Samantha Dalal

AI-generated image of individuals using a ride share service.

MUST READ: New blog from former CDT Fellow Varun Nagaraj Rao (Princeton University) + UC Boulder’s @samanthadalal.bsky.social, investigating how opaque AI and algorithmic decisions impact rideshare drivers. cdt.org/insights/the...

Even more reason to form a union at your place of work (please don't ask ChatGPT and ask a volunteer at @organizeworkers.bsky.social).

From the changemyview community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the changemyview community

The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988

With respect to the researchers' claims that the "the potential benefits of this research substantially outweigh its risks," it seems to mostly rely on "warning call" benefits.

I am personally not a fan of "we need to do harm to show that harm can be done" ethical justifications.

ai is a political project to centralize power

Revolutionizing Rideshare: Researchers Develop FairFare App to Empower Workers - CITP Blog On February 1, 2025, Colorado’s Transportation Network Transparency Bill (SB24-075) took effect. CITP scholars, along with their colleagues, played a key role in supporting advocacy around the bill by...

NEW Blog Post! Check out how CITP researchers are making real-world impact on the side of workers. Read "Revolutionizing Rideshare: Researchers Develop FairFare App to Empower Workers" 🔻

🙌 @andresmh.com @samanthadalal.bsky.social @dana.witchy.business

blog.citp.princeton.edu/2025/03/25/r...

The Department of Education, among other things, is what funds special education for children with disabilities.

Trump’s executive order will hurt kids and parents in virtually every school district in the country.

New level of microloan hell unlocked 🤡

Welp

(University of California system-wide hiring freeze and other cost-cutting measures implemented)

ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/employee-new...

Not an FTC commissioner using the Notes app to write his statement response to being fired by Tr*mp 😭

but fr damn this administration, their corruption, and their cronyism

The Fall of an Algorithm: Characterizing the Dynamics Toward Abandonment As more algorithmic systems have come under scrutiny for their potential to inflict societal harms, an increasing number of organizations that hold power over harmful algorithms have chosen (or were r...

@narijohnson.bsky.social and Sanika have a FAccT paper about this (and also compiled cases of abandoned algorithms): arxiv.org/abs/2404.13802

One of the core points of Community Notes was that the COMMUNITY trusts it. This was built into so many aspects of the original, including making the code open source

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

by the way these are literally the exact same dumbass motherfuckers, not like them, the literal exact same fucking guys, saying government is inefficient and you should cancel it to give them all the governments money so they can provide you services instead

"Instead, to advance justice, we must radically transform not just the technology itself, but our ideas about it, and develop it from the bottom up, from the perspectives of those who stand the most risk of being harmed."

String in a Maze Law, politics, and power.

happy to announce the launch of my newsletter, String in a Maze. i'll be writing about the law, politics and media at least a few times a month, with a mix of free and premium content. thank you and bless up.

This is one of the most basic insights from 20th century polisci.

The paradox of a democracy that presumes mass knowledge and participation, and manages to (at least barely) function in their absence, is one of our foundational puzzles.

This is intro-level shit. And Balaji is failing the test.

TL;DR MSFT being a leading GenAI company while also having researchers publishing work identifying the pitfalls of GenAI doesn’t imply hypocrisy in my opinion. Rather it reveals the existence of an open research environment where this type of critique can be empirically studied and published! 10/n

We also don't know if the authors did critique these larger systemic issues in an initial version and were asked to revise the paper to stay in scope! We only see the final version that is produced by both authors AND reviewers! 9/n

Authors can get dinged by reviewers for going outside their lane/presenting problems to which there is no technical solution or where the solution requires expertise beyond the scope of human-computer interaction. 8/n

BUT I am also someone who publishes in the same venue as this paper was published in and I know firsthand how difficult it is to introduce critiques of larger systems/organizational logics at CHI. 7/n

To be clear, I am generall critical of GenAI, and I do believe that companies like MSFT are complicit in shaping peoples’ attitudes towards AI systems through advertising campaigns and forceful product integration. 6/n

Fourth, the scope of this study is to evaluate the impacts of GenAI tools on critical thinking NOT to analyze the role of corporate marketing campaigns on knowledge workers’ overall behaviors and beliefs. The latter would be a great STS/critical paper! 5/n

It’s not the case that a handful of researchers, let alone a single intern, speak on behalf of a huge corporation like Microsoft lol. 4/n

Third, MSFT is not a monolith and in fact there are many researchers at MSR who put out work critiquing the tools, frameworks, and assumptions used throughout many of the GenAI products that MSFT the company makes 3/n

Second of all, there is a difference (and you can debate HOW much of a difference there really is) between MSFT the company and MSFT Research (MSR). This paper was done by researchers at MSR.

First of all, this is an intern’s paper that was the product of many weeks worth of thoughtful conversations between a PhD student and their mentors at Microsoft Research, not some intentionally crafted corporate PR campaign. 2/n

Seen a lot of people dunking on this Microsoft (MSFT) CHI paper on the impacts of GenAI and critical thinking in knowledge work and I have to say a lot of this critique feels unfair. 🧵 1/n

I was looking for news about AI refusal this morning and low and behold the first search result - Microsoft product users lamenting about their AGENCY to REFUSE AI being limited by aggressive product integration! STOP IT! NAUGHTY COMPANIES!!

I am once again begging companies to STOP shoving AI integrations down our throats!!! WE DON'T WANT IT