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Conor Linehan

@conorlinehan.bsky.social

Researcher in Applied Psychology and Human Computer Interaction. University College Cork

227 Followers  |  158 Following  |  12 Posts  |  Joined: 13.11.2024
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Posts by Conor Linehan (@conorlinehan.bsky.social)

To be entirely clear: every "AI" company should have bright red ethical lines against things like genocide and weapons systems and surveillance and consent violations and shepherding an encroaching fascism, and those lines should be placed way earlier than anthropic and openAI's seem to be.

28.02.2026 17:41 β€” πŸ‘ 244    πŸ” 48    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 6

i think lots of people underestimate how badly these β€œAI” companies want people to be unable to afford computers. they view personal computing as a roadblock to their desire for complete end-to-end centralization. the fact that their tech is putting hardware out of reach is not just a happy accident

17.02.2026 17:49 β€” πŸ‘ 4314    πŸ” 2162    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 77
Image of the Yeti in the skiing Windows game SkiFree eating the player

Image of the Yeti in the skiing Windows game SkiFree eating the player

Breaking: Tragedy at the Winter Olympics

07.02.2026 15:39 β€” πŸ‘ 8709    πŸ” 2584    πŸ’¬ 73    πŸ“Œ 69

Feck's sake - you can tell the people who make decisions about public transport in Cork city never have to actually use it.

And haven't for years.

11.02.2026 08:09 β€” πŸ‘ 21    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 1
β€œPeople don’t understand what this job is,” he said, adding, β€œYou cannot pick and choose, because among the very rich is a higher percentage of unpleasant and not very attractive people. Capitalism is a rough system.”
In defending his pursuit of Mr. Epstein and candidly describing the burden of raising money, Dr. Botstein gave insight into how the need to attract dollars can appear to run headlong into an academic institution’s stated values.
Mr. Epstein gave prolifically to many charities and universities, including Harvard and M.I.T., and the Wall Street Journal report showed that his network of contacts was wider than had been thought, including prominent figures like the linguist Noam Chomsky and Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard. Dr. Summers sought money for a poetry foundation, led by his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard literature professor. Mr. Summers declined to comment.
β€œWould we accept money from Jeffrey Epstein today? No,” Dr. Botstein said, describing the former donor as a β€œmonster” and β€œtruly evil man.” β€œWe had no idea, the public record had no indication, that he was anything more than an ordinary β€” if you could say such a thing β€” sex offender who had been convicted and went to jail.”

β€œPeople don’t understand what this job is,” he said, adding, β€œYou cannot pick and choose, because among the very rich is a higher percentage of unpleasant and not very attractive people. Capitalism is a rough system.” In defending his pursuit of Mr. Epstein and candidly describing the burden of raising money, Dr. Botstein gave insight into how the need to attract dollars can appear to run headlong into an academic institution’s stated values. Mr. Epstein gave prolifically to many charities and universities, including Harvard and M.I.T., and the Wall Street Journal report showed that his network of contacts was wider than had been thought, including prominent figures like the linguist Noam Chomsky and Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard. Dr. Summers sought money for a poetry foundation, led by his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard literature professor. Mr. Summers declined to comment. β€œWould we accept money from Jeffrey Epstein today? No,” Dr. Botstein said, describing the former donor as a β€œmonster” and β€œtruly evil man.” β€œWe had no idea, the public record had no indication, that he was anything more than an ordinary β€” if you could say such a thing β€” sex offender who had been convicted and went to jail.”

As more academic names keep coming up in the Epstein files, I keep thinking about this NYT interview with the Bard president from a few years ago, and wondering how many people were rationalizing in similar ways.

www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/u...

01.02.2026 00:17 β€” πŸ‘ 643    πŸ” 183    πŸ’¬ 38    πŸ“Œ 42

This pretty much nails what underlies all the hype about sentient AIs.

02.02.2026 08:54 β€” πŸ‘ 42    πŸ” 17    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

read online that someone set-up a premium rate phone number where callers get charged $3.99/ min. then they posted flyers in their neighborhood that said "call this number to report illegal aliens," but the number just puts them on hold with music. so far, they've made $17,000

01.02.2026 20:28 β€” πŸ‘ 21312    πŸ” 3545    πŸ’¬ 458    πŸ“Œ 406
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Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless Independent research identifies few learning gains

Blistering piece on ed tech in @economist.com.

β€˜Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schoolsβ€”and often impairs it.’
economist.com/united-state...

24.01.2026 14:24 β€” πŸ‘ 517    πŸ” 258    πŸ’¬ 13    πŸ“Œ 51

When Elon changed the name of Twitter to X everyone was like "what the fuck, that sounds like the name of a website for extremely illegal pornography made by and for nazis"

And behold what it became.

Nominative determinism go ew

05.01.2026 22:16 β€” πŸ‘ 379    πŸ” 104    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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UCC launches new toolkit to combat engagement with AI deepfakes A programme developed by researchers at University College Cork has found that educating individuals about the harms of AI identity manipulation can help to stop this problem at source. Rachael spoke ...

Reducing harmful engagement with AI-generated explicit images

UCC researchers have launched the world's first educational tool which aims to curb the watching, sharing, and creation of AI-generated explicit imagery.

16.01.2026 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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UCC researchers unveil 'world-first tool' aimed at persuading Grok users to avoid creating explicit images Free 10-minute intervention dubbed β€˜Deepfakes/Real Harms’ has been designed to reduce the willingness of users to engage with harmful uses of deepfake technology, like creating non-consensual explicit...

"The free 10-minute intervention dubbed β€˜Deepfakes/Real Harms’ has been designed to reduce the willingness of users to engage with harmful uses of deepfake technology, like creating non-consensual explicit content", research by John Twomey supported by Lero
www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

16.01.2026 10:46 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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UCC launches toolkit to combat AI deepfake engagement Researchers at University College Cork (UCC) have developed a new online educational toolkit designed to reduce engagement with AI-generated explicit images.

PAT research led by John Twomey on addressing engagement with deepfake tools is featured in the media today! @uccresearch.bsky.social @ucc-apppsych.bsky.social @lerocentre.bsky.social www.rte.ie/news/munster...

16.01.2026 10:36 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Politicians: don't use AI to make your maps.

14.01.2026 11:13 β€” πŸ‘ 1051    πŸ” 371    πŸ’¬ 114    πŸ“Œ 259
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Do You Want Your Food Made by a Robot? E-commerce mogul Marc Lore's Wonder is leaning into automation in a $2 billion effort to do to restaurants what Amazon did to shopping.

Every future imagined by a tech company is worse than the previous iteration.

12.01.2026 17:01 β€” πŸ‘ 226    πŸ” 51    πŸ’¬ 15    πŸ“Œ 17
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Are you thinking about your 2026 CAO choices? Have an interest in Psychology? Students from UCC PsychSoc have put together an extremely informative introduction to the School of Applied Psychology in UCC! #caochoices #cao #psychology #leavingcert

09.01.2026 15:25 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

A very long and important THREAD -

The real reason the US is invading Venezuela goes back to a deal Henry Kissinger made with Saudi Arabia in 1974.

And I'm going to explain why this is actually about the SURVIVAL of the US dollar itself.

Not drugs. Not terrorism. Not "democracy." 1/

04.01.2026 09:40 β€” πŸ‘ 2336    πŸ” 1359    πŸ’¬ 92    πŸ“Œ 477

If you are thinking of following suit, here's a list of EU tech alternatives:

european-alternatives.eu

04.01.2026 19:24 β€” πŸ‘ 79    πŸ” 58    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 3

if you are talking today about how bad maduro was and were alive, at all, during the run-up to the iraq war you are potentially the dumbest person to ever live

03.01.2026 17:00 β€” πŸ‘ 18540    πŸ” 3961    πŸ’¬ 17    πŸ“Œ 29

Under Irish law Musk can be jailed for 12 months for being a director of a company distributing CSAM. Section 9 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998. 'X' is a company registered in Ireland.

02.01.2026 13:57 β€” πŸ‘ 1468    πŸ” 400    πŸ’¬ 33    πŸ“Œ 72

A lovely gentle and accessible dialogue on the limits of computationalism.

02.01.2026 15:57 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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We Reject the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reflexive Qualitative Research - Tanisha Jowsey, Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Deborah Lupton, Michelle Fine, 2025 Four hundred and nineteen experienced qualitative researchers from 32 countries invite readers of Qualitative Inquiry to consider their position on use of gener...

Now published…

We Reject the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence for Reflexive Qualitative Research - Tanisha Jowsey, Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Deborah Lupton, Michelle Fine, 2025

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

23.12.2025 06:48 β€” πŸ‘ 155    πŸ” 61    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 6

The most generous reading of this is as art intervention, giving AI researchers an opportunity for reflection by applying AI slop to their own work and reputation and seeing the damage it does to

20.12.2025 09:39 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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#TwinPeaks #ChatGPT #LogLady
@logladyfilm.bsky.social

19.12.2025 20:11 β€” πŸ‘ 153    πŸ” 36    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 2
Screenshot of an ACM Digital Library search result showing an AI-generated summary where an abstract of the article would usually appear.

Screenshot of an ACM Digital Library search result showing an AI-generated summary where an abstract of the article would usually appear.

What the absolute shit is this? ACM using AI summaries instead of abstracts in search results?! So, if I understand correctly, instead of the author's own summary of the work (i.e. an abstract) we are better off with some regurgitated slop version of that summary instead? @chi.acm.org

16.12.2025 20:02 β€” πŸ‘ 61    πŸ” 18    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 6
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why is the ACM stabbing authors in the back with generative AI text effluent?

16.12.2025 22:54 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
Details | Working at Bristol | University of Bristol

Apply for my old job as Lecturer in HCI at Bristol. It's a lovely group and a good place to work. I only left because my wife lived in a different country.

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

16.12.2025 17:12 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
09.12.2025 17:19 β€” πŸ‘ 8931    πŸ” 1977    πŸ’¬ 50    πŸ“Œ 16
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AI is a crisis for the climate. @naomiaklein.bsky.social

05.12.2025 19:55 β€” πŸ‘ 274    πŸ” 74    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 6

AI is a climate issue. AI is a climate crisis.

04.12.2025 17:55 β€” πŸ‘ 834    πŸ” 294    πŸ’¬ 13    πŸ“Œ 11