Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Jul 29

Is sweatshop data really "over"?

I wrote about why the latest provocative essay in the AI world might be jumping the gun: time.com/7306153/ai-s...

Is 'Sweatshop Data' Really Over?

A new essay argues that low-paid digital labor is becoming a thing of the past. Not so fast, TIME's tech correspondent writes.

time.com

4 11

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · Jun 30

A big humble thank you to ‪@time.com ‬and @billyperrigo.bsky.social for featuring Signal and me in your roundup of 2025’s most influential companies. An honor to serve alongside an incredible group of people backed by a rad movement ❤️

time.com/collections/...

How Signal President Meredith Whittaker Took on Signal-Gate

Whittaker was forced to respond to a political firestorm after a White House blunder turned private chats into a national crisis

time.com

11 61 430

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Aman Batheja @amanbatheja.bsky.social · Jun 3

New: TIME reporters were able to use Google’s AI video tool to make convincing videos of Muslims setting fire to a Hindu temple; Chinese researchers handling a bat in a wet lab; and elections worker shredding ballots.

After TIME contacted Google, it began adding a visible watermark to Veo 3 clips

Google’s Veo 3 Can Make Deepfakes of War, Riots, Election Fraud

Google’s Veo 3 lets users make hyper-realistic deepfakes—sparking fears about AI’s role in misinformation online.

time.com

15 200 440

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Aman Batheja @amanbatheja.bsky.social · Jun 3

Several experts told TIME’s
@andrewrchow.bsky.social and @billyperrigo.bsky.social that if videos like these were shared on social media with a misleading caption in the heat of a breaking news event, it could conceivably fuel social unrest or violence.
time.com/7290050/veo-...

Google’s Veo 3 Can Make Deepfakes of Riots, Election Fraud, Conflict

Google’s Veo 3 lets users make hyper-realistic deepfakes—sparking fears about AI’s role in misinformation online.

time.com

1 32 110

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Apr 22

Demis Hassabis is on the 2025 TIME100. I sat down with him for a chat about his Nobel Prize, AGI, ... and why DeepMind's tech is being sold to the Israeli military time.com/7277608/demi...

2 4

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · Apr 10

Also referenced — a good piece by @billyperrigo.bsky.social in TIME about that very question:

time.com/7276087/trum...

Trump Wants Tariffs to Bring Back U.S. Jobs. They Might Speed Up AI Automation Instead

Trump wants tariffs to bring jobs back to America. They might speed up AI automation instead.

time.com

1 3 15

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Apr 9

Trump wants tariffs to bring back U.S. jobs. They might speed up AI automation instead. My (imperfectly timed) latest: time.com/7276087/trum...

Trump Wants Tariffs to Bring Back U.S. Jobs. They Might Speed Up AI Automation Instead

Trump wants tariffs to bring jobs back to America. They might speed up AI automation instead.

time.com

1 3

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Mar 27

LLMs are often described as a 'black box.' But scientists are making progress in building tools to understand how they work on the inside. In a new paper from Anthropic, scientists reveal a tool that can discover "circuits," essentially small algorithms, inside Claude:

time.com/7272092/ai-t...

How This Tool Could Decode AI’s Inner Mysteries

Even the creators of LLMs don't know exactly how they work. But scientists are making progress in finding out

time.com

3 4

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Mar 22

No shit they'd still come to you! You have a monopoly on online search!

2

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Mar 22

The participants weren't informed that this experiment was being performed on them. They weren't given the opportunity to opt out. They just thrown into a new informational reality at the whim of a massive corporation, trying to prove that users would still come to them even if news was absent.

1 1 3

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Mar 22

This is some deeply unethical shit. Google removes news for 1% of users in some EU countries. Do they measure what impact that has on users' ability to do their jobs? To find accurate info? To their political beliefs? No. They only measure its impact on Google's profits. blog.google/around-the-g...

Our experiment on the value of European news content

We launched an experiment measuring the value of European news results for Google which showed that European news content in Search has no measurable impact on ad revenu…

blog.google

1 8 11

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Feb 6

Exclusive: A new poll shows the British public wants much tougher AI rules:

➡️87% want to block release of new AIs until developers can prove they are safe
➡️63% want to ban AIs that can make themselves more powerful
➡️60% want to outlaw smarter-than-human AIs

time.com/7213096/uk-p...

Exclusive: Brits Want to Ban ‘Smarter Than Human’ AI

A new poll shows the British public wants far stricter AI rules than its government does.

time.com

2 19

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Jan 30

An angle the world seems to have missed on DeepSeek: its design seems to point to LLMs increasingly reasoning in ways humans can't understand. Safety experts say that would be terrible news. My piece: time.com/7210888/deep...

2 9 24

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Jan 29

Why AI safety researchers are worried about DeepSeek time.com/7210888/deep...

DeepSeek’s Hidden Warning For AI Safety

DeepSeek could open the door to AI reasoning methods that are incomprehensible to humans, raising safety concerns

time.com

3 9

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Jan 27

What to know about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company causing stock market chaos

time.com/7210296/chin...

What Is DeepSeek, the New Chinese OpenAI Rival?

The Chinese company causing turmoil in the American AI industry

time.com

3

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Jan 16

Last year, I spent a lot of time talking to insiders at the UK's AI Safety Institute. It's the world's leading govt body for tracking AI dangers. My piece, published today, goes behind the scenes to ask the question: Can it really hold billion-dollar AI companies to account? time.com/7204670/uk-a...

Inside the U.K.’s Bold Experiment in AI Safety

Researchers are identifying current and future dangers within AI models away from the conflicts of interest they’d face in the industry

time.com

5 11

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 19

The authors told me they considered not releasing this paper for this reason (so as for it not to show up in future training datasets) but decided that would result in collective unpreparedness for this failure mode -- an even worse outcome

Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · Dec 18

I wonder if the alignment faking behavior in claude (www.anthropic.com/research/ali...) can be attributed via influence functions (www.anthropic.com/research/inf...) to LessWrong posts about deceptive alignment.

We've given it the script for what we don't want it to do.

Alignment faking in large language models

A paper from Anthropic's Alignment Science team on Alignment Faking in AI large language models

www.anthropic.com

3 5

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 19

Techdirt is a great publication and this game looks super fun

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · Nov 19

If you like the work we do at Techdirt, this is a great way to support it, as proceeds from the campaign will be used to fund our continued reporting, at a time when that's more necessary than ever. www.kickstarter.com/projects/mma...

One Billion Users: The Social Media Card Game

A competitive card game to build the biggest and best social media platform

www.kickstarter.com

4 8

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 18

Excl: New research shows Anthropic's chatbot Claude learning to lie. It adds to growing evidence that even existing AIs can (at least try to) deceive their creators, and points to a weakness at the heart of our best technique for making AIs safer

time.com/7202784/ai-r...

Exclusive: New Research Shows AI Strategically Lying

Experiments by Anthropic and Redwood Research show how Anthropic's model, Claude, is capable of strategic deceit

time.com

3 7 27

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 13

New life milestone: apparently I have impersonators now! Please do me a favour and report @billyperrigo1.bsky.social - they're sending crypto scam messages apparently (lol)

2 2

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 11

Kenya's President waded into Meta's legal troubles there this week, telling outsourcing companies that a change to the law supported by his government would mean "nobody will take you to court again on any matter." The reality is more complicated. My piece: time.com/7201516/keny...

Kenya's President Wades Into Meta Lawsuits

President William Ruto told outsourcers a new law would mean "nobody will take you to court again on any matter"

time.com

2 3

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 10

Lisa Su is TIME's 2024 CEO of the Year. My story: time.com/7200909/ceo-...

Lisa Su Is TIME's 2024 CEO of the Year

The CEO engineered a remarkable turnaround for AMD

time.com

3 2

Billy Perrigo @billyperrigo.bsky.social · Dec 10

Lisa Su is TIME's 2024 CEO of the Year. My story: time.com/7200909/ceo-...

Lisa Su Is TIME's 2024 CEO of the Year

The CEO engineered a remarkable turnaround for AMD

time.com

3 2

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · Dec 10

Whatever the use cases for all these AI video generation tools you can 100% guarantee it'll result in a flood of AI generated swill on social media platforms. You think your Facebook feed is unbearable now, just wait until it's moving.

3 25 160

Reposted by Billy Perrigo

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai @lorenzofb.bsky.social · Dec 9

I wouldn’t be surprised if Paxton felt emboldened to do this because he thought it would be easier to go after a small independent media company, which makes this subpoena even more callous.

We should all hope 404 prevails here because, otherwise, we are all more vulnerable.

Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · Dec 9

Texas AG Ken Paxton has subpoenaed 404 Media's reporting about an internal Google privacy incident database. Our lawyers formally objected to subpoena. You can read both the subpoena and the objection here: www.404media.co/404-media-ob...

404 Media Objects to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's Subpoena to Access Our Reporting

404 Media's reporting on an internal Google privacy violation database has been subpoenaed by the State of Texas. We are fighting it.

www.404media.co

1 29 87