Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

📣 I am hiring a postdoc! aial.ie/hiring/postd...

applications from suitable candidates that are passionate about investigating the use of genAI in public service operations with the aim of keeping governments transparent and accountable are welcome

pls share with your networks

October 30, 2025 at 7:51 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

apparently a lot of people need to hear this: harmful practices that violate fundamental rights are not a matter of ethics or morality. please don’t frame it as “unethical”. the “ethics” lens undermines the fact that is it unacceptable under any condition. not a matter of debate

October 14, 2025 at 6:05 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

@olivia.science

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

September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Emily M. Bender

@emilymbender.bsky.social

Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>

Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading:

"You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy.

Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field.

In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea."

Original:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)

October 11, 2025 at 12:13 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Zohran Kwame Mamdani

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

October 11, 2025 at 12:33 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

we wrote this over 5 yrs ago

dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

October 9, 2025 at 8:56 PM

Dr. Jay

@mckupo.bsky.social

As a cognitive scientist, I confirm that we don't know how humans think.

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Oct 10

as a cognitive scientist, I confirm

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Oct 10

as a cognitive scientist, I can confirm we don't know how humans think

October 11, 2025 at 2:57 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

as a cognitive scientist, I confirm

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Oct 10

as a cognitive scientist, I can confirm we don't know how humans think

October 10, 2025 at 10:11 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

@olivia.science

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧵 1/

Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

October 4, 2025 at 5:33 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Mark Dingemanse

@dingemansemark.bsky.social

Since you ask: we don't need tools that reduce the art of academic writing to average authorless output.
Find your own voice: ideophone.org/find-your-ow...

Also, the efficiency frame is suspect. We don't need more papers, faster; we need slow science. osf.io/preprints/os...

Find your own voice: against LLM slop in academic writing – The Ideophone

ideophone.org

October 1, 2025 at 10:50 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Camilla Nord

@camillanord.bsky.social

What drives the bidirectional relationship between metabolic and mental ill-health?

Read our new metabolic psychiatry paper, “An interoceptive model of energy allostasis linking metabolic and mental health” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... led by @saramehrhof.bsky.social @hugofleming.bsky.social

An interoceptive model of energy allostasis linking metabolic and mental health

Interactions between metabolic interoception and regulation may drive comorbidity between mental and metabolic ill-health.

www.science.org

September 25, 2025 at 9:48 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

the ideology is well documented in Gebru & Torres's paper

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence | First Monday

www.firstmonday.org

September 22, 2025 at 7:52 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

i would rather read your imperfectly written, typo riddled idiosyncratic ideas that show you have read my papers and are familiar with my lab’s work than a grammatically perfect and generic genAI written application/email … every damn time

September 21, 2025 at 2:51 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

@olivia.science

Getting close to 50k views and I'm wondering is it just everybody is scared to say this and pleased I did? Because if there's so many of us who agree, trust me I'd know if 1k people disagreed with me let alone 50k, why are we letting AI ruin our universities?

Together we can turn back the tide.

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

September 21, 2025 at 11:08 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

ACLU

@aclu.org

One immigrant detained at Fort Bliss was given psychotropic medication with no record of consent. Another was placed on suicide watch, with no record of anyone actually watching them.

A new investigation reveals horrific violations at the Fort Bliss detention facility, even by ICE’s own standards.

60 violations in 50 days: Inside ICE’s giant tent facility at Ft. Bliss

As the Trump Administration rushes to open massive makeshift holding centers nationwide, one former official called the list of violations at Fort Bliss among the worst she’s ever seen.

www.washingtonpost.com

September 17, 2025 at 6:51 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

this is so good. our paper is mentioned (or rather quoted extensively) from ~25mins onwards

ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · Sep 17

@taylorlorenz.bsky.social cites @abeba.bsky.social and Jelle van Dijk in unpacking the (kinda fucked up) AI slur joke ("clankers", "rosa sparks", etc...) that people are up to these days

Why People Are Roleplaying Robot Racism

YouTube video by Taylor Lorenz

youtu.be

September 17, 2025 at 7:11 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

feel welcome to read our paper: firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

September 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Scrybabies

@scrybabies.bsky.social

LIVE NOW!🔥

We have our fellow East Coast friends @brujajagaming.bsky.social and @k0ppk0pp.bsky.social here today to play a chaotic game of casual commander!

Thank you to our sponsors @dragonshield.bsky.social & @moxfield.com !

Don’t forget to like & subscribe! RT to share! #magicthegathering #edh

September 17, 2025 at 4:00 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba.bsky.social

but let's focus on the *potential* benefits...

Reuters @reuters.com · Sep 15

ChatGPT, Grok, Meta AI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek. Most refused to scam seniors — until we cajoled them or said we were a researcher or novelist. Read the full investigation here: reut.rs/3K400yU

September 15, 2025 at 9:11 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Mark Dingemanse

@dingemansemark.bsky.social

recognisable — see e.g. 'Allround is the new excellent' from a while back www.ru.nl/en/staff/new... (part of a series of blog posts a bunch of us wrote from inside the continental European system)

Blog 1: All-round is the new excellent | Radboud University

Recent years have seen a lot of buzz around Recognition & Rewards. Everyone welcomes improvement in how we recognize and reward scholars, but we rarely hear about one of the most palpable side effects...

www.ru.nl

September 16, 2025 at 4:20 AM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

@olivia.science

Cursed like every start of the academic year but extra

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · Sep 1

70 years ago yesterday, they applied for summer money.

Typescript cover page to A PROPOSAL FOR THE
DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

First typescript page of A PROPOSAL FOR THE
DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT
ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. First paragraph reads:
“We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be
carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other foature of intelligence can in principle be no precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.”

September 1, 2025 at 10:02 PM

Reposted by Dr. Jay

Iris van Rooij 💭

@irisvanrooij.bsky.social

“She also detailed the strategy of “credentialism,” by which women hoped that if they accrued enough credentials, their gender became irrelevant. (It did not.)”

In my experience my gender became more relevant the higher I got in the academic hierarchy. Misogynist attacks get worse too

August 31, 2025 at 8:58 AM