AI and the Future of Work (10/7/25). It's a wrap!

Thanks to our expert panelists: @dacemoglumit.bsky.social, @pkrugman.bsky.social, Danielle Li, @zey.bsky.social & @sgreenhouse.bsky.social.

#AI. Who will win and who will lose? How worried should we be? Stay tuned for the video, coming soon.

The picture we've all been waiting for: #AlaaIsFree

h/t: Mohamed Elbaqer

Egyptian authorities announced the presidential pardon of prominent activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah after six years in prison, according to his lawyer Khaled Ali and an announcement by state TV.

Social Media Reduced Two Horrific Killings to Cheap Snuff Films
By Zeynep Tufekci

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/o...

Egypt's president Sisi has ordered authorities to study the possible pardon of Egyptian-British activist and blogger, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has already served an unjust 5 year sentence www.reuters.com/world/uk/egy...

Pssst ... @zey.bsky.social let me know when that other moment approaches!

Highlighted part in your last graf is what we do at Starling Lab, an academic research program based jointly at Stanford + USC. So happy you're casting a light on this emerging field of authenticity. We share your concerns!

Yes. This AI path we are on can easily lead to uber-surveillance by authorities as a means to restore social order being welcomed by shell-shocked people.

We know the step after that.

bsky.app/profile/just...

AI video is almost there: no amount of post-hoc squinting can tell fake from real.

Losing our last bastion of verification is no joke. Trusted news can help with high-profile events, but what about everyday life? Recipe for chaos.

Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/o...

This is very important. From the start ChatGPT- the name, the interface- was designed to make us view it as 'like us' & capable of thought, not just a collection of numbers for text prediction. Creating a social role for an LLM is more imp. than the LLM itself, and it's where any profit comes from.

Plausibility engine is such a great way to think of LLM's

This is a great essay:

L.L.M.s are what they eat

Nice piece on the dangers of LLMs. I liked the description as “plausibility engines” and not “truth seekers” or “reasoning machines”

I wrote about Grok going "MechaHitler" over at X, and the need to view LLMs correctly: as remarkably powerful plausibility engines.

Their AGI marketing and the strong inclination to project human qualities to anything that can speak is misleading us.

NYT gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/o...

After trying to sift thru the AI-generated crap in #WNBA, I found this

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/o...

"AI-generated content — true and otherwise — is taking over the internet, providing training material for the next generation of LLMs, a sludge-generating machine feeding on its own sludge."

“the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by DOGE. He was not replaced.”

“To a Washington bean counter, his loss might have looked like one tiny but welcome subtraction in a giant spreadsheet, but not in a region so prone to these perilous events that it’s known as Flash Flood Alley.” @zey.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/o...

"The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge," according to its union's legislative director. 🎁 🔗

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u...

Here's the original KXAN article from April reporting on Paul Yura's early retirement "as the Trump Administration works to slash the budget at NWS and the larger NOAA organization"

www.kxan.com/weather/weat...

Key Texas floods @nws.noaa.gov vacancies:
San Angelo office is missing
* meteorologist in charge
* senior hydrologist
* staff forecaster
San Antonio office is missing
* warning coordination meteorologist
* science officer

Breaking News: President Trump said that the U.S. had bombed Fordo, Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear facility, as well as two other sites.

Paging the approximately ten million PhD students working on AI & society

These positions are jointly with @randomwalker.bsky.social but the exact distribution will depend on fit to various projects.

Separately, I am also considering hiring postdocs to work on AI and society so please reach out over email if that is already your field!

We can’t match corporate salaries but do offer decent pay, great benefits and real intellectual freedom and challenge.

We have a group of people from CS, sociology, policy, history, law etc. thinking hard about this historic moment—and no lazy AGI talk.