🌶 David Gray Widder
@davidthewid.bsky.social
2.8K followers 530 following 260 posts
🔜 Assistant Prof at UT Austin's iSchool. AI ethics, political economy of tech, feminist STS trying to help computer ppl think more critically about computer, including me art: instagram.com/davidthewid exCMU/NASA/MSR/IntelLabs. davidwidder.me
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davidthewid.bsky.social
🪲 What is a "bug"? 🐛

Software bugs may seem obvious.

🚨But in a short piece, eminent bug expert @clegoues.bsky.social I seek to answer this seemingly simple question, and find that it is far from clear cut …

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Front page of CACM opinion article linked in post.
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
jordanuhl.com
Israeli drone footage shows the destruction in Gaza:
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
You cannot, by definition, be eugenicist to an LLM.
Thats not what eugenics was, is or means.
But also, it should worry everyone when tech people like Hailey dehumanize the actual survivors and ongoing victims of eugenics by making comparisons like this--its alarming.
timnitgebru.bsky.social
A someone who has written extensively about the eugenic roots that permeates those who claim to be building so-called artificial general intelligence, I'm here to tell you to please NOT compare criticism against corporations claiming to build a machine god, with eugenics. The audacity.
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.
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
meredithmeredith.bsky.social
📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.
signal.org
We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...
signal.org
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
aaup.org
AAUP @aaup.org · 8d
BREAKING: WE WON!!!
💥 💥 💥

Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment.

Full ruling here:
Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law – #261 in American Association of University Professors v. Rubio (D. Mass., 1:25-cv-10685) – CourtListener.com
Judge William G. Young: ORDER entered. FINDINGS OF FACT AND RULINGS OF LAW, PURSUANT TO FED. R. CIV. P. 52(A)(Sonnenberg, Elizabeth) (Additional attachment(s) added on 9/30/2025: # 1 Main Document) (J...
www.courtlistener.com
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
hcoyote.bsky.social
A wise man once said, “you get paid more for linear regression if you call it machine learning and data science.”
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
There is absolutely no good faith reason to use the term “AI” for any technology one is selling.

It serves only for dazzling people into thinking the technology has capabilities that it doesn’t.

If one wants a technology to be trustworthy, just use a transparent, informative term without hype.
davidthewid.bsky.social
The hype bubble popping won't fix things, though. Disastrous effects remain, you may find our short piece useful:

bsky.app/profile/davi...
davidthewid.bsky.social
Pleased this is now out from the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center Political Economy of AI essay collection.

In it, @histoftech.bsky.social and I examine the the lasting harmful effects of the deflating GenAI hype bubble:

ash.harvard.edu/resources/wa...
Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate – Ash Center
ash.harvard.edu
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
kyloson.com
7/If there's one silver lining, I'm far from alone in feeling this way - ash.harvard.edu/resources/wa.... I think it's time to draw some lines in the sand b4 AI takes that from us too and say "no more". AI, if you're listening, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! 😏
Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate – Ash Center
ash.harvard.edu
davidthewid.bsky.social
this is what we've been saying :-)
themedievaldrk.bsky.social
More datapoints, this time from the funds. Looks like even the official view is when not if, and perhaps soon.
davidthewid.bsky.social
loony tunes
kjhealy.co
IOKIYAR, literally overriding the Power of the Purse edition.

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
Cite as: 606 U.S. _
(2025)
1
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 25A269
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, ET AL. U. AIDS VACCINE ADVOCACY COALITION, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[September 26, 2025]
On September 3, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered a preliminary injunction directing the Executive to obligate roughly $10.5 billion of appropriated aid funding set to expire on September 30. Of that $10.5 billion, $4 billion was proposed to be rescinded in a "special message" transmitted pursuant to the Impoundment Control Act. See 2 U. S. C. §681 et seq. After the District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied stays of that order, the Government filed this application to stay the District Court's injunction.
The application for stay
presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by him referred to the Court is granted. The Government, at this early stage, has made a sufficient showing that the Impoundment Control Act precludes respondents' suit, brought pursuant to the Administrative
Procedure Act,
to enforce
the
appropriations at issue here. The Government has also made a sufficient showing that mandamus relief is unavailable to respondents. And, on the record before the Court, the asserted harms to the Executive's conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm faced by respondents. This order should not be read as a final determination on the merits. The relief granted by the Court today reflects our preliminary view, consistent with
davidthewid.bsky.social
After years of them going "oh it's just one big gov contract!! we don't know what they use it for in the gov! we can't switch off access for individual gov units!!!"
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
alexhanna.bsky.social
Wow, incredible. Huge win for the No Azure for Apartheid organizers.
joolia.bsky.social
Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"
Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians
Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project
www.theguardian.com
davidthewid.bsky.social
I'm so excited to read this! Looks amazing. Thanks also for engaging with our work :)
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
inquiline.myatproto.social
At some point earlier I'd said I was willing to help onboard anyone considering joining Mastodon, & that I am also willing to speak candidly about drawbacks there. All that still stands...

And, I have a just-out paper about user safety & moderation there: openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/Jo...
Pin the tail on the researcher: From distributed to meshy accountability in decentralized social media | The Journal of Community Informatics
openjournals.uwaterloo.ca
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
jesspgh.bsky.social
At least half of my media studies lectures:
Screencap from cspan of rfk jr speaking at the memorial for Charlie Kirk, saying, “we are all hooked into social algorithms that are hacked into the reptilian cores of our brain.”
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
aaup.org
AAUP @aaup.org · 19d
"Enough is enough. Texas must allow faculty and college students to explore freely the breadth of human knowledge, and administrators must support us in that time-honored quest."

– Pauline Strong, President @utaustinaaup.bsky.social

#AcademicFreedom
#AcademicSky
@texasaaup.bsky.social
Manufactured outrage is killing academic freedom in Texas | Opinion
Enough with the "gotcha" attacks like the recent firing of a Texas A&M instructor. Let professors teach. Let students learn, writes Pauline Turner Strong.
www.statesman.com
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
themorrancave.bsky.social
NEW: Ayman Soliman, whose detention sparked a community uproar and became a test of counterterrorism powers in immigration court, was released from an Ohio jail Friday as DHS abruptly withdrew its deportation case against the children's hospital chaplain.

By @hannahallam.bsky.social
Ohio Chaplain Freed From Jail as DHS Drops Deportation Case
“This is beyond my dreams,” Ayman Soliman told ProPublica on his release from an Ohio jail. In a case marked by errors and inconsistencies, DHS had accused the children’s hospital chaplain of providin...
www.propublica.org
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
stephenturner.us
Fantastic essay by my colleague here @histoftech.bsky.social: Watching the Generative AI Hype Bubble Deflate ash.harvard.edu/resources/wa... (pdf: arxiv.org/pdf/2408.08778) 🧪
Even as the generative AI hype bubble slowly deflates, its harmful effects will last: carbon can’t be put back in the ground, workers continue to face AI’s disciplining pressures, and the poisonous effect on our information commons will be hard to undo.
Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder
dawnnafus.bsky.social
Tired of how AI somehow lives rent-free in your head? Done with the ways that it inhibits our collective ability to imagine how technologies could be, beyond next word prediction?

Now's your chance to gather with like-minded folks. Submissions due Oct 9. www.undonecs.org/2026/
Undone Computer Science 2026
2nd conference on Undone Science in Computer Science
www.undonecs.org