Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · 8d

Sooooo exciting!!!

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · 21d

The answer is most definitely zero. And if advisors are missing this stuff they are not doing their jobs to maintain the quality and integrity of our guild.

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Louis Barclay @louisbarclay.bsky.social · Sep 11

Q. Who aligns the aligners?
A. alignmentalignment.ai

Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

alignmentalignment.ai

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Robert Downen @robertdownen.bsky.social · Sep 8

You'll never guess who funds Hallow, the prayer app recommended by the White House. (It's Peter Thiel and JD Vance).

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · Sep 8

I regret to inform you that this is a White House governmental website: www.whitehouse.gov/america250/a...

The WHITE HOUSE
K AMERICA 250
America Prays
AN INVITATION TO
PRAYER & REDEDICATION
OF THE UNITED STATES AS
ONE NATION UNDER GOD

Resources and Ideas for Times of Prayer:
• Historic prayers, sermons, presidential proclamations, etc. View Here.
• Follow the common ACTS prayer model: Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication.
• Open the prayer meeting with scripture about God's sovereignty and nations (2
Chronicles 7:14, Psalm 33:12, 1 Timothy 2:1-4)
• Organize the time of prayer by different subjects, such as prayer for government leaders, cultural renewal, protection of freedom, families, individuals, etc.
• Weekly Prayer Challenge: each member commits to pray daily for a specific issue or person
• Pray for individuals in your community by name
• Join online communities of prayer, such as Hallow, Pray.com, and many others

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

American Society for Premodern Asia @aspa1842.bsky.social · Sep 5

JAOS 145.3 is out: doi.org/10.7817/jaos..., articles on: autobiog of becoming, Ming women's anger, an old term for foreigners in China, cuneiform word lists, neo-Babylonian chronicles, the epic of Aqhat, Tabari's poetic license, bustling Buddhist monasteries, the aims of Sanskrit doxography, & more!

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 31

As we boot up the semester, here’s a useful link for your syllabi statements on the use of LLMs. 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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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 29

Darian Donovan Thomas’ new album _A Room with Many Doors: Day_ just dropped today. Go get it! It’s ridiculously gorgeous. ddt93.bandcamp.com/album/a-room...

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Alexander Jabbari @ajab.bsky.social · Aug 28

JOB POSTING
Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies
Religious Studies Program, University of Minnesota
Area, time period, and discipline are open and it's a great place to work!

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 20

Goodbye Frankfurt, hello Boston! After getting bumped from flight yesterday, it’s good to finally be back home.

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 19

T-Mobile plans are pretty good at generous free international data. Only expensive if you make a lot of voice calls. I’ve been in Europe for last two months and haven’t needed to purchase data at all.

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 19

15 year-old me will never recover from the fact that I’m taking Flight 420 from Gate 69.

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 19

Heidelberg —> Mannheim —> Frankfurt —> Boston via streetcar, S-Bahn, high speed rail, and airplane. As much as Germans complain about the Deutsche Bahn and its increasingly frequent delays, I keep telling them how amazing it must feel to have transportation infrastructure worth complaining about.

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 18

Hard to find words to express how short-sighted this decision is. Y’all are such a cool model of what a forward-thinking religious studies program can look like.

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 18

Search engines are basically useless these days. fwiw, I’ve been building a critical annotated anti-“AI” bibliography (with links!) for some time now. It’s idiosyncratic and partial and a bit snarky. But section on environment may have some useful stuff for you. codeberg.org/overbey/genA...

codeberg.org

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 18

As we approach Fall, my annotated genAI bibliography continues to grow. Hope this can be of some use to AI-critical scholars as they watch their deans, colleagues, and administrators falling prey to the Sales Guy snake oil. Feel free to request additions or corrections! codeberg.org/overbey/genA...

codeberg.org

Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · Aug 15

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 17

Post-IABS decompressing in Heidelberg is the best way to end this summer break. pixelfed.social/p/overbey/86...

Ryan Richard Overbey (@[email protected])

Philosophenweg view of Heidelberg’s castle, the old bridge, and the funicular rail.

pixelfed.social

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 16

Leipzig —> Mannheim—> Heidelberg. #IABS2025 was a blast. See y’all in Vancouver in 2028!

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 11

Leipziger Lerche, a nut and jam pastry created as a substitute for roasted meadowlark after the Saxon king banned meadowlark hunting. A fitting Aśoka-esque detail to ring in the IABS!

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 10

Train day! Hall in Tirol —> Jenbach —> München —> Leipzig. Looking forward to hearing Germans complain every time the Deutsche Bahn is 3 minutes late.

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 9

*restorative, obvs. Typos like these are what happens when you’re too blissed out after a hike!

Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 9

Last full day in Austria before heading to the IABS in Leipzig. It wss 90 degrees here, so a good day to hike and swim the Achensee! Gonna really miss hanging out in Tirol. What a redtorative month. pixelfed.social/p/overbey/85...

Ryan Richard Overbey (@[email protected])

Achensee panorama

pixelfed.social

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Reposted by Ryan Richard Overbey

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · Aug 8

I do think this is indicative of the sheer absurdity of what we're living through. OpenAI is allegedly worth $500 billion - more than Netflix - and this is their brand new product that is meant to be super powerful. Does this really make a billion dollars a month? This thing? ChatGPT?

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · Aug 8

At first I thought GPT 5 had got this right then I saw things like "Tonnessee," "Mississipo" and my personal favourite "West Wigina." Please do not respond just saying the different typos to me we can all read the joke, we all know about "Distrricke"

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Ryan Richard Overbey @overbey.bsky.social · Aug 6

Friends! Hope to see you in Leipzig, where I’ll present on how I confirmed that the Consecration Scripture was indeed edited by a single person or team. I promise that during my talk I will use the phrase “vibes-based argument” at least twice! conference.uni-leipzig.de/iabs2025/aca...

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