Woodrow Hartzog
@hartzog.bsky.social
10K followers 1.2K following 1 posts

Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. Author of "Privacy's Blueprint" (2018) and co-author of "Breached!" (2022). Posting mainly about privacy, tech and the law.

Political science 32%
Computer science 24%
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
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.

Reposted by Rebecca Tushnet

hartzog.bsky.social
AI destroys institutions.
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“One of the negative consequences AI is having on students is that it is hurting their ability to develop meaningful relationships with teachers, the report finds. Half of the students agree that using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers.”
Rising Use of AI in Schools Comes With Big Downsides for Students
A report by the Center for Democracy and Technology looks at teachers' and students' experiences with the technology.
www.edweek.org
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“One of the negative consequences AI is having on students is that it is hurting their ability to develop meaningful relationships with teachers, the report finds. Half of the students agree that using AI in class makes them feel less connected to their teachers.”
Rising Use of AI in Schools Comes With Big Downsides for Students
A report by the Center for Democracy and Technology looks at teachers' and students' experiences with the technology.
www.edweek.org

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

lordbusinessman.bsky.social
"no in the future people will cryptographically verify what's true and-" no they will not. People are fucking stupid.

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

jonchristian.net
folks, what are we even doing here
In one video, a forklift delivers Hawking’s wheelchair into a WWE-style ring, where he’s immediately knocked to the ground by burly wrestlers.

“This shouldn’t even be legal!” exclaims an announcer in the AI-generated clip.

In another video, Hawking takes blow after blow to the face from a UFC fighter. “Hawking’s in trouble,” the announcer yells, as the physicist topples out of his wheelchair.

In another, Hawking is trampled by a raging bull. In another, he’s attacked by a crocodile that drags him into a muddy river. In yet another, he drops into a skateboarding halfpipe and wipes out badly, smoke pouring from his wheelchair.

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

scalzi.com
Delighted that Cory is having a moment with "Enshittification," because it's an accurate word for what's happening in tech and he's the right person to describe it.

(Gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/b...
A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

mediagazer.com
About 25% of US adults say they use AI chatbots like ChatGPT for news, and 33% of them say they generally find it difficult to tell what is true and what is not (Pew Research Center)

Main Link | Mediagazer Permalink
merriam-webster.com
We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.
drewharwell.com
OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“.. OpenAI spent more on marketing and equity options for its employees than it made in revenue in the first half of 2025. That single fact sums up where we are in the AI cycle more neatly than anything we could ever write, so we’ll just end there.”

@financialtimes.com
www.ft.com/content/908d...
edzitron.com
Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...
The Case Against Generative AI
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...
www.wheresyoured.at

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

reckless.bsky.social
The essential failure of LLMs in the smart home - where natural language processing should shine - is the best evidence that LLMs as a technology simply may not be able to do the things they’re promised

www.theverge.com/report/78717...
Amazon’s workaround has been to use its LLM models as a kind of translator. It interprets what you say, then hands off the request to deterministic systems — APIs, device controllers, or local Matter connections.

The unpredictability of LLMs is a poor fit for smart home control, where reliability and repeatability are crucial.
I’ve found this works most of the time, but if the LLM translates a request incorrectly or there’s a gap in the API, it appears that handoff can fail. I assume that’s why my bathroom fan sometimes turns on as requested and why Alexa sometimes insists on creating a routine but then forgets to finish the job.
lutzfernandez.bsky.social
Say it often, say it loud:

"Overall, research has not supported the common-sense presumption that digital approaches to schooling are better than non-digital alternatives. At the broadest level, widespread computer use in education has been found to be associated with lower student achievement."
Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education
Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...
nepc.colorado.edu
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“In a new report, management consultants Bain & Company found that despite being ‘one of the first areas to deploy generative AI,’ the ‘savings have been unremarkable’ in programming.”
AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds
The AI industry's claims about AI coding assistants boosting productivity significantly appear to be massively overblown, per a new report.
futurism.com

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

chronotope.aramzs.xyz
Everyone keeps saying that an individual's user data just isn't worth that much. Well now we know it's worth at least as much as a 3GB/mo cell phone plan.
robertscotthorton.bsky.social
Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'
Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’ | Fortune
Oracle's Larry Ellison believes citizens and police alike will be under constant surveillance of each other.
fortune.com
hypervisible.blacksky.app
The guide lists 7 risks “that come from AI governance: discriminatory work assignments, fluctuating wages, loss of worker control, constant surveillance, unreasonable performance evaluations, automated punishment, and non-payment.”
Report Warns That AI Is About to Make Your Boss a Panopticon Overlord
Far from a dystopian fantasy, algorithmic management tech is rapidly expanding across the US and European Union.
futurism.com

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

mattsteg.bsky.social
CEO: We'd love to make the risk zero if possible.

So you're e2e encrypting, not storing user keys, processing data locally and *maybe* letting people opt-in to more, right? Right?

CEO: oh not like that we're just lobbying for laws that make our risk zero.
carlbergstrom.com
Left unchecked, openAI and other infotech providers will destroy any remnants of the American education system that manage to escape the Trump administration.

Read the full thread.
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...
Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.
www.nytimes.com
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...
Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Ryan Calo

Reposted by Woodrow Hartzog

rcalo.bsky.social
Does your university have an account with Oxford Academic? If so, you can read the entirety of my book Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach here! academic.oup.com/book/61252
Validate User
academic.oup.com