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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Had a long discussion about gen AI today. Are there valid use cases for the tech? Yes. Is the current implementation problematic? Yes. Is it being oversold? Yes.

Do the benefits outweigh the harms? ... I suspect not, but I cannot know because the true costs are hidden, and this is a huge problem.

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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · Apr 21

So this interview lasted 2 hours so this “you’re scaring me” part might seem like an overreaction or fearmongering to someone without that context.

There’s a lot of evidence to support my hypothesis that a potential H5N1 pandemic would be worse than COVID.

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MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 6d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 2d

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org

The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

www.nobelprize.org

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Maarten van Smeden @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social · 2d

Kind reminder: data driven variable selection (e.g. forward/stepwise/univariable screening) makes things *worse* for most analytical goals

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 4d

They are making such bets with other people's money (and time, IP, attention, electricity, water, etc) ... so it is never "wrong" for them.

"Heads, I win; tails, you lose! (and I'll get promoted because of my so called hard-won experience)"

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 5d

Although I would include a somewhat different set of considerations (e.g. the roles of compassion and intentionality), this is the most clarifying and tech-fantasy-debunking paper I've read in this space.

Well worth reading for anyone interested in ethics towards AI/robots/etc.

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 5d

Robot personhood/rights is conceptually bogus and legally puts more power/rights in the hands of those that develop and deploy robots/AI systems

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

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Richard D. Morey @richarddmorey.bsky.social · 6d

Also - contrast b/w the response when I advocate teaching R instead of SPSS -- "No hurry, let's not rush into it" (still waiting) -- & others re: use of LLMs -- "It's inevitable, we're behind; need it implement it ASAP!" -- is telling. Learning to code is freeing. Overhyped LLMs create dependency.

Excerpt from Guest & van Rooij, 2025:

As Danielle Navarro (2015) says about shortcuts through us-
ing inappropriate technology, which chatbots are, we end up dig-
ging ourselves into “a very deep hole.” She goes on to explain:

"The business model here is to suck you in during
your student days, and then leave you dependent on
their tools when you go out into the real world. [...]
And you can avoid it: if you make use of packages
like R that are open source and free, you never get
trapped having to pay exorbitant licensing fees." (pp.
37–38)

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 8d

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins:
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
(Not sure if I spelled that right)
What immortal hand or eye
Could fashion such a stripy guy?
What the hammer that hath hewn it
Into such a chonky unit?
Did who made the lamb make thee,
Or an external franchisee?

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Wolfgang Blau @wblau.bsky.social · 6d

Spot the North-American anomaly: only region where social media use is still growing.
Great work by the FT’s @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
www.ft.com/content/a072... “Have we passed peak social media?”

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Stephen Lockyer @mrlockyer.bsky.social · Feb 23

Let me make your Sunday. Got a library card? Great.

Download the Libby app. Free.

Up to 10 audiobooks. FREE (cancel Audible).

Up to 10 e books. FREE.
(Cancel Kindle Prime).

UNLIMITED high street magazines (I chose Empire, RW, Wired, Simple Things to start).

NEWSPAPERS!

This app is AMAZING.

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 7d

Small preview: "far from being an unstoppable force, [AI] is irrevocably shaped ... by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment.... The technology of AI is ultimately not that complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to its owners’ wants and ends."

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 7d

Sounds great! And I suggest the book "Why we fear AI" by @hagenblix.bsky.social and I. Glimmer if not already on the list.

In a nutshell, it discusses how the social & economic patterns of late capitalism (anti labor, anti knowledge knowledge; but pro fear) show up in technology, i.e. AI.

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 8d

A much needed reflection on the crisis of rational thought today: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...

As a side note on reason itself, the article's attention to Arendt on imagination aligns with the unique aspects of Pierce's abductive reasoning (as complementary to inductive and deductive forms)

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might th...

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Harrap @bharrap.bsky.social · 9d

Are you a student or early-career statisticians & data scientists in the Sydney area? Come hear from a diverse panel on their experience and career trajectories! Food and drink to follow

📅 9th Oct, 6-8pm Sydney time
📍 USyd

Registration required:
statsoc.org.au/event-6332903

#statssky #databs

Statistical Society of Australia - SSA NSW: Early Career and Student Statisticians Career Event 2025

statsoc.org.au

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Trekkie Bill 🖖🏻 @trekkiebill.bsky.social · 9d

Do you ever think about the fact that Wikipedia is the last good major website on the internet? You aren't bombarded with ads. It doesn't try to push video on you, and it doesn't redirect you to a scam site.

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Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 9d

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

harpers.org

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 9d

Impressive work, esp. combining the two papers!

Last week I spoke at Google's (internal) Survey Con about why "Synthetic Survey Data is Not Data".

One audience question: would the estimates get better by adding more data?

My response was 🤷 "maybe" 🤷 ... but this is a much better answer!

Verasight @verasight.bsky.social · 9d

In Verasight’s second synthetic data paper, @gelliottmorris.com, Ben Leff and @peterenns.bsky.social find that the performance of synthetic samples does not consistently improve (and can perform worse) with additional administrative data or real survey responses. Link in the thread.

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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 9d

please read this

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 9d

MW correctly reading the room

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 9d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 9d

A book in the works, or ... ?

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Nick Ulivieri @nuphoto.com · 9d

Well this is (not) reassuring: a TFR (temporary flight restriction) just went up over the city from now through October 12th for "Special Security Reasons."

Not that this makes it any better, but this TFR is specifically for drones (UAS) provided you don't have prior approval or authorization.

This image displays a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) detailing temporary flight restrictions around Chicago, Illinois, near O'Hare International Airport. The restriction zone spans a 15 nautical mile radius centered around the O'Hare VOR/DME, from the surface to 400 feet above ground level. The NOTAM, issued for special security reasons, is in effect from October 1, 2025, at 1445 UTC until October 12, 2025, at 2359 UTC. It highlights that no Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations are allowed in the area unless authorized under specific conditions for defense, law enforcement, or other critical missions.

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anthrofuentes.bsky.social @anthrofuentes.bsky.social · 9d

Oh no. Jane Goodall has passed. Jane changed so many lives across so many species. The best remembrance is to keep fighting for the rights of all species and to center care in all relations. Plus, do go and read her early work from Gombe, it's revolutionary.

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Chris Chapman @cchapman.bsky.social · 9d

nb: my article is about synthetic *survey* data in particular. The OP🧵is broader and some of those questions are better formed than surveys (even if LLMs are still dubious for them).

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Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 22d

This problem will only get worse when people try to use LLMs to model vulnerable or hard-to-reach populations. People are already suggesting that LLMs could do this to help increase representativeness of research; I believe presently it will likely have the exact opposite effect.

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