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EmilyTav

@emilytav.bsky.social

5.8K followers 900 following 540 posts

Policy + design + tech. Angry optimist. Co-Curator of an oral history of the origins of the U.S. Digital Service

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · Aug 22

1/ My 🌶️ take on how augmented reality and chatbots are enabling avoidance on a mass scale.

“The bottom line is this: children are using products that are simulations of relationships — simulations of intimacy.”

“It’s the filter bubble on steroids.”

techpolicy.press/weapons-of-m...

Weapons of Mass Delusion Are Helping Kids Opt Out of Reality | TechPolicy.Press

Emily Tavoulareas says AI firms are actively enabling young children to trade real relationships for an illusion — or perhaps more aptly, for a delusion.

techpolicy.press

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

Dystopia now comes with a Halloween costume.

Ring puts a fun twist on the surveillance state with security camera Halloween costumes.

Amazon now sells its new $200 4K Outdoor Cam Pro with your choice of one of five free Halloween camera costumes, or you can 3D print your own. Sticking a camouflaged camera behind your bowl could be a...

www.theverge.com

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 1d

Would be super helpful to know who those copyright holders are 🤔

It’s almost like they are trying to create the illusion of support… 🤥

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Sam Altman Says Copyright Holders Are Begging for Their Characters to Be Included in Sora

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has remained adamant that rightsholders are already lining up to have their IP featured on Sora 2.

futurism.com

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4d

Literal dead labor.

Dead celebrities are apparently fair game for Sora 2 video manipulation

OpenAI’s likeness protections for living “public figures” don’t apply to “historical figures.”…

arstechnica.com

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Bookshop.org @bookshop.org · 4d

Can’t decide what to buy on Prime Day?

Try: absolutely nothing, and then go support indie bookstores instead 📚

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J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 3d

Genuine question - what are OpenAI’s Sora and other video generation tools good for?

I am honestly trying to understand what is so important that it’s worth the cost. If you have examples, I would be interested to hear them.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

People Are Making Sora 2 Videos of Stephen Hawking Being Horribly Brutalized

People are using OpenAI's Sora 2 to generate videos of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking being brutalized in ghoulish ways.

futurism.com

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 4d

Flying cars are the perfect example of a point solution: trying to solve a systemic problem (traffic) with an individual product (fly over the traffic).

But traffic is not a technology problem; it's a social problem. Remote work, congestion fees, and dense transit-connected housing solve it better.

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 4d

which then begs the question of why you want flying cars instead of whatever mass transportation equivalent you imagine

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4d

“…that Sora is being used for stalking and harassment will likely not be an edge case, because deepfaking yourself and others into videos is one of its core selling points.”

Far from an edge case, it’s the primary use case.

Stalker Already Using OpenAI's Sora 2 to Harass Victim

A journalist claims that her stalker used Sora 2, the latest video app from OpenAI, to churn out videos of her.

futurism.com

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 4d

Right!? Too perfect.

EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 5d

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 7d

In my backyard doing some writing, and from my neighbors yard:

5y/o: *singing Golden*

Dad: “what’s this sock doing here!?”

— pause —

5y/o: (louder) “we’re goin UP UP UP it’s our moment…!!!!”

❤️🥹

EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 7d

… 🫠

Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 8d

This piece starts well:

"At MIT, I study the history and future of education technology, and I have never encountered an example of a school system – a country, state or municipality – that rapidly adopted a new digital technology and saw durable benefits for their students."

What past education technology failures can teach us about the future of AI in schools

It can take years to collect evidence that shows effective uses of new technologies in schools. Unfortunately, early guesses sometimes go seriously wrong.

theconversation.com

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 9d

"If we lose hope, we're doomed."

We must continue Dr. Jane Goodall's mission and all fight for the future of the planet.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 9d

OpenAI is essentially a social arsonist, developing and releasing tools that hyper scale the most racist, misogynistic, and toxic elements of society, lowering the barriers for all manner of abuse. The so called guardrails make a pinky swear look like an ironclad contract.

This social app can put your face into fake movie scenes, memes and arrest videos

The new Sora social app from ChatGPT maker OpenAI encourages users to upload video of their face so their likeness can be put into AI-generated clips.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 11d

Video: “Technological progress that isn’t sustainable isn’t really progress,” @katecrawford.bsky.social says, as she explains how the AI industry is damaging the earth and leaving humans in the lurch, jeopardizing its own future and ours. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/o...

Opinion | A.I.’s Environmental Impact Will Threaten Its Own Supply Chain

www.nytimes.com

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Dr Farbod @emergencybod.medsky.social · 11d

Creep by Radiohead as you've never heard it before.

Absolutely beautiful and full of soul. Amazing talent.

I feel uplifted.

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 12d

I may have found the dad joke to end all dad jokes.

It physically hurts, but I’m still laughing while groaning😅

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 12d

What’s the opposite of formaldehyde?

casualdejekyll

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 13d

A lot of Americans think that our healthcare system is much better than it is. Stories like this, or worse, are not as rare as many people think. And as she says, doctors are often not in the driver’s seat when it comes to care.

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No Purpose Flour @hodgepodge.bsky.social · 13d

Fuck no Lowe’s. You can’t have the Halloween stuff and the Christmas shit out at the same time. No. Bad hardware store.

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 16d

Ps: There’s a fundraiser to get a new version of her book reissued on the Internet Archive.

www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...

Donate to Help Paulina Borsook: disabled writer, artist, activist, organized by paul Carter

Paulina's long time friend Steve Rappaport writes, "Support P… paul Carter needs your support for Help Paulina Borsook: disabled writer, artist, activist

www.gofundme.com

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 16d

More here in her own words, for anyone who wants to keep digging…

cyberselfish.com/history.html

Paulina Borsook

cyberselfish.com

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 16d

You can find an essay that later turned into a book (it was based on her book proposal!)

www.motherjones.com/politics/199...

Cyberselfish

Silicon valley, one of the country's biggest recipients of government largesse, would like to bite the hand that feeds it. <a href="mailto:[email protected]">Paulina Borsook</a>, a <a href="http...

www.motherjones.com

Reposted by EmilyTav

Greg Lindsay @glindsay.bsky.social · 16d

I met Paulina on the tour for “Cyberselfish,” cited her in my own book, and never forgot her gimlet-eyed take on the SF scene.

It’s high past time to belatedly recognize her prescient warnings on what Silicon Valley was and what it would become. She was there, she saw it, and no one has any excuse.

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 16d

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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EmilyTav @emilytav.bsky.social · 16d

The degree to which this woman saw SV for what it was, and the path it was putting us on is wild.

Even more wild is the fact that her incisive perspective was lost in the trance of promises and potential that so many of us fell into.

I want this book.

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 16d

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Annelise @annelise.bsky.social · 22d

Reposting things really fills that age old need to cut an article out of the paper, xerox it at the library and mail it to all your relatives and friends with a hand written note about how they might want to check this out.

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 22d

STEWART: “Comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s a bellwether— we’re the banana peel in the coal mine… authoritarians are the threat to comedy, music, art, thought… progress.”

Nailed it.

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