Meredith Broussard, PhD

The Corpse Flower | New York Botanical Garden Now blooming! It's a spooky season surprise—another corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) has begun blooming in the Haupt Conservatory as of 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 29! Keep an eye on the liv...

Current spooky status: watching the corpse flower livestream at @nybg.bsky.social
www.nybg.org/garden/the-c...

First Key Update: Capabilities and Risk Implications This Key Update covers major breakthroughs in AI capabilities since the publication of the last Report in January 2025 and some implications for major risks. New training techniques that allow AI syst...

Arvind Narayanan @randomwalker.bsky.social & Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social are Senior Advisors to the International AI Safety Report, a follow-up the first Jan '25 Report. The new report covers major breakthroughs in AI capabilities since the first publication. Read the report in full online👇

Legal and Ethical Issues in AI / Thursday, October 30 1 pm ET/10 am PT Library Futures logo

One day only THIS THURSDAY 10/30! @nickgarcia.bsky.social, @merbroussard.bsky.social, and @bb.usefairuse.com will be talking legal and ethical issues in AI for libraries and librarians! Register to attend (or get the recording and all the links)!

nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week

The fact that these are the numbers the company will put on the record … www.wired.com/story/chatgp...

Screenshot of archived paper

Who today is influencing science a la Big Tobacco or Oil and Gas?
In our new preprint we show how tech companies like Meta are capturing research on their product, using mechanisms that subtly (or not so subtly) shape what science gets produced

Why Europe’s Resistance to Big Tech Matters for the Future of Democracy | TechPolicy.Press We are witnessing the fusion of corporate and state power take institutional form, writes Courtney C. Radsch.

The cozy alliance between Washington and Silicon Valley is creating an unprecedented concentration of power. In this new landscape, Europe’s bid for digital sovereignty is a bid for democracy itself, writes Open Market Institute's Courtney C. Radsch.

AI is about to upend Google's AdWords cash cow The revolutionary advertising product launched 25 years ago, propelling the company into the stratosphere. Could the party be over?

25 years ago Google unveiled a brand new product to the world called AdWords. It ended up providing the company with billions of dollars of revenue. For @fastcompany.com, I ask whether the rise of AI answer jeopardises that www.fastcompany.com/91424453/ai-...

OpenAI Loosened Suicide-Talk Rules Before Teen’s Death, Lawsuit Alleges An amended complaint from the parents of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who died by suicide, alleges the changes were part of a push to increase engagement.

"OpenAI twice loosened ChatGPT’s rules for discussing suicide in the year before 16-year-old Adam Raine took his own life using a method the chatbot advised him on, according to an amended lawsuit filed by his parents on Wednesday."

And yet here we are.

Collage of objects including postcards, dice, mobile phone, camera, stones positioned on a game board.

The application portal for the 2026 Cultural Heritage Data School is officially open 🥁

Join us from 13-17 April 2026 to explore the theme 'Critically Engaging Audiences with Cultural Heritage Data'.

Early bird deadline: 23 Nov
Virtual Q&A: 10 Nov

Apply online: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/about/news/c...

This article is quite good and balanced, but I find these numbers pretty insane.

AI’s Invasive Species The slop is winning.

Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.

Don’t let AI chatbots tell you how to vote, Dutch authorities warn voters Far-right PVV and GreenLeft-Labor were overrepresented as suggested picks, in a test of how four chatbots gave voter advice.

The Dutch data protection watchdog has warned voters not to ask artificial intelligence chatbots for voting advice ahead of the country’s general election next week.

www.politico.eu/article/dont...

I have yeeted
the LMS
my uni
has paid for
and which
you were probably
thinking
helps you teach
Forgive me
it was surveillant
so mid
and so broke

The rise of the sleep data nerds: ‘The harder you try, the harder it is to sleep’ Wearable sleep trackers may help you measure hours asleep but experts ask how accurate they are, how useful the data is and even what good sleep looks like

Today in luxury surveillance.

The AI Industry Is Traumatizing Desperate Contractors in the Developing World for Pennies AI is propped up by a global sweat shop operation, where exploited workers polish the software for wealthy corporations in the west.

“…for an AI chatbot to generate an autopsy report, contract workers have to sift through thousands of gruesome crime scene images, a gig known as ‘data labeling.’”

A fun (“fun”) new thing we need to address is the time wasted correcting the errors of people who arrive at a conversation having only read the AI summary of a document.

Build what makes you special. Buy the rest. A framework for newsroom build vs buy decisions.

Every newsroom depends on software, but that doesn’t mean it should build it.

Here’s a framework for deciding what to build, what to buy, and why technology should be a strategic partner, not a helpdesk.

werd.io/build-what-m...

As AI gets more life-like, a new Luddite movement is taking root | CNN Business At my local coffee shop a couple of weeks ago, I overheard one 20-something woman say to another: Could I ask, what kind of phone do you have?

“There is a genuine, Gen Z-driven Luddite renaissance building as some people reject the tech platforms that have clamored for our attention (and money) over the past two decades,” @amorrow.bsky.social writes. And the flood of AI-generated content is only intensifying it. www.cnn.com/2025/10/08/b...

Legal and Ethical Issues in AI Thursday, October 30, 1 pm ET/10 am PT / Library Futures logo

We're thrilled to welcome @nickgarcia.bsky.social arcia.bsky.social, @merbroussard.bsky.social, and @bb.usefairuse.com to the next in our fall webinar series!

Register today for Legal and Ethical Issues in AI on 10/30!

nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Kids who use social media score lower on reading and memory tests, a study shows Data from a large, ongoing study of adolescents shows a link between increasing social media use and lower cognition and memory in teens.

"Preteens using increasing amounts of social media perform poorer in reading, vocabulary and memory tests in early adolescence compared with those who use no or little social media. That's according to a new study that suggests a link between social media use and poorer cognition in teens" in JAMA.

📢 Grant Opportunity for Investigative Journalists

Stringer Journalism is offering support for investigative reporting.

🗓️ Deadline: Dec. 31, 2025
Apply here: https://twp.ai/9PXNRS

Sora 2 and ChatGPT are consuming so much power that OpenAI just did another 10 gigawatt deal | CNN Business OpenAI is partnering with Broadcom to design and develop 10 gigawatts of custom AI chips and systems, a massive amount of power that will use as much electricity as a large city. The move further high...

This is an alarming compression of the planetary destruction timeline: with the massive growth of the AI bubble, data centers are expected to consume up to 12% of total US electricity by 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023.
www.cnn.com/2025/10/13/t...

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

🚨Less Than a Week Left to Apply!🚨

If you are someone looking to inform technology policy through rigorous original reporting or policy analyses, we want to hear from you! Click the link below and apply to be part of our 2026 Fellowship cohort!

airtable.com/appIrc1F9M5d...

If a bunch of smart, financially-disinterested experts take a look at something and they all come away with concerns, that's not "bias." It's data.

AI Psychosis Is Rarely Psychosis at All A wave of AI users presenting in states of psychological distress gave birth to an unofficial diagnostic label. Experts say it’s neither accurate nor needed, but concede that it’s likely to stay.

Chatbots are explicitly being designed “to elicit intimacy and emotional engagement in order to increase our trust in and dependency on them” (me in Wired magazine 🤭). This designed intimacy combined with AI sycophancy creates serious risks for delusional thinking

www.wired.com/story/ai-psy...