talk about it" is not a viable strategy for the kinds of fucked up answers LLM/GPT-type "AI" is likely to give, because that strategy doesn't account for the structural reasons it gives those answers. Meaning it can't account for the question/topic you can't think of

Heads-up, several legitimately useful things with absolutely no reason to be related to google's gemini "AI"— e.g. Reply Nudges, Package Tracking, & Spell Check— are bundled under "smart features."

I'm not saying don't turn it off, I'm saying be aware of to what you may need to again pay attention.

Under Former Chemical Industry Insiders, Trump EPA Nearly Doubles Amount of Formaldehyde Considered Safe to Inhale Chemical industry lobbyists have long pushed the government to adopt a less stringent approach to gauging the cancer risk from chemicals, one that would help ease regulations on companies that make or...

In a highly unusual move, the EPA is revising an assessment of the health dangers posed by formaldehyde, a widespread pollutant that causes far more cancer than any other chemical in the air.

(Published Dec. 2025)

Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).

I wrote a Wiley book, and found out about this last year via the news

www.thebookseller.com/news/wiley-s...

NEW: Springer Nature — the prestigious publisher of scientific journals like Nature and the 1845-founded magazine Scientific American — is imploring published journal authors to buy $49 AI-generated "Media Kits" that summarize their own work.

futurism.com/springer-nat...

Problems with Publishers Moving to AI-Based Production - Daily Nous Straive is a firm that uses AI to, among other things, help publishers with various tasks "across the publishing value chain". One of its clients is Springer Nature, the publisher of many philosophy j...

More evidence: Straive is apparently causing a lot of issues (unsurprisingly) during copy editing forthcoming articles in Springer journals.

dailynous.com/2025/12/18/p...

Two ancient humans, including famed ‘Iceman,’ had cancer-causing virus Findings from ancient DNA may shed light on HPV’s history in our species

Ötzi and a 45,000-year-old Siberian were both infected with a cancer-causing strain of HPV.
This is fascinating, and a reminder that we have a vaccine that *prevents cancer* and everyone eligible should get it.

This is your annual reminder that if you are in the US and have FSA funds that you won't use, Menstrual products are covered by FSA funds and can be donated to food pantries and shelters.

Here's the reality this example illustrates:

It's not even just about people blindly trusting what ChatGPT tells them. LLMs are poisoning the entire information ecosystem. You can't even necessarily trust that the citations in a published paper are real (or a search engine's descriptions of them).

This is infuriating and tbh a good argument for why MDs should have to take more applied math coursework

(Also I think the number has got to be higher than 2.5%; like half the menstruating people I know are like "I'm really tired and my ferritin is kinda low but my doctor says I'm fine" 🤬)

fair. The Holdovers might be out too then.

Second The Holdovers or maybe Tokyo Godfathers? Better than some actual hallmark movies but with similar emotional themes.

Thank you for sharing. Jim was very supportive of the graduate students when I was at Pitt. An excellent philosopher and a kind person.

More press about our BBS paper on metabolism and cognition:

aktuell.uni-bielefeld.de/2025/11/24/t...

#neuroskyence #cogsky #philsci

🚨We're hiring! A tenure track position at McGill University in the area of #bioethics and / or philosophy of science, with a special focus on the ethics of medical technologies. Please share widely. #philsky #ethics #philsci philjobs.org/job/show/30402

YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley Howard University AI Panel

You think LLM-based chatbots can help students learn? Think again.

Take a few minutes to listen to Dr. @drtanksley.bsky.social clear explanation why this is very bad, harmful idea, especially for Black students.

#Critical_AI_Literacy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mtc...

hope you had a big lunch!

Exclusive: CDC to end all monkey research Studies related to HIV and other infectious diseases will be phased out, sources say; fate of the agency's animals remains unclear

EXCLUSIVE: CDC to end all monkey studies. Decision handed down by recent college grad and former DOGE employee who is now deputy chief of staff at the agency. Animals were being used in studies of HIV prevention. Some may be euthanized. My latest for @science.org

The anatomy courses in question:

The extremely rad editors of @being.transinphilosophy.org have put out a call for pitches for the next edition of their zine! They are also hosting cool events at the Eastern and Pacific meetings of the APA (details on the website). being.transinphilosophy.org/cfp/

COWEN: Let’s say I run a science lab, and I know GPT-6 is coming. What should I be doing now to prepare for that? ALTMAN: It’s always a very hard question. Even if you know this thing is coming, if you adapt your — COWEN: Let’s say I even had it now, right? What exactly would I do the next morning? ALTMAN: I guess the first thing you would do is just type in the current research questions you’re struggling with, and maybe it’ll say, “Here’s an idea,” or “Run this experiment,” or “Go do this other thing.”

This is a frustrating misconception of what doing science is like. All that's needed to break through is someone else to tell you to just "run THIS experiment". Oh that's so easy, thanks, why didn't I think of that?

Folks who work on measurement: this society and conference is a lovely interdisciplinary space. It includes philosophers, education researchers, historians, psychologists, psychometricians, etc. Consider submitting and taking a trip to Edinburgh!

Oh I’m very interested in joining. Thanks for sharing! I’ve requested to join the google group.

Folks who work on measurement: this society and conference is a lovely interdisciplinary space. It includes philosophers, education researchers, historians, psychologists, psychometricians, etc. Consider submitting and taking a trip to Edinburgh!

When you are using the "AI" framing, does the way you talk about "AI" carry water for the Sam Altmans of the world? That is, are you helping to paint a picture of their tech as inevitable, all powerful, and/or anything other than commercial products?

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Once again, @yaelrice.bsky.social and I published this article in 2020 so that no one ever has to debunk this vile nonsense point-by-point ever again. As we write (see the next post in this thread)...

hyperallergic.com/604897/how-s...

Here comes the PSA! With @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social we'll talk about the invisibility of East-European migrants in German health data. We've published on how the lack of data on racialisation maintains white ignorance about racism and next we'll look at the Western dimensions of white ignorance