@mfernandes-jesus.bsky.social
Assistant Professor, University of Sussex; Assoc Editor, JSPP & JCSAP; Researcher on climate justice, collective action, migration, youth climate activism, communities & social justice.
BREAKING: Banner drop on Westminster Bridge ahead of the mass silent vigil taking place in Trafalgar Square today.
The banner says "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action"
As the genocide escalates in Gaza, and our rights to oppose it are under threat, we must resist.
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users โ 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 industryโs 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. OpenAIโs ChatGPT and Appleโs 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! ๐คฉ Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industryโs marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Human rights orgs: Israel is committing genocide and using starvation as a method of war against Palestinians.
โForemostโ political-psych society: dialogue is the answer; we are concerned by the, ehm, suffering that has "transpired" mysteriously in the region.
Shame on the signatories.
(1/2)
Absolutely devastating but no longer headline newsโฆ
www.bbc.com/news/article...
"In Gaza, hunger has been used as a weapon of war since the beginning of the genocide to weaken and control..."
16.06.2025 16:45 โ ๐ 6 ๐ 4 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
My latest post charting the erosion of free dissent in the US
open.substack.com/pub/christin...
"You can cut the branches
of the tree of liberty,
but you canโt destroy the roots
because they are too strong
and too many.โ
-Toussaint L'Ouverture
#NoKings
Three members of the Madleen teamโPascal Maurieras, Yanis Mhamdi, and Marco van Rennesโare still illegally detained by Israel and may be held for another month.
Arrested unlawfully in international waters and denied basic rights,
"So how is the "transfer" being carried out at this moment? Through starvation and the destruction of vital infrastructure. Through the weaponization of โhumanitarian aid.โ Through relentless, systematic bombing."
14.06.2025 09:53 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Israeli forces have killed more than 120 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours...
12.06.2025 05:43 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
๐จALERT๐จ
Thiago รvila and Rima Hassan are now held in solitary confinement under punitive and inhumane conditions:
Thiago was placed in isolation in Ayalon Prison due to his ongoing hunger and thirst strike, which he began two days ago.
...2/
SOS! the volunteers on 'Madleen' have been kidnapped by Israeli forces.
Thiago Avila is a citizen of Brazil. Thiago รvila, has been kidnapped by the Israeli military.
The Brazilian government must protect their citizen!
...2/
Greta Thunberg. Clear as ever.
www.democracynow.org/2025/6/4/gre...
Israeli Military Attacks Madleen in International Waters.
freedomflotilla.org/2025/06/09/i...
๐จ PhD position in Political Communication at @ascor.bsky.social ๐จ
Come work with @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social @lindabos.bsky.social and myself on a 4-year project about visual communication & political anger
DL June 4 - Thanks to repost for diversity! ๐ฅ
@polcomm.bsky.social
โก๏ธ tinyurl.com/8yvbkwxu
Climate research doesn't fuel climate anxiety. Failure to act on climate change does. Canceling climate research will undoubtedly fuel climate anxiety among young people as well as adults. Great article here. ๐ฅ
17.04.2025 12:56 โ ๐ 66 ๐ 36 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0New article on young people's political agency in the context of climate change
18.04.2025 19:30 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 2 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Criminalisation of protest is severe in the UK but as this new report highlights, repression of #climate and #environment activism is a global story
@michelforst.bsky.social @ruthchambers.bsky.social
#EnvironmentalJustice
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Youth studies starter pack! A work in progress - please send suggestions (and feel free to nominate yourself)
I miss our youth studies chat on the other place.... here we go! ๐ฅ
go.bsky.app/DbniWGw
Starter pack of social scientists working on climate/environment with a focus on justice-driven policy, behavior, & systems change. *Inclusive of early career scholars.* Recommendations welcome @carlietrott.bsky.social
[Collaboratively created; Additions โ endorsement.]
go.bsky.app/6yrkE6C
