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Reposted by Kleber Oliveira

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 29d

📣 NEW -- In The Economist, discussing the privacy perils of AI agents and what AI companies and operating systems need to do--NOW--to protect Signal and much else!

www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

An illustration of me, and the headline: "AI agents are coming for your privacy, warns Meredith Whittaker
The Signal Foundation’s president worries they will also blunt competition and undermine cyber-security"

To put it bluntly, the path currently being taken towards agentic AI leads to an elimination of privacy and security at the application layer. It will not be possible for apps like Signal—the messaging app whose foundation I run—to continue to provide strong privacy guarantees, built on robust and openly validated encryption, if device-makers and OS developers insist on puncturing the metaphoric blood-brain barrier between apps and the OS. Feeding your sensitive Signal messages into an undifferentiated data slurry connected to cloud servers in service of their AI-agent aspirations is a dangerous abdication of responsibility.

Happily, it’s not too late. There is much that can still be done, particularly when it comes to protecting the sanctity of private data. What’s needed is a fundamental shift in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents. First, privacy must be the default, and control must remain in the hands of application developers exercising agency on behalf of their users. Developers need the ability to designate applications as “sensitive” and mark them as off-limits to agents, at the OS level and otherwise. This cannot be a convoluted workaround buried in settings; it must be a straightforward, well-documented mechanism (similar to Global Privacy Control) that blocks an agent from accessing our data or taking actions within an app.

Second, radical transparency must be the norm. Vague assurances and marketing-speak are no longer acceptable. OS vendors have an obligation to be clear and precise about their architecture and what data their AI agents are accessing, how it is being used and the measures in place to protect it.

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Jul 26

Uncritical adoption of AI “undermines our basic pedagogical values and principles of scientific integrity. It prevents us from maintaining our standards of independence & transparency. And most concerning, AI use … hinder[s] learning and deskill critical thought.” openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia

openletter.earth

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · Jul 18

"The order, aggravated by Trump's illegal attempt on intervening on Brazil's sovereign institutions, comes before..." -- there you go, corrected it for you in case you have any spine left and would call it as is

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METR @metr.org · Jul 10

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.

The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · Jul 9

With everything else going on, I'm not sure people realize that Trump's latest tariff on Brazil took things to a new (lower) level
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-dic...

Trump's Dictator Protection Program

Using tariffs to fight democracy

paulkrugman.substack.com

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · Jun 17

This is awful... 🤦

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · Jun 14

Funny thing, "there are many Brazilians on this platform" exactly because another platform refused to comply with the most basic things to operate in the country, such as having legal representation.

Maybe we wait and see on this one before announcing it's the death of social media?

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Jun 8

the Brazilian replies to this post will take you on a fucking journey

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · Jun 7

A Brazilian comedian has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for ‘bigoted’ jokes told in 2022. The decision marks the latest effort by Brazil to place limits on freedom of expression.

Brazilian comedian sentenced to 8 years in prison for ‘bigoted’ jokes

The ruling against comedian Leo Lins for jokes told in 2022 is shaping up as the next front in Brazil’s escalating struggle over freedom of expression.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · Jun 6

Well done, @arifosch.bsky.social

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Abbas K. Rizi @abbasrizi.bsky.social · Jun 5

If you're looking for a quite handy multitype branching process framework for modeling diffusion in networks with communities check this work by @davidjpos.bsky.social and friends. @netsciconf.bsky.social #netsci2025

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · Jun 5

Fully-funded PhD positions to work with a fantastic team (and me 🫠) in a beautiful campus. Please share it with people who may be interested! Deadline on the 10th of July.

Mike Quayle @mikeq.bsky.social · Jun 5

We're offering two funded PhD studentships in the ERC-Funded ID-Compression project at the University of Limerick, Ireland -- please pass on to any kind, curious & talented candidates who might be interested. Thank you! @csi-research.bsky.social
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/svvz1...

An image of a description for ID-COMPRESSION PhD Studentships 2025
Studentship 1: Social Sciences with an Interest in Social Identity
Studentship 2: Applied Maths/Stats/Computational Social Science

Full text PDF available at link

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Dino Carpentras @justanormaldino.bsky.social · May 13

We often suppose that things like intelligence and opinions not only exist, but can be measured in a “correct” way. So our goal is to reduce the error as much as possible to get closer and closer to such “correct” measurement. [1/7]

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · May 12

On top of leaning towards this with the usual networks + nonlinear dynamics toolkit (I suppose I will be able to call myself a computational social scientist at some stage?), we will deal with a good amount of information theory. Feel free to reach out if you are curious about the project's details!

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Kleber Oliveira @kleber-ao.com · May 12

Glad to share that next month I am joining @mikeq.bsky.social's group on a full-time research position in my alma mater.

I've been studying social systems for some time, but never from the theoretical foundations of how people act towards each other (which are from social psychology).

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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.bsky.social · May 1

Good piece in Science by @kakape.bsky.social on the massive censorship of scientific work by the U.S. government - all in the name of free speech, presumably: www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump’s team, often accused of spreading misinformation, slashes misinformation research

Hundreds of grants axed in a field where the United States was a global leader

www.science.org

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