Katie (Kathryn) Conrad

It's a special kind of empty

Disney Defends Star Wars' Latest Trailer For Mandalorian & Grogu After Divisive Super Bowl Ad Mandalorian and Grogu movie teaser backlash.

Trailer itself aside, boy oh boy the marketing head’s response looks absolutely human written. Not extruded at all. Way to build confidence about the script!
screenrant.com/mandalorian-...

Opinion | Ring is using lost dogs to make the surveillance state adorable The same technology the Amazon-owned company uses to find lost dogs could easily be turned against their owners.

“No matter how Ring and other surveillance tech companies may downplay it, there’s no world in which finding lost dogs is the final end-use for this technology.”

“The surgeon warned Acclarent “there were issues that needed to be resolved”... Despite that Acclarent “lowered its safety standards to rush the new technology to market,” & set “as a goal only 80% accuracy for some of this new technology before integrating it into the TruDi Navigation System.”

Library of Babel Group logo with hexagon pattern.

Just a reminder to consider the Library of Babel Group. We have projects afoot and opportunities to network with like-minded folks. www.law.georgetown.edu/privacy-tech...

Exclusive: Pentagon clashes with Anthropic over military AI use, sources say The Pentagon is at odds with artificial-intelligence developer Anthropic over safeguards that would prevent the government from deploying its technology to target weapons autonomously and conduct U.S....

“In its discussions with government officials, Anthropic representatives raised concerns that its tools could be used to spy on Americans or assist weapons targeting without sufficient human oversight, some of the sources told Reuters.”

With news today about a surge in gas-fired power generation for data centers and AI, here's an occasional reminder that I maintain Against AI and Its Environmental Harms, an open library with journalism, peer-reviewed research, and other media for teaching: pad.riseup.net/p/Against_AI...

College approached and paid student to write op-ed in The Dartmouth The Dartmouth ran the article on Nov. 17 without knowledge that the College had been involved. 

The college at which I'm employed, which has signed a contract with the AI firm that stole books from 131 colleagues & me, paid a student to write an op-ed for the student paper promoting AI, guided the writing of it, and did not disclose this to the paper. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...

Let them eat slop

Pygmalion Displacement:

9) Social bonding: Do the users and/or creators of the AI develop interpersonal-like relationships with it?

10) Psychological service: Does the AI function to subserve and enhance the egos of its creators and/or users?

PDF: doi.org/10.31235/osf... @spookyachu.bsky.social

When Google brought its monorail to my campus Plus some things to ask when they come to yours

Hey so here's a little retrospective on Google's fall visit to my campus. open.substack.com/pub/kconrad/...

CNN headline: "Elon Musk makes bold pitch for super-fast rocket travel"in front of an image of Lyle Lanley, monorail conman from the Simpsons.

In related news,

When Google brought its monorail to my campus Plus some things to ask when they come to yours

Hey so here's a little retrospective on Google's fall visit to my campus. open.substack.com/pub/kconrad/...

Oh yay!

"AI didn't just increase its footprint in Washington in 2025. It ate tech lobbying whole." www.axios.com/2026/01/23/a...

What is wild to me is the defense, BY THE NEURIPS BOARD, that fabricated citations do not mean "the content of the papers themselves [is] necessarily invalidated"

It does. It very much does. What do you think citing other work is for? What do you think writing a paper is for? What do you *think*?

The silicon gaze: A typology of biases and inequality in LLMs through the lens of place - Francisco W. Kerche, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham, 2026 This paper introduces the concept of the silicon gaze to explain how large language models (LLMs) reproduce and amplify long-standing spatial inequalities. Draw...

"Drawing on a 20.3-million-query audit of ChatGPT, we map systematic biases in the model's representations of countries, states, cities, and neighbourhoods. From these empirics, we argue that bias is not a correctable anomaly but an intrinsic feature of generative AI”.

ht: Dagmar Monett

Perhaps "Abject Victorian orphan" is the line between "seen a ghost" and "processing bad news"

Agreed! I think "jackass" could also be called "ghoul" - just to harmonize with the "seen a ghost" (which shades occasionally into "abject Victorian orphan" when he's being apologetic but I would say is still the same category).

Democratic accountability requires following power where it moves. Traditional mechanisms—public notice, comment, judicial review—were designed for formal rulemaking. We now need accountability frameworks that cut through the mirage of AI deregulation.

YouTube video by Ryan George Extra Plus! The Absolute Lunatics of LinkedIn Pt. 2

For a little midweek relief, I highly recommend Ryan George’s “The Absolute Lunantics of LinkedIn“ for dramatic readings and analyses of such posts. Eg. youtu.be/D3MQQDYijqY?...

#ai companies have been steadily moving into schools across North America in the last year.

They are spending millions of dollars on advertising.

Parents often don't know the negative effects of AI, and educators are being told to use it by administrators blown away by slick presentations.

1/2

Oooh

WANT

I'll also add that when I read the intro, I imagine the Talking Heads "Once in a Lifetime" playing in the background 😁

I had to send an email to my kid's teacher. Thankfully they weren't having the kids interact with it directly but I was still furious

I'm sorry I missed your earlier posts about your dad. Again, so sorry. And yes, you've got plenty other on your plate. :)

Seems like only a few years ago this type of thing was a scandal.

Ben, I am so sorry. Thank you for sharing this.