Margaret Mitchell

Google’s healthcare AI made up a body part — what happens when doctors don’t notice? The basilar ganglia does not exist.

NEW: Google dubbed an error from its healthcare AI model, Med-Gemini, a typo. Experts say it demonstrates the risks of AI in medicine.
www.theverge.com/health/71804...

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

The underwings of a Flicker (video you’re replying to) are either “red” or yellow, depending on the subspecies. In the PNW where I am, they’re “red”. (But I consider them burnt orange/vermilion). The Pileated Woodpecker is in the video I was QTing, the underside of their wings is black and white.

Yes!

Download Merlin, it’ll make a world of difference.

🪶 For my birder friends: Today there was a momma+juvenile Pileated Woodpecker visit, then after I shared that here, a papa+juvenile Northern Flicker (woodpecker) pair came for a visit!* Weird day. Gonna keep videoing and posting and push my luck. 👀 Surely this is causal.
*assuming parent+chick

Clockwise: Northern Red-Shafted Flicker on a Madrone branch, seen from below; vermilion rose; orangey yellow Nasturtium with vermilion colored spikes on the petals; vermilion Coleus; French Marigold with reddish inner and yellow tips; orangey red mum.

🪶🌱 Vermilion set for #SixOnSaturday.
Main picture is of a Northern Red-Shafted Flicker sitting on a Madrone, Washington’s native broad-leaf evergreen.

August 1, 2025 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations Statement from the American Economic Association on the Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today. The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day. Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias. The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions. We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure. Lawrence Katz President, American Economic Association Katharine Abraham President-Elect, American Economic Association Karen Dynan Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics Kenneth Troske Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

🪶 My favorite video snippet from the fledging Pileated Woodpecker visit I just had. 🤗

Taking many little breaks and hopping (“flying”) from branch to branch, eventually gets to the birdbath and drinks a bit, too. 🥳
(Water was fresh.)
Then it spent several minutes hopping through our undergrowth making more little creaking sounds. 🤷‍♀️
Mom waited in nearby tree.

Fledgling attempts to use feeders for itself…fails. Tries maybe the suet feeder pole?? Nope, no food there.
Eventually flies over to another feeder and succeeds at acquiring suet! 🥳

Fledgling bops along the ground and attempts different angle to understand wtf its parent is doing.

Fledgling stands on ground watching mom demonstrate using a suet feeder, baffled.

🪶Just had a visit from a baby (fledgling) Pileated Woodpecker and its mom! Mom was teaching it how to fly and find food and water. Baby Pileated spent most of its time making little creaky sounds and bopping around on the ground fruitlessly. More📸 and 🎞️ in 🧵 if you’re into that kind of thing! 1/

Palantir Is Extending Its Reach Even Further Into Government Palantir has become one of the few winners in the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts, offering other contractors a lifeline while consolidating its own reach and power.

All the government’s data about everyone all in one interoperable system run by a private company. What could go wrong? www.wired.com/story/palant...

Online news publishers face 'extinction-level event' from Google's AI-powered search While many factors often drive traffic fluctuations, publishers say the introduction of Google's AI Overviews has led to dramatic declines for news outlets and other online information sources.

While many factors often drive traffic fluctuations, publishers say the introduction of Google's AI Overviews has led to dramatic declines for news outlets and other online information sources.

OpenAI removes ChatGPT feature after private conversations leak to Google search OpenAI abruptly removed a ChatGPT feature that made conversations searchable on Google, sparking privacy concerns and industry-wide scrutiny of AI data handling.

🤖 Example of how “informed consent” can go wrong — and what it means to be “informed”: users inadvertently agreed to share details that could be used against them. The friction for sharing private info should be greater than a checkbox or else shouldn’t be an option.
venturebeat.com/ai/openai-re...

ChatGPT Confessions gone? They are not ! OpenAI closes gap, but another opens of 110.000 chats

Even though they can't be found through google anymore, they can still be found on Wayback Machine 🙃

www.digitaldigging.org/p/chatgpt-co...

Exclusive: Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations, potentially exposing sensitive user data Thousands of shared ChatGPT chats are now appearing in Google search results.

Well this is bad. Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations exposing sensitive user data

I tried a few quick searches. I found someone's chat where I can see their api key

I found some building their resume. Their name, email and phone numbers are exposed.

www.fastcompany.com/91376687/goo...

😡

100%

This company also non-consensually generated a video of AI-generated Paul McCartney endorsing them.
So yeah, I appreciate the goal but the means, and justifications for the means, are atrocious.

The issue is not only a lack of appreciation for history and the lessons it provides, it’s that many leaders actively want sentient-type beings, and so will see it — and sell it — in the technology they create.
Weizenbaum was much more clear-eyed.

What Is the Eliza Effect? | Built In The Eliza Effect is the tendency to falsely attribute human thought processes and emotions to AI, and believe an AI is more intelligent than it actually is.

Me me! I work in tech….and yes, we are falling for it again lol.
Here’s me two years ago explaining.
builtin.com/artificial-i...
And years before that, was fired for articulating similar:
dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
1/

As human-created art, it would absolutely *be authentic*. Unlike AI, which can never experience human love and loss.
Look, advancing technology for assistive uses is awesome.
Hawking anti-musician BS to give an aura of goodness to “AI” instead is not awesome.
Ask musicians to do this.

🤖 Always on the lookout for potential net positive uses of “AI”, esp for elderly…but the claims here pissed me right off:
“There was no way that we could have found enough songwriters out there to be able to create those tracks in an authentic way”
🚫 No. MANY musicians [wc]ould do this. And, 🧵

chart: capital expenditures, quarterly shows hockey-stick like growth in the capex expenditures of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and meta, almost entirely on data centers in the most recent quarter it was nearly $100 billion, collectively

The AI infrastructure build-out is so gigantic that in the past 6 months, it contributed more to the growth of the U.S. economy than /all of consumer spending/

The 'magnificent 7' spent more than $100 billion on data centers and the like in the past three months *alone*

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sili...

I get that it isn't easy. But the more of us that speak up, and the more we boost those speaking up, the more we can be a voice for informed change

We live in a hostile world, and it is only getting more hostile. We need to push back against anti intellectualism before we truly are silenced

OpenAI killed a ChatGPT feature that made some sensitive conversations publicly searchable.

If you knew where to look, anyone on the internet could access public ChatGPT logs where people seemed to confess to crimes, share trade secrets & more potentially damning scenarios.
x.com/cryps1s/stat...