Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kean Birch @keanbirch.bsky.social · Aug 5

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology

#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Do Artifacts Have Political Economy? - Kean Birch, 2025

Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay “Do artifacts have politics?,” my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question—namely, do artif...

journals.sagepub.com

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Nathalie A. Smuha @nathaliesmuha.bsky.social · Feb 17

It's out! You can now access The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Ethics and Policy of #AI: www.cambridge.org/core/books/t...

20 #openaccess chapters covering topics on AI, ethics, philosophy, legal domains and sectoral applications.

Huge thanks to all the authors who made this possible!

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Jul 21

Mary! It’s been too long.

I’ll put a version online next week and send you the URL.

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Jul 20

Thomas Carroll and I put our heads together to articulate the main ethical concerns with using AI to address the empathy crisis in medicine. “The Ethics of Empathetic AI in Medicine” is now out in IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society.

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/110...

The Ethics of Empathetic AI in Medicine

The expression of empathy is an important part of effective and humane medical care. Modern medicine faces a significant challenge in this area, at least in part due to the ever-increasing demands on ...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Jul 7

Wrote about why Robin Williams’s wisdom from Good Will Hunting is worth revisiting in the AI age: books and bots offer words that move us, but they’re not offering caring relationships.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/07/o...

A chatbot can never truly be your friend - The Boston Globe

AI relationships may be useful and even enjoyable. But only a fellow human can offer the depth of understanding that real closeness comes from.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Jul 1

Not much on social media these days. But if anyone is interested in why I think the entire paradigm of human-like AI is wrong, here’s a short post at the APA Public Philosophy blog. They leaned into the “shit on a stick” story for the cover art. 😆

blog.apaonline.org/2025/07/01/t...

The Precautionary Approach to AI: Less Human, More Honest

Have you ever caught yourself thanking Siri or saying please to ChatGPT? If so, you’re not alone. Evolutionary forces, social norms, and design features all make us naturally inclined to treat these t...

blog.apaonline.org

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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · Apr 10

"The profit-driven nature of life outside the classroom makes students wonder why we even bother discussing the ethics of technology in class." @evanselinger.bsky.social reads Daryl Campbell's "Fatal Abstraction" with the realities his students face in mind. lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

What Can Enlightened Coders Really Do? | Los Angeles Review of Books

Evan Selinger reads Darryl Campbell’s “Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software” with the realities his students face in mind.

lareviewofbooks.org

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Apr 10

Can enlightened altruistic coders save us from the oppressive tyranny of corporate managerialism? Alas, I don’t think so. My argument in a review essay of Darryll Campbell’s “Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.” lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

What Can Enlightened Coders Really Do? | Los Angeles Review of Books

Evan Selinger reads Darryl Campbell’s “Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software” with the realities his students face in mind.

lareviewofbooks.org

Caroline Lequesne @clequesne.bsky.social · Jan 28

🗓️ Nice, les 13 & 14 Mars.
A tous les passionnés et les curieux, les avertis et les novices : colloque international sur la reconnaissance faciale et les technologies de surveillance. 12 pays représentés, 30 experts et de passionnants échanges en perspectives👇
droit.univ-cotedazur.fr/law-enforcem...

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Mar 13

Wish I could! But it’s only in-person. There isn’t a link.

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 25

The attack on universities mirrors our blind spot with supply chains. Because both operate invisibly, misconceptions abound. The profound contributions of universities often go unnoticed—and, just like supply chains, we risk only recognizing their value when they're diminished or fail.

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 20

Dodgy Data

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 19

The main thesis is that the hermeneutic circle (no, they don't use this phrase!) haunts AI consciousness claims. Our theories of mind are built on pre-theoretical experience of consciousness. And yet companies insist they can replicate what they can't even define independently of that experience.

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · Feb 19

Some AI enthusiasts fantasize about chatbots' potential future suffering. But David McNeill and Emily Tucker say there are many good reasons to reject the claim that contemporary AI research is on its way toward creating genuinely intelligent, much less conscious, machines.

Suffering is Real. AI Consciousness is Not. | TechPolicy.Press

Probabilistic generalizations based on internet content are not steps toward algorithmic moral personhood, write David McNeill and Emily Tucker.

buff.ly

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 19

Congrats!

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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · Feb 19

Some AI enthusiasts fantasize about chatbots' potential future suffering. But David McNeill and Emily Tucker say there are many good reasons to reject the claim that contemporary AI research is on its way toward creating genuinely intelligent, much less conscious, machines.

Suffering is Real. AI Consciousness is Not. | TechPolicy.Press

Probabilistic generalizations based on internet content are not steps toward algorithmic moral personhood, write David McNeill and Emily Tucker.

buff.ly

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Andrew Keen @ajkeen.bsky.social · Feb 18

keenon.substack.com/p/episode-22... important warnings by @gaiabernstein.bsky.social about threat of AI companions to kids

Episode 2241: Gaia Bernstein on the Threat of AI Companions to Children

AI Companions as the New Frontier on Kids' Screen Addiction

keenon.substack.com

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Gaia Bernstein @gaiabernstein.bsky.social · Feb 17

Last opportunity to register to Seton Hall Law School's AI Companions online symposium tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 18 ,12 pm-2:30 pm EST. You can register here: : bit.ly/40Ztl2j

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 17

Growing up in the 80s makes me a sucker for underdog stories. I loved reliving Karate Kid vibes with Cobra Kai!

Question—

Does celebrating beating the odds risk minimizing how stacked the deck is?

Or is that view overblown b/c life poses many challenges, and we need many inspirational stories?

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Frank Pasquale @frankpasquale.bsky.social · Feb 17

“Brain capacity is also being squeezed. Our mental lives are more fragmented and scattered than ever before”
www.ft.com/content/c288...

The human mind is in a recession

Technology strains our brain health, capacity and skills

www.ft.com

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 16

Narrating counterfactuals is necessary to make the invisible legible. Tragically, though, I suspect many will find such stories too abstract and hypothetical to resonate. When people are hurting, it's hard to point out that things could have been worse, and much is taken for granted.

Julia Angwin @juliaangwin.com · Feb 16

Government’s wins are often invisible: Systems that avoid plane crashes; alliances that avert war; surveillance that prevent pandemics.

Government wins are often *the avoidance of loss.*

So how do we tell the story of the destruction of government? The story of future losses *not* averted?

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Julia Angwin @juliaangwin.com · Feb 16

Government’s wins are often invisible: Systems that avoid plane crashes; alliances that avert war; surveillance that prevent pandemics.

Government wins are often *the avoidance of loss.*

So how do we tell the story of the destruction of government? The story of future losses *not* averted?

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 15

It’s hard for some to appreciate this because, tragically, they only associate governance with one thing: a scolding headshake.

“The second fallacy we’ve heard is that AI requires a tradeoff – between safety and progress, between competition and collaboration, and between rights and innovation.”

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · Feb 14

At the Paris AI Action Summit, Dr. Alondra Nelson was an invited speaker at a private dinner at the Elysée Palace hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. Here are her remarks on “three fundamental misconceptions in the way we think about artificial intelligence.”

Three Fallacies: Alondra Nelson's Remarks at the Elysée Palace on the Occasion of the AI Action Summit | TechPolicy.Press

Dr. Nelson was an invited speaker at a dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palais de l'Élysée on February 10, 2025.

www.techpolicy.press

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 15

Ha! But is that idea—that everything can be explained with the right mathematical take—the same perspective being advocated for here and also explicitly linked to ketamine epiphanies?

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 15

with his take, his response was basically, “Well, I guess you don’t get math.”

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 15

revolved around the idea—which he got from Deleuze—that you could explain all kinds of social phenomena through the lens of structures like soap bubble formation. I never really understood it. But he was clear to us that experiences with ketamine helped unlock his key insights. And if you disagreed

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Evan Selinger @evanselinger.bsky.social · Feb 15

Can you explain the ketamine part to me? When I was a grad student a billion years ago, I made a couple of trips with some Danish friends to visit Manuel DeLanda. Not sure if you’ve heard of him but DeLanda was a self-taught Deleuze scholar who wrote a bunch of weird and interesting books. They

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Danielle Citron @daniellecitron.bsky.social · Feb 15

The top 100 legal scholars of 2024 is in and a woman made number 1–so happy to appear alongside @ariezra.bsky.social @klonick.bsky.social @hartzog.bsky.social @lsolum.bsky.social @micahschwartzman.bsky.social @richschragger.bsky.social @meganstevenson.bsky.social @uvalaw.bsky.social Whoos!

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · Feb 14

At the Paris AI Action Summit, Dr. Alondra Nelson was an invited speaker at a private dinner at the Elysée Palace hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. Here are her remarks on “three fundamental misconceptions in the way we think about artificial intelligence.”

Three Fallacies: Alondra Nelson's Remarks at the Elysée Palace on the Occasion of the AI Action Summit | TechPolicy.Press

Dr. Nelson was an invited speaker at a dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palais de l'Élysée on February 10, 2025.

www.techpolicy.press

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Casilli @casilli.bsky.social · Feb 11

Big news: From February 20 to 28, I’ll be on a North American tour with talks in Toronto, Yale, and Harvard about my latest book, Waiting for Robots. Register here to join 👉
www.casilli.fr/2025/02/10/u...

Upcoming North American Book Tour: Four Talks on My New Book Waiting for Robots | Antonio A. Casilli

I'm excited to announce my upcoming North American book tour for Waiting for Robots: The Hidden Hands of Automation. Throughout February 2025, I’ll be giving talks between Toronto and Boston, discussi...

www.casilli.fr

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