Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 1d

Saying this on repeat: Masked men in uniform are just unconstitutionally kidnapping people off the street & making up any excuse to justify their actions (if they give an excuse at all). I*C*E is engaged in domestic terrorism.

Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · 1d

Elevating today’s ICE arrest of a journalist and American citizen in Chicago

1

Reposted by Rae Walker

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT

GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

www.theverge.com

40 160 360

Reposted by Rae Walker

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>

Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading:

"You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy.

Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field.

In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea."

Original:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)

18 81 410

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

🤮

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 3d

Apropos of nothing, I’ve stood in the Oval Office (while meeting with a previous President), and the current version with all its gaudy baubles is infinitely uglier.

Reposted by Rae Walker

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 4d

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4d

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

28 330 910

Reposted by Rae Walker

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 4d

They gave the physics prize to the dude who said that ChatGPT is the world's butterfly and GPT3 was a caterpillar.

The dude who told us in 2018 that radiologists should cease to go to school because the profession was gonna be out in 5 years. But 5 years later he just moved on to the next lie.

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

www.rollingstone.com

4 89 270

Reposted by Rae Walker

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 5d

The audacity to anthropomorphize machines being built by corporations
--stealing data
--exploiting the labor of the people who are actually the "undesirables" under eugenic thought
--killing the environment,

and then compare criticisms of such eugenic practices to, wait for it, eugenics.

4 140 600

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 5d

Spied a grass spider web 😍

A small white web lies atop brown leaves and grass

Closer image of a small white web that lies atop brown leaves and grass

1

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Adding a Teaspoon to the cauldron does seem appropriate

1 1

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Yesterday was our youngest cat’s 2nd birthday. This is Teaspoon. He found an empty cauldron & immediately climbed in.

A young black cat peeks out from inside a black cauldron.

A young black cat sticks his head even farther out from inside a black cauldron. He has yellow eyes.

1 4

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

At a time of rising authoritarianism, when almost nothing feels funny, I want to thank public library service announcements for giving me a reason to cackle

Reposted by Rae Walker

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 7d

And if you prefer to watch & listen to talks, here's the talk it is based on:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuU-...

Resisting dehumanization in the age of AI - Emily Bender

YouTube video by CogSci: Interdisciplinary Study of the Mind

www.youtube.com

3 14 49

Reposted by Rae Walker

Scientists for Global Responsibility @responsiblesci.bsky.social · 12d

🚨Polluter and Cyber Elites - A lethal Alignment?

This year's conference explores where the interests of the far right tech bros and major polluters coincide - and what we can do to challenge them!

Join us on Wednesday 15th October, 16:00 - 18:00 BST

www.tickettailor.com/events/scien...
🧪

1 10 20

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Grants can be very confusing! I’m glad if any of this way helpful. Good luck!

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Usually someone at the org should be available to answer technical questions like about allowable budget items & where to put them. It serves them well to have as many well-written proposals in their pool as possible, so they have an incentive to help you.

1 2

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

And we’ll list honoraria under directs (if they’re allowable).

Apologies if this is not helping. It’s hard to say without seeing the mechanism & template/rules for that particular budget.

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

If your grant has instructions to fill out a separate budget on consulting, I’d look at the rules for that section. Usually when we hire consultants it’s for formal consultation (like design or methods), but not critical support like interpretation, which typically falls under directs as a service.

2 1

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Here’s where I pause to acknowledge each grant mechanism often has its own rules about what needs to be a line item. At institutions where I’ve worked, if you have to bring someone in from the outside & pay them, that usually needs a subcontract. And consulting fees usually fall under direct costs.

2

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

Briefly:

Direct= anything you need to formally budget/pay for (your time/salary or that of others; supplies; data; software; etc)

Indirect= overhead for your institution (e.g. cost of keeping the lights on), usually a % of the direct costs

Consulting Costs= subcontracts for folks not at your uni

1

Reposted by Rae Walker

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 13d

"alarming impact of AI on the environment: forprofit utilities will have to make $720 B in grid upgrades by 2030 to meet spiraling demand, costs that they will pass on. locking in planetchoking carbon emissions right when we should be pivoting away from fossil fuels"

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

The Costs of the Cloud | Ashley Dawson

Hours after his inauguration, Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency.” The US, he warned in an executive order, suffered from “a precariously

www.nybooks.com

1 20 44

Reposted by Rae Walker

andrew ⓕ lyons @andrewfordlyons.net · 8d

Paper goes hard at the start on how exaggerated or false claims about what Gen AI represents is making it into psychology research.

"...from the clearly insidious to those whose ethical neutrality is skin-deep and whose functionality is a mirage. Ultimately, contemporary AI is research misconduct."

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 8d

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧵 1/

Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

1 11 28

Reposted by Rae Walker

Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 10d

If you follow AI, you've heard a number of cognitive scientists weigh in with valuable insights and concerns. You may not have heard from one quite like Hagen Blix, however, who describes generative AI as "class warfare through enshittification."

My interview with @hagenblix.bsky.social:

"AI is an attack from above on wages": An interview with cognitive scientist Hagen Blix

The author of 'Why We Fear AI' on why he sees generative AI as "class warfare through enshittification."

www.bloodinthemachine.com

4 67 220

Reposted by Rae Walker

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 10d

"AI" is absolutely and ONLY a marketing term, and at this point if it's being used, the intent behind it is to overpromise to the consumer/end user on the program's actual capabilities. And, of course, none of the "AI" is actually intelligent in any meaningful way.

derickhuth.bsky.social @derickhuth.bsky.social · 10d

It would be neat if it wasn’t marketed as AI. Predictive statistical modeling doesn’t really slide off the tongue I guess

40 160 910

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 10d

I’ll (hopefully) be on sabbatical next year & I’m currently in the planning phase.

Throwing this out there in case any colleagues are interested in a visit*

(*timing & financial capacity also being obvious limitations - care work means I can’t leave home for extended periods…)

a black and white cat standing on a couch with the words hi there written below it

Alt: a black and white cat standing on a couch waves at the camera with the words hi there written below it in white

media.tenor.com

1