Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1h

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 3h

Thank you for your attention to this matter. 😊

Reposted by Murray Bourne

Dumbe Blonde @dumbeblonde.bsky.social · 3h

The uniparty UNITE!! ✊

Nick Feik @nickfeik.bsky.social · 3h

Just so we’re clear: Labor is choosing to work with the worst possible party on environmental issues, instead of the Greens and teals who actually want environmental regulation.
And Watt is already admitting it won’t have a climate trigger …

Watt nears deal with Coalition to finally overhaul environment laws

Environment Minister Murray Watt will sit down with his Liberal counterpart Angie Bell today, with quiet optimism in both parties that a deal might soon be struck to finally rewrite Australia's "broke...

www.abc.net.au

8 18

Reposted by Murray Bourne

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

96 1.6K 3.1K

Reposted by Murray Bourne

brightnessinsight.bsky.social @brightnessinsight.bsky.social · Nov 15

7 86 270

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 4h

Labor's hatred of the Greens results in worse policy outcomes. Every time.

Dig baby, dig. Forever more.

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 5h

Murphy's Law of Copiers: The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 9h

"Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps..." [Jack Canfield]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 13h

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

1

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 17h

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

[Plato, Greek philosopher c. 427 – 348 BC]

3 4

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 21h

"The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do." [Joseph Stalin]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

"It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career." [Carlton Fisk]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

The Zionists have done an excellent job for decades, ensuring everyone in power is convinced Israel is the victim and has the right to fight back, no matter how much they provoke in the first place.

I'm sick of news reports that start, "The war in Gaza started after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7."

1 5

Reposted by Murray Bourne

Denise Shrivell @deniseshrivell.bsky.social · 1d

So - let me get this straight…

They’ll ban social media for under 16s even though most experts say it WON’T work

But they won’t ban gambling advertising & other key recommendations even though most experts say it WILL work

What? #4corners #auspol

31 140 430

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea." [Isak Dinesen]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." [Theodore Rubin, US psychiatrist and writer, 1923-2019]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men." [Emile Zola]

Reposted by Murray Bourne

aliciablackgirl.bsky.social @aliciablackgirl.bsky.social · 1d

Greta Thunberg will be in history books. never stop Greta. you are a beacon of hope. More guts than every leader in this world.

57 540 1.7K

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

"Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." [Flannery O'Connor]

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

Coming soon.

1

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

Nah. Australia's run by "I grew up poor and we ate grass and me and me mum lived in housing commission so I promise I'll look after the battlers" Albo who looks after the rich. No intention of raising the rate.

2

Reposted by Murray Bourne

Sydney EV @sydneyev.bsky.social · 1d

this sounds a lot like our energy retailer, and why we decided to not export any power to the grid initially, we would pay negative prices, pay to give our energy for them to sell it for profit. so we don't export. (inverters modified to zero export) until now. found a better deal.

Owner switches off solar farm powering area twice the size of Tasmania

The owner of a huge solar farm in outback Queensland hits the kill switch after almost a decade, saying his contract with Ergon Energy was unfair.

www.abc.net.au

4 9 29

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

This week is Metric Week. https://usma.org/#metric-info

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 1d

It went like this:

Woodside: NWS must go ahead.

Albanese: NWS must go ahead.

Watt: NWS must go ahead.

Staffer: Here's your statement. We got AI to write it, ensuring it sounds like NWS must go ahead.

Job done.

3

Murray Bourne @bourne2learn.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah, I guessed as much 😁

1