Pat Savage

Screenshot of David Simon interview 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.

The only correct take on a fundamentally anti-human technology.

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

Yes, this is great. Have you considered including something like that "AI is research misconduct" wording in the title?

I never met Jane Goodall, but she loomed over much of my reporting over the years. With @emilyanthes.bsky.social I wrote a piece about her scientific legacy. Gift link: nyti.ms/46PGBtd

Relatedly, I’m curious: how do people feel about reading books vs listening to audiobooks? It was only really with audiobooks I was able to rediscover the joy of reading for fun since feeling like I didn’t have time to sit and read (especially after becoming a parent)

Hi! Did you know that you aren’t pronouncing axolotl correctly?

Suppression of indigenous languages by the Spanish is one of the Four Wounds of Colonization. This is a small subversion of colonial power you can use!

Axolotl is a Nahuatl word, and it sounds like this:

How much did Colossal pay you for this ad (sorry, “Career Feature”)?

Although we cannot offer to move your review request further, we believe Communications Tomer may find it of interest, see the link to transfer your review there.

I'm sorry to not respond more positively, and I hope that you continue to see Tomer Ullman as a venue for your future review requests.

I really like our paper published today. It is written directly for Māori and Pacific prospective and current PhD students in STEM www.journal.mai.ac.nz/10.20507/MAI...

The working link to Tara's latest, share this with the Māori and Pacific grads around you!

Non-citizen permanent residents can vote in New Zealand

Honored to have been interviewed for this week's issue of @currentbiology.bsky.social!

Teaching advice please —

I’m deciding if I should replace traditional paper assignments with an alternative now that we are all battling AI generated student papers…

But what is the best alternative?

I’ve started usually requiring all students to give group oral presentations with Q&A in addition to final papers. And in-class participation is weighted most.
Doesn’t solve everything but has helped.

Govt's $70m boost for AI Funding will be over 10 years and will be rolled out in two phases.

HEY GUYS Let's take money from basic science and use give it the outcome of basic science 🤡
#NZGovtAntiScience
www.nzherald.co.nz/business/ret...

🙃

Language endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - Language endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country

New paper alert! 🧪

www.doi.org/10.1057/s415...

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright

man rolling rock up hill how it started how its going

Harvard Sues Ex-HBS Professor Gino for Defamation, Accusing Her of Falsifying Evidence

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Professor who predicted 2020s unrest sees US sliding deeper into crisis Fifteen years ago Peter Turchin warned America was on the brink of a decade of growing political unrest. This is what he says now.

From a few months ago:
www.newsweek.com/peter-turchi...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

The lyrics have sparked debate for decades. While the title evokes imagery reminiscent of the English nursery rhyme “Who Killed Cock Robin?”—a rhyme dating back to at least 1744 and catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index number 494 , there is no concrete evidence to suggest a direct lineage between the two Is it about gambling? Hunger? Power? The reference to “gambling for Sadie” suggests a dice game, yet the chilling chorus — I picked his head, I picked his feet / Would’ve picked his body, but it wasn’t fit to eat… — evokes starvation or even cannibalistic metaphor. Scholar Elijah Wald has noted its ties to minstrel tradition, while Mance Lipscomb spoke of hunting robins during hard times. Others argue it’s rooted in the “dozens,” a verbal sparring tradition full of witty, biting insults. So is “picking poor robin clean” a metaphor for utter destruction? Emotional exploitation? Taking all one can from the vulnerable? Possibly all of the above. And that, perhaps, is the point. The magic of the song lies in its ambiguity.

"Pick Poor Robin Clean" singing scene from Sinners

Re-listening to the Sinners soundtrack - what a series of non-stop bangers! Each track has such a rich history. Enjoyed learning about the origins/meaning of "Pick Poor Robin Clean" in this post:
thedocumentrecordsstore.com/sinners-pick...

A reminder that the deadline for commentary proposals for my new BBS paper is tomorrow!

An honor of publishing with BBS is having thoughtful colleagues engage with one's work, and I can't wait to see y'all what think.

My Goodreads review of "The shortest history of music" by Andrew Ford: The idea of a short history of all music is great. I liked the first chapter that actually tried to engage with diverse musical traditions. But most of the rest of the book fell into the standard trap of mostly discussing Western classical composers, with a small section on African-American blues and jazz and a few mentions of other traditions sprinkled throughout. It felt in between a popular and academic book: too many composer/musician names and musicological jargon for a non-expert, not enough details for an expert. It's hard to complain too much when there aren’t many better examples out there, but I’d probably recommend Ted Gioia’s “Music: A subversive history” instead to most readers.

Here's my review of Andrew Ford's "Shortest history of music" that was published last year but hadn't come onto my radar until now.

Curious if others have any thoughts?
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

So many lies

CC-BY-NC is a good compromise

tūtira mai ngā iwi AUE #NewZealandValues

Fewer Marsden Fund grants after government cuts A major research fund has been forced to slash its grant allocation by more than $20 million next year.

More cuts to the Marsden Fund. This time $20 million from the annual budget cut starting next year. This is on top of previous cuts by this government. They are trying to skip the 'priming the pump' step of public research as a driver of the economy. How well that is going to work?
#NZPOL