A sober takedown of Mr. "I consult taxi drivers for foreign policy takes".

Same (re Whatsapp) :-(

I quit using fb the day the Cambridge Analytica story broke in Mar 2018. The post on that story is my last and last engagement on my account. [I have kept my account alive as I co-manage my father's remembrance page with my siblings after his passing- may have to sadly revisit that decision].

AI start-up Anthropic settles landmark copyright suit for $1.5bn Case will compensate authors but could raise costs of training large language models

This is big news. www.ft.com/content/96b5...

A beautiful piece of writing. About humanity, pain, loss of parents and loved ones, poetic experiences.. everything that AI is not. And about impressionable minds caught in a death spiral engendered/egged on by insidious "sociotechnical" systems. Thank you for sharing, @benjaminjriley.bsky.social

Ty for sharing. Contrary to your admission, this was an eloquent piece of writing. The framing of the story resonated deeply (I'm now in a world w/o either parent. That final & irreparable unmooring from our human creators is an indescribably hard thing). I too have thought so often of Adam Raine.

I live in Texas and have never received a Blue Alert. I do get weather alerts for severe weather warnings and amber alerts (pretty frequently).

HEB: The true leaders of Texas

Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We’ve Already Lost Control! Geoffrey Hinton YouTube video by The Diary Of A CEO

Empfehlung von Nobelpreisträger Hinton: Politiker sollen dringend starke AI Regulierung einführen und Junge sollen Sanitärinstallateur lernen youtu.be/giT0ytynSqg?...

Polygonic breathing 😊

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific A discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR, the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight the global pandemic.

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪
www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

I had the pleasure of serving on the OECD 2021 PISA Math Framework Expert group in 2018 that was co-led by Bill Schmidt and Joan Ferrini-Mundy. Such an accomplished academic, and a powerhouse in educational assessment.

AI is Maybe Sometimes Better than Nothing Reporting on that World Bank Nigeria paper

Wrote about my problems with that World Bank "ai tutoring" study. pershmail.substack.com/p/ai-is-mayb...

In a few months, this World Bank study of "AI tutoring" will have dozens of citations and still be circulating as authoritative "policy relevant" evidence that AI improves learning.

Here's a very useful assessment of why it should not be interpreted, cited, or used like that.

AI Isn’t the Answer To Our Education Crisis — It’s a Distraction While AI has a role to play in education, it is not the lifeline the American education system needs, argues Aron Solomon of Amplify. What does it need? Support, stability and a system that sees both ...

"AI is not the lifeline our education system needs. Certainly not right now. What we need—what we’ve needed for decades—is serious investment in teachers, classrooms, infrastructure and support services. And we’re getting the opposite." This is on *Crunchbase*! news.crunchbase.com/edtech/k12-a...

Congrats! 🥳

It’s “a thing” in most of the far east. I visited several temples in HongKong recently and saw multi-armed goddesses.

All set for my upcoming travel! Looking forward to
@emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social’s takedown of #AI #hype.
@dairinstitute.bsky.social
#TheAICon #AICon

Opinion | A.I. Will Destroy Critical Thinking in K-12

Despite the hype, nothing about #AI is inevitable. Humans are making decisions about its use everyday, & we need to convince the ones in charge of our #K12 schools—esp our elementary schools—that the zealous embrace of the latest tech is not the way forward. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/o...

*YOUR

YEs. And not just how its going to make all your problems go away, but how YOU STUDENTS WILL BE LEFT BEHIND if you don't embrace this technology.
Such pressure has been exerted at various summits & fora at various industry sectors (incl social service orgs) since 2023, mostly by tech peeps.

"Thousands of pages of documents show school districts around the country did not understand how much ChatGPT would change their classrooms, and pro-AI consultants filled in some of the gaps."

www.404media.co/american-sch...

#sharegoodnewstoo

Republicans Try to Cram Ban on AI Regulation Into Budget Reconciliation Bill Republicans try to use the Budget Reconciliation bill to stop states from regulating AI entirely for 10 years.

There's a lot of chatter around the proposal being inserted into a budget bill that would put a moratorium on any AI legislation being passed by the states for the next 10 years. I thought I'd say a bit about why this is an absolutely disastrous move.

www.404media.co/republicans-... 1/n

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants.

Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

Three-fourths of NSF funding cuts hit education More research eliminated and mass firings

hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging."

Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council.

I wrote about my decision in TIME.

time.com/7285045/resi...

Bottomline: Be VERY WARY of putting kids in #K12 on an expansive #GenAI driven learning diet. Ensure that they're savvy abt using AI, yes, but make sure that they can think, survive, and perform all knowledge tasks (writing, synthesizing, analyzing, ..) equally well w/o AI.

They say that those who can & cannot use #AI will fuel the next digital divide.
There's a corollary to that they're missing—
Those who are able to think & problem solve WITHOUT AI vs those totally reliant on AI for their knowledge work will fuel the next intellect/knowledge/economic divide.

(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in para6 graph (2), no State or political subdivision thereof 7 may enforce any law or regulation regulating artifi8 cial intelligence models, artificial intelligence sys9 tems, or automated decision systems during the 10- 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment 11 of this Act.

This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years.

from @404media.co

www.404media.co/republicans-...