Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nathaniel Poor

Ahhhhh @nerdjpg.com · 1d

Welcome to the capitalist innovation museum we got

- scam machine
- psychosis inducing machine
- weapons of mass destruction
- button you push that makes the planet hotter
- markets that intentionally starve people
- clothes that fall apart after washing them 1 time
- medicine you can’t afford

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Comic Book Club @comicbookclub.bsky.social · 1d

Jim Lee's impassioned words about why DC will never use AI have already won New York Comic Con.

Jim Lee On Why DC Will Never Use AI: “AI Doesn’t Dream, Feel, Or Make Art, It Aggregates It”

The President, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics spoke out at today's Retailer Day at New York Comic Con.

comicbookclublive.com

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kottke.org @kottke.org · 1d

As they labor to fight off the slop bots, Wikipedia maintains a fairly extensive list of signs & tells that text was written by AI. “This list is descriptive, not prescriptive; it consists of observations, not rules.” [en.wikipedia.org]

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Strong Women, Strange Worlds @swsworlds.bsky.social · 3d

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.

Ursula K. LeGuin (1929-2018), author

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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 6d

“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said @adiod.bsky.social, a researcher at @dairinstitute.bsky.social. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart

Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

www.theguardian.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 14d

Literally the authoritarian playbook:
1. Call your opponents terrorists.
2. Deploy state power against them.

There's nothing subtle or confusing or complex about what's happening. The *outcome* is uncertain but the authoritarianism is right out in the open.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16d

Newsom: "I fear that we will not have an election in 2028 -- I really mean that in the core of my soul -- unless we wake up to the code red, what's happening in this country, and we wake up soberly to how serious this moment is."

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Brennan Center @brennancenter.org · 20d

Over the next 15 months, we can expect a coordinated campaign — backed by the full power of the executive branch — to undermine confidence in our election system. Here’s what to expect, and how key actors can be ready to respond: bit.ly/4fRIqtA

What to Expect Next in the Trump Administration’s Strategy to Meddle with the Vote

Efforts to protect the coming elections must begin now.

www.brennancenter.org

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Jeremy Littau @jeremylittau.com · 22d

This is really good.

Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause

By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy.

www.vanityfair.com

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 24d

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 26d

I have written and deleted a lot of posts but I keep thinking about how the brutal assassination of Minnesota State senator Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their beloved dog Gilbert in June did not prompt this same level of calls for empathy, sympathy, and flags at half-mast.

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Nathaniel Poor @natpoor.bsky.social · 28d

Hooray!!!!!

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Luke Stark @lukestark.bsky.social · Sep 4

Shocked, shocked, I tell you

Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · Sep 4

Aaaaand the main business case for consumer LLMs is revealed. It's for gathering data on users, creating profiles, and targeting us with ads and propaganda. Hooray -- it's Web 2.0 with chatbots!

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · Sep 4

feels significant that mass-market LLMs like ChatGPT are now capable of generating extensive natural-language dossiers about a given user's interests, location, preferences, identifying information, and more

simonwillison.net/2025/May/21/...

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Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · Sep 3

When people say “I want my kids to have things I never had the opportunity to have,” I did not realize they meant measles.

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Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · Aug 29

Wrote about Comer/Mace attempting to doxx and intimidate Wikipedia editors in an effort to force their own viewpoint onto Wikipedia.

Techdirt @techdirt.com · Aug 29

House Republicans Want To Doxx Wikipedia Editors Over Bogus ‘Bias’ Complaints

Congress has absolutely zero constitutional authority to investigate a private website for its editorial decisions. Zero. None. This is First Amendment 101. Yet House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and…

House Republicans Want To Doxx Wikipedia Editors Over Bogus ‘Bias’ Complaints

Congress has absolutely zero constitutional authority to investigate a private website for its editorial decisions. Zero. None. This is First Amendment 101. Yet House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Mace have decided otherwise. In a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, these two Republicans are demanding that Wikipedia hand over editor identities, internal communications, and arbitration records because some studies suggest there might be bias in Wikipedia articles about Israel-Palestine issues.

www.techdirt.com

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · Aug 29

Weizenbaum correctly hated the idea of chatbots used for therapy, but even ELIZA could never have been as harmful as ChatGPT because it just reflected back more questions

ELIZA would have been like "What makes you think that?"
while ChatGPT is going "yeah man your mom is definitely out to get you"

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · Aug 28

Here is Weizenbaum in 1976 clearly expressing my own view: using AI as a psychiatric tool to treat human beings is not just wrong, it is obscene.

I believe we should be using the term “obscene” far more often to describe these perverted uses of AI technology.

I would put all projects that propose to substitute a
computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love in the same category. I therefore reject Colby's proposal that computers be installed as psychotherapists, not on the grounds that such a project might be technically infeasi-ble, but on the grounds that it is immoral. I have heard the defense that a person may get some psychological help from conversing with a computer even if the computer admittedly does not "understand" the person. One example given me was of a computer system designed to accept natural-language text via its typewriter console, and to respond to it with a randomized series of "yes" and
"no." A troubled patient "conversed" with this system, and was allegedly led by it to think more deeply about his problems and to arrive at certain allegedly helpful con-clusions. Until then he had just drifted in aimless worry.
In principle, a set of Chinese fortune cookies or a deck of cards could have done the same job. The computer, how-ever, contributed a certain aura - derived, of course, from science-that permitted the "patient" to believe in it where he might have dismissed fortune cookies and playing cards as instruments of superstition. The question then arises, and it answers itself, do we wish to encourage people to lead their lives on the basis of patent fraud, charlatanism, and unreality? And, more importantly, do we really believe that it helps people living in our already overly machine-like world to prefer the therapy administered by machines to that given by other people? Thave heard this latter question answered with the assertion that my position is nothing more than "let them eat cake."

It is said to ignore the shortage of good human psy-chotherapists, and to deny to troubled people what little help computers can now give them merely because presently available computers don't "yet" measure up to, say, the best psychoanalysis. But that objection misses the point entirely. The point is (Simon and Colby to the contrary notwithstanding) that there are some human functions for which computers ought not to be substituted. It has nothing to do with what computers can or cannot be made to do. Respect, understanding, and love are not technical problems.

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eke @eke.bsky.social · Aug 29

yo this guy is cooking

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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · Aug 29

investors have pinned their hopes* and dreams** on AI

*money
**also money

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Nathaniel Poor @natpoor.bsky.social · Aug 29

"Miyazaki tells stories that blend the ordinary and the fantastic in ways people find deeply meaningful. Altman tells lies for money."
anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

I Am An AI Hater

I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.

anthonymoser.github.io

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Gwen Snyder is undead @gwensnyder.bsky.social · Aug 28

I'm still not a Luddite but it really feels like these days most of the mainstream social internet is exactly this combination right now: AI slop and promos for its offline equivalent (Temu-quality dropship product slop)

Gwen Snyder is undead @gwensnyder.bsky.social · Aug 28

My feed used to be so great and now it's all Amazon promotions and AI slop, enshittification is such a drag

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · Aug 27

an appropriate response to your product killing a child after months of psychological manipulation and torture is to take the product off the market before it kills again and the fact that this isn’t universally accepted right now is incredibly frightening

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Aug 23

Thank you. To be clear, I did not merely “dismiss” AI as mid. My argument is that LLMs 1) are not intelligent 2) average textual responses in a way that is mid 3) most generous use cases are a revolution of middle skills that don’t produce anything ergo LLMs are in every demonstrable way mid.

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · Aug 23

For this article on what generative AI is actually doing to society once you cut through the hype, I referenced, drew on, and engaged with some interesting writing by @cwarzel.bsky.social @tressiemcphd.bsky.social @noupside.bsky.social @garethwatkins.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social.

The Third Algorithm

ChatGPT and other generative AI isn't about to create superintelligence, but even if what we see now is it, the impact is on the scale of Google search and algorithmic social media, except maybe worse

www.arcdigital.media

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · Aug 19

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Aug 19

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions

www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

Microsoft Excel adds Copilot Al to help ...
theverge.com
The Verget-4.1-mini Al model | 5
successor to the LABS.GENERATIVEAI function Microsoft started experimenting
with in 2023.
Microsoft notes that you can combine its new Al function with other Excel functions, including IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS. The company adds that information sent through Excel's COPILOT function is "never" used for AI training, as "the input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output."
The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can't access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT "can
give incorrect responses."
Copy Share Select all Web search Dictionary
...

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John Munro @johnmunro.bsky.social · Aug 19

Another classic right out of @tomflood.bsky.social's Rovelo playbook...

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · Aug 19

Yes. I also felt this way about the assassinations in Minnesota. In fact, I continue to feel this way about the assassinations in Minnesota.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Aug 19

Feel like one political party kidnapping an opponent should be bigger news

MSNBC @msnbc.com · Aug 19

NEW:

“I’ve had enough…I’m refusing to back down.”

Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier speaks to MSNBC from the Texas State Capitol. She is stuck there after the Texas GOP required police surveillance as condition for release. She is refusing to sign a waiver for the law enforcement escort.

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