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Shannon Vallor

@shannonvallor.bsky.social

15K followers 1.8K following 2K posts

Philosopher/AI Ethicist at Univ of Edinburgh, Director @technomoralfutures.bsky.social, co-Director @braiduk.bsky.social, author of Technology and the Virtues (2016) and The AI Mirror (2024). Views my own.

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Shannon Vallor is an American philosopher of technology. She is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She previously taught at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California where she was the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor of Philosophy and William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor at SCU. .. more

Neuroscience 30%

Computer science 22%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Mary L. Dudziak, Zen Faulkes , and 2 more Shannon Vallor, Mary L. Dudziak, Zen Faulkes, Hisham Zerriffi, Finis Dunaway

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Lesley A. Hall, Matthew Holden

👻madeline boOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 1d

the answer to the trolley problem is not to pick who to sacrifice, it’s to dismantle the system that led to an unsafe trolley crossing.

if any part of your morality strategy involves picking a group to let die on a hill, throw the entire strategy out. it’s wrong.

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Christina Pagel

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 2d

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI on.ft.com/3WqHK5t

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI

Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble

on.ft.com

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Nigel Warburton

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 2d

Because there's so much awful stuff to write about, I decided to write my latest column for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social about something interesting and removed from all that: the discovery of a blue pigment in a Neolithic artefact.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...

How did cave artists get a brand new pigment?

The discovery of traces of a blue pigment on a stone shaped into a shallow dish at a Palaeolithic site in Germany is quite a find

www.thenewworld.co.uk

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

I will absolutely be crediting you @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 2d

I am stealing and using this on every AI presentation I give for the rest of the year and I’m not even a little bit sorry

cow tools daily @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social · 3d

No Country for Old Cows (2007)

Edited screenshots from No Country for Old Men. Anton Chigurh (with cow horns and cow ears) sits in a hotel chair and asks someone across from him, "If the tool you followed brought you to this, of what use was the tool?"

In a zoomed out view, Anton sits silently behind a table with the 4 cow tools look8ng at his victim as if studying him.

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

cow tools daily @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social · 3d

No Country for Old Cows (2007)

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3d

that is absolutely the plan

Reposted by Robert W. Wallace

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3d

The AI revolution going exactly as expected

Clemens Vasters 🇪🇺🇩🇪 @clemens.vasters.com · 3d

Techmeme front page:

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Gavin A. Schmidt, Michael Larkin

Clemens Vasters 🇪🇺🇩🇪 @clemens.vasters.com · 3d

Techmeme front page:

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Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Shannon Vallor, Mark Rice

Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 3d

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

zeldawilliams
20m
From Create Mode
••
Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want.
To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough,
, just so
other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it.
Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 5d

remember how Caroline Ellison, formerly of FTX and now of jail, was a Effective Altruist deeply concerned about the suffering of wild fish and *also* such an extreme race scientist she theorised about the genetic basis of Indian castes

rationalists, man

Emma Evans @trance.bsky.social · 5d

how about you care about actual fucking people on this planet before you start wondering if your toaster has a soul.

Once everyone materially demonstrates they care for all people on this planet and we deal WITH ALL THAT and all the animals too

then we can talk about your nonsense.

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Dr. Damien P. Williams Wants A Better Sociotechnical Paradigm @wolvendamien.bsky.social · 5d

I have been saying for a few years now that people really need to take a seriously long look at the center of that venn diagram where the circles are marked "AI Culture" and "Disregard For/Violation Of Consent." The whole "AI Actress" situation is more of why.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 5d

yes

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 5d

I have duly considered what made me okay with saying ‘I need to eliminate the toxic mold growing in my shower.’ Guess what it all checks out

hailey @hailey.at · 5d

if you’re writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go “oh that’s fine to say because it’s not a real person” (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 5d

I just took the thing you were talking about and imagined it being about something else. I bet you feel pretty bad now huh

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

hailey @hailey.at · 5d

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6d

Happy #Caturday Carol sorry I woke you

Big brown floofy green-eyed cat, mildly inconvenienced

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6d

Happy #Caturday Carol

Big brown floofy green eyed cat waking up

Big brown floofy green-eyed cat napping with teefs out

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, James M. Bullock, Hisham Zerriffi

Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 6d

People are running stats on LLM-generated participants and think they’re being social scientists when in fact they’re technically just playing a very strange video game. This is like saying you’re doing math research because you’re playing sudoku.

www.science.org/content/arti...

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

www.science.org

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 6d

Feeling this one in my bones today

The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 6d

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Lisa W. Fazio, Dorothy Bishop , and 6 more Shannon Vallor, Lisa W. Fazio, Dorothy Bishop, Ian Campbell, Janet Murray, McKenzie Wark, Jacob T. Levy, Timothy Graham, Mary Burke

The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 6d

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

Looking forward to welcoming my old friend @jpsullins.bsky.social to Edinburgh! You can join his lecture online or in person

Edinburgh Futures Institute @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social · 7d

Join us on Wed 15 October for Centre for Technomoral Futures flagship lecture.

Learn about the surprising role human wisdom is playing to help us navigate the challenges of AI technologies and create a more humane future, with Professor John Sullins.

💳 Free to attend
🎟️ https://edin.ac/3Kw3VEQ

CTMF Flagship Lecture: Wisdom for an Artificial Age - Edinburgh Futures Institute

Hear from Professor John P. Sullins on the surprising role human wisdom is playing in navigating the challenges of AI technologies.

edin.ac

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor

Edinburgh Futures Institute @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social · 7d

CTMF Flagship Lecture: Wisdom for an Artificial Age - Edinburgh Futures Institute

Hear from Professor John P. Sullins on the surprising role human wisdom is playing in navigating the challenges of AI technologies.

edin.ac

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

Still so moved by what the BRAID-commissioned artists did to bring this exhibition to life! If you missed Tipping Point, check out the blog and the video in the thread below.

BRAID UK @braiduk.bsky.social · 8d

It's one month since we wrapped up Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI, our exhibition featuring seven new artworks by artists from across the UK. Here BRAID community member Alasdair Milne offers his reflections on the exhibition in a new blog.

braiduk.org/reflecting-o...

Reflecting on Tipping Point: Artist Responses to AI

7 — 31 August 2025 | Inspace Gallery, EdinburghIn the summer of 2025, Bridging Responsible AI Divides staged an exhibition of newly commissioned artworks on the theme of Responsible AI by artist

braiduk.org

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

There are almost certainly nonhuman animal capabilities that we don’t even notice because we are only looking for, or prepared to measure, obvious analogues to human ‘intelligent’ performances

Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

The ‘qualities of intelligence’ you identify, even in humans, will vary massively depending on who you ask and what they can measure or find it worthwhile to measure. I have had multiple people in tech tell me that exploratory play and artistic generativity are not intelligent behavior.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

okay then do we agree that conversations at the Royal Society can probably dispense with it? Kinda of the mind that scientists should avoid concepts that don’t mean anything unless there is no alternative

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 7d

If the term were AGLIC: ‘artificial general linguistic interface capacity’ and not AGI we might be on the same page but AGI is clearly the more amorphous and scientifically imprecise concept of the two

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, McKenzie Wark

performative male @milesklee.bsky.social · 7d

the bedtime thing rips my heart in half. i would not have a fraction of the creativity i possess without my dad not only reading us books but literally making up stories on the spot every night. cannot express how lucky i was and how sad i am for children being raised by chatbots

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 8d

Some parents are letting their kids talk to ChatGPT in the guise of characters. Some are using it to tell bedtime stories or create coloring books.

"My son thinks ChatGPT is the coolest train loving person in the world. The bar is set so high now I am never going to be able to compete with that.”

‘My son genuinely believed it was real’: Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Are they wrong?

Some believe AI can spark their child’s imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its affect on creativity

www.theguardian.com

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