Meredith Broussard, PhD

GREAT new resource from us:

You can now flip through the financial disclosures of Trump officials.

See what they own --and how much they're worth.

See who's worked where-- and how much they banked.

Want the folks connected to Palintir? Please enjoy.

projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

84% of the time, “ChatGPT Health” killed a customer using their paid service as advertised

WSJ reporting that the U.S. used Claude for the air strikes in Iran. Centcom has been using Claude "for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios" www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life. Kate Fox says Joe Ceccanti was the ‘most hopeful person’ before he started spending 12 hours a day with a chatbot

“It’s difficult to understand the scale of the problem, but OpenAI itself estimates that more than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT.”

Stewart Brand finding out about maintenance theory (minus you know all the feminism) in his late 80s is still incredibly funny to me, like yeah man you gotta take care of your knees

Look around. The case for more, not less, liberal arts education is stronger than ever.

Why AI Companies Are Suddenly Worried About Theft Models built on scraped material are now getting scraped themselves.

“The scrapers have become the scraped, their own powerful distillations of the world’s information sampled, reconstituted, and distilled once more.”

nymag.com/intelligence...

The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. @evystadium.bsky.social has more.

Story by @josephcox.bsky.social www.404media.co/this-app-war...

It's Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto - FuelArc News We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to comp...

The Ford Pinto had a death rate of 85 people for 10 million cars sold. The Cybertruck hasn't sold 10 million, but the fatality rate so far maths out to 1,452 people killed per 10 million sold.

The Cybertruck may be the deadliest road car, for the occupants, ever sold.

fuelarc.com/evs/its-offi...

Police are finding suspects based on their online searches as courts weigh privacy concerns Criminal investigators hoping to develop a suspect are turning to a powerful cyber tool by asking Google to disclose who had been searching for relevant information.

There are privacy implications raised by this, but ingenious investigating to find a serial rapist by asking Google for IP addresses of those who looked up the address of a victim's house apnews.com/article/goog...

I'm celebrating 400 episodes of Techtonic - with handpicked excerpts of past interviews, featuring @merbroussard.bsky.social @jasonkoebler.bsky.social @writearthur.bsky.social @byrontau.bsky.social & more.

Full episode:
techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

A New Wharton Study on AI Warns of a Growing Problem: Cognitive Surrender Casual users should pay special attention

“People followed wrong AI answers 80% of the time. The effect size for the gap between AI-accurate and AI-faulty trials was massive…Essentially, AI determined the outcomes more than people.”
www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/a-new-whar...

The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology: “I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”

"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

Oh, the full coverage of this exchange is even worse:

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

The Lesson of A.I. Literacy Class: Don’t Let the Chatbot Think for You

“Are you steering the technology or is it steering you?” asked a slide on the classroom whiteboard at Washington Park High School. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/t...

Don’t think people realize how much journalism has almost never paid for itself. The work of news gathering has almost always required some kind of subsidy — either by bundling, licit government support, or a de facto monopoly on local info distribution — and usually works in firms as a loss leader.

Meta Director of AI Safety Allows AI Agent to Accidentally Delete Her Inbox Meta Superintelligence Labs’ director of alignment called it a “rookie mistake.”

NEW: Meta’s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools don’t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know don’t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.

How to Get Paid to Polarize on TikTok Spanish nonprofit Maldita.es uncovered how TikTok's algorithm pays creators to spread AI-generated political disinformation and fuel polarization across Europe.

Spanish nonprofit Maldita.es uncovered how TikTok's algorithm pays creators to spread AI-generated political disinformation and fuel polarization across Europe. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to Maldita’s Carlos Hernández-Echevarría and Marina Sacristán. www.techpolicy.press/how-to-get-p...

everyone loved the tech industry's free music and friendship machines of 20-30 years ago. it's unclear what could be causing people to feel the opposite about the industry's new racism and insanity machine

Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs Ring's CEO told staff the feature is “first for finding dogs,” indicating a plan to expand.

Yeah so that Ring ad that aired at the Super Bowl about 'Search Party?" 404 Media now has proof that it won't just be used to locate dogs...
www.404media.co/leaked-email...

Love this exercise idea!

Some Reese’s Treats Drop the Milk Chocolate. Mr. Reese Disapproves.

When I raid my kids' holiday candy stashes, I usually think to myself, 'This doesn't taste as good as it tasted to me when I was a kid.'

I thought it was because my taste buds had changed, but it's actually that the candy is not as good: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/c...

Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher Nick Land believes that digital superintelligence is going to kill us all. In San Francisco, his followers ask: What if, instead of trying to stop an A.I. takeover, you work to bring it on as fast as ...

We should be talking a lot more about how the San Francisco tech scene is populated by a strange cult of doom acceleration nerds who fantasize about using computers to destroy humanity.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Ambient AI listening in the hospital” what could go wrong

Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen and paper instead Parents are forming a loose network teaching one another how to get their children off school-issued Chromebooks and iPads.

Parents are increasingly opting out of mandatory school laptops for kids. Surprised this article didn’t mention the privacy and security risks that should also make parents concerned. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

Exclusive: OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team Joshua Achiam will become the company's chief futurist

OpenAI has disbanded the team it formed in 2024 to advance the company's stated mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

They’re speed running the rise and fall of Google’s reputation down to when they got rid of “Don’t be evil” as a company motto.

CBP Signs Clearview AI Deal to Use Face Recognition for ‘Tactical Targeting’ US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.

NEW: CBP signs a new deal with Clearview AI to access its scraped image database for "tactical targeting," including efforts to “disrupt, degrade, and dismantle” networks of people labeled security threats.

This is so good: @weratedogs.com calls out Ring for using people's love of dogs to manufacture consent for mass surveillance.