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Nick Proferes

@profprof.bsky.social

900 followers 630 following 93 posts

Studies tech, discourse, and how sometimes things mean other things. Opinions are my own. Grading while listening to death metal enthusiast.

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Nick Proferes @profprof.bsky.social · Jul 24

New OA pub day! Given the dwindling of local newspapers, folks are turning to social media. Platforms are discursively constructing local community groups as a new kind of hub. But local volunteer mods are the ones who are charged to realize these visions. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Local platformized utopias? corporate discourse, community groups, and volunteer moderation on Facebook, Reddit, and NextDoor

journals.sagepub.com

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 8d

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

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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 9d

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

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Lauren Rosenthal @laurenthal.bsky.social · 10d

Electricity now costs 267% more (!!) for 1 month vs. what it cost 5 years ago near data center hotspots. Awesome reporting from Josh Saul @dinabass.bsky.social Leonardo Nicoletti @naurtorious.bsky.social Demetrios Pogkas (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring

Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

www.bloomberg.com

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☠️mawls slaughter☠️ @oddletters.bsky.social · 16d

words have (different) meaning(s according to which discourse communities are deploying them and to what rhetorical purposes)!!!

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Peter Gratton @petergratton.bsky.social · 15d

hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

hbr.org

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 16d

8% of US adults say they have no close friends
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Chart showing a narrow majority of adults (53%) say they have between one and four close friends, while a significant share (38%) say they have five or more. Some 8% say they have no close friends.

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Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 22d

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention

Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

arxiv.org

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Gregory Convertito @gregconvertito.bsky.social · 22d

September’s post in the APA Blog’s “Teaching and Learning Video Series” is a very fun consideration of our intuitions about the threshold for moral status by way of an iconic scene from “The Good Place.” Thanks @profprof.bsky.social! blog.apaonline.org/2025/09/17/c...

“Chidi Kills Janet!” Unpacking Sentience and the Moral Status of AI

This clip, “Chidi Kills Janet!,” from the first season of NBC’s The Good Place, lets us gauge our intuitions about how computers fit with our concepts of life, intelligence, sentience, etc. In the por...

blog.apaonline.org

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Nick Proferes @profprof.bsky.social · 27d

fellow loud music enjoyers: ho99o9's new album is fantastic.

Nick Proferes @profprof.bsky.social · 29d

Thanks for your response!

Nick Proferes @profprof.bsky.social · 29d

How do you feel about the “loud pipes save lives” argument? I ask because it seems an odd by-product of the gas powered that (to me) does carry some degree of merit and is worth thinking about in the design of electrics.

Nick Proferes @profprof.bsky.social · Sep 6

4S folks: if you are looking for something to do post conference, Ada’s technical books is worth a visit. adasbooks.com

Ada's Technical Books & Cafe

Ada's Technical Books & Cafe is Seattle's technical bookstore. We build community through science minded literature, a vegetarian cafe, specialty coffee, coworking, and an intimate event venue. Our co...

adasbooks.com

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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/...

I really don’t like ChatGPT’s new memory dossier

Last month ChatGPT got a major upgrade. As far as I can tell the closest to an official announcement was this tweet from @OpenAI: Starting today [April 10th 2025], memory …

simonwillison.net

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Stevie Chancellor @schancellor.bsky.social · Aug 27

What is it going to take to get companies to care about this and do something? It's been a tough day reading this great report by @kashhill.bsky.social on the risks of chatbots.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.

www.nytimes.com

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Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Metadata, Lattes & Impostor Syndrome) @hannahshelley.bsky.social · Aug 13

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

Google Scholar Is Doomed

Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?

hannahshelley.neocities.org

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Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · Aug 24

Called it guard.io/labs/scamlex...

All we did was fake a simple email from a fresh new ProtonMail address (so it’s clearly not from a bank) posing as a message from a Wells Fargo investment manager. Inside was a link to a genuine phishing page, active in the wild for several days, and still unflagged by Google Safe Browsing.

When Comet received the email, it confidently marked it as a to-do item from the bank and clicked the link without any verification. There was no URL check, no pre-navigation warning -just a direct pass to the attacker’s page. Once the fake Wells Fargo login loaded, Comet treated it as legitimate. It prompted the user to enter credentials, even helping fill in the form.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 19

7. The paper looks at how researchers might hand off boring "drudge work" such as data collection and cleaning to AI agents, and what could (and IMO will) go wrong as they do so.

Here's a key passage.

Critically, we argue that the very framing of certain AI applications around themes of
productivity, efficiency, speed, convenience, and ease can conflict with their thoughtful and
rigorous situated consideration — itself a somewhat laborious exercise. Precisely because
convenience is the key appeal of some AI tools, researchers who adopt these methods have
little incentive to question them and investigate in detail the epistemic implications of
adopting them – or privileging them over other approaches. Convenience AI can be
dangerous because, motivated by speed and ease, it can instil complacency into the use of
given tools and lower the depth and frequency of critical scrutiny

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 19

5. Today I read a paper by @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social and Alexander Mussgnug that I think illustrates this point perfectly.

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24891/1/Phil...

Convenience AI
Sabina Leonelli & Alexander Martin Mussgnug12
Abstract: This paper considers the mundane ways in which AI is being incorporated into scientific
practice today, and particularly the extent to which AI is used to automate tasks perceived to be
boring, “mere routine” and inconvenient to researchers. We label such uses as instances of
“Convenience AI” — that is situations where AI is applied with the primary intention to increase
speed and minimize human effort. We outline how attributions of convenience to AI applications
involve three key characteristics: (i) an emphasis on speed and ease of action, (ii) a comparative
element, as well as (iii) a subject-dependent and subjective quality. Using examples from medical
science and development economics, we highlight epistemic benefits, complications, and drawbacks
of Convenience AI along these three dimensions. While the pursuit of convenience through AI can
save precious time and resources as well as give rise to novel forms of inquiry, our analysis
underscores how the uncritical adoption of Convenience AI for the sake of shortcutting human labour
may also weaken the evidential foundations of science and generate inertia in how research is
planned, set-up and conducted, with potentially damaging implications for the knowledge being
produced. Critically, we argue that the consistent association of Convenience AI with the goals of
productivity, efficiency, and ease, as often promoted also by companies targeting the research market
for AI applications, can lower critical scrutiny of research processes and shift focus away from
appreciating their broader epistemic and social implications.

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Aug 18

Increasingly, what makes sense to me is framing a class as a *dialogic community* and assessing students on their contributions as members of that community. Such contributions can be and should be as spontaneous as they are regulated. +

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Ernie Smith @ernie.tedium.co · Aug 9

So apparently we are within the last 60 days of dial-up AOL being a thing.

help.aol.com/articles/dia...

ht @mat.tl

Dial-up Internet to be discontinued
AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.

This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan, which you can access any time on your AOL plan dashboard. To manage or cancel your account, visit MyAccount.

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Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · Aug 6

NEW: In a likely first, security researchers have shown how generative AI agents can be hijacked to cause physical consequences.

They tricked Google's Gemini AI into turning off smart home lights, opening windows, and turning on a boiler.

They hid instructions to the AI in a *calendar invitation*

Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home

For likely the first time ever, security researchers have shown how AI can be hacked to create real world havoc, allowing them to turn off lights, open smart shutters, and more.

www.wired.com

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Michael Zimmer @michaelzimmer.bsky.social · Aug 4

The full-day, hybrid workshop is "Matters: Ethical Challenges in Research with Online Communities" led by Matthew Zent plus @schancellor.bsky.social, @cfiesler.bsky.social, @sarahagilbert.bsky.social, @estellesmithphd.bsky.social and more.
sites.google.com/umn.edu/cont...

Context Matters - CSCW'25

Context Matters: Ethical Challenges in Research with Online Communities

sites.google.com

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Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · Jul 28

Applications are open for SFI's 2026 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships

If you’ve recently earned a Ph.D. in any scientific field and want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research, consider applying.

Deadline: October 1, 2025
Apply here: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

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Nancy Baym @nancybaym.bsky.social · Jul 28

We may have the chance to hire an outstanding researcher 3+ years post PhD to join Tarleton Gillespie, Mary Gray and me in Cambridge MA bringing critical sociotechnical perspectives to bear on new technologies.

jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

Search Jobs | Microsoft Careers

https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1849026/Principal-Researcher-–-Sociotechnical-Systems-–-Microsoft-Research

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