The only area of AI that I tolerate is its use in medical research… but even that is turning into a disaster

This is an important point to remember every time some yahoo politician who wants to defund the NSF reads the title of a grant in dumbstruck tones: "They're studying the venom of Gila monsters? What? Who's *that* for?"

All of us, Gomer. It's how science actually works.

And gone we do Thursday night soup night. I text everyone weekly if it's on or not. I make two soups. Sometimes there's bread, sometimes not. People can bring something but I state and restate it's not required....it's a huge hit and community builder.

When my kids were smaller I would occasionally put out the invite to a bunch of people that it was pizza night and I'd make a bunch of cheese pizza or something super simple. People loved it and there was exciting getting together and no judgement. Now that the kids are grown

Fitting a 55 minute online stress management training in to this point in the semester is... stressful.

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning..

We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance.

And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use!

1/

Do they not have the Horseradish Festival any more? (I've been gone a few decades!)

Pope Leo at the Stations of the Cross: "Every person in authority will have to answer to God for the way they exercise their power." Jesus says. "Whatever you do to another human being, especially to the small and vulnerable, you do unto me. And it is to me that you will one day give an account."

This is really dangerous! The “translation” is close enough to be plausible but totally different in tone and specifics

Kill Chain On the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children

How Palantir, not Anthropic, led US bombs to kill 175 civilians, mostly 7-12yo girls, in a school in Minab, Iran on Feb 28. How embedding automation - not LLMs in this case, just image processing and sensor fusion - in military workflows mutes human judgment, causes errors, & diverts accountability.

No Phoenix officers will be disciplined after protesters falsely charged as gang members Phoenix police will not discipline any officers for their roles in a massive city scandal where officials invented a fake gang and then falsely charged protesters as members back in 2020.

“The Phoenix Police Department will not discipline any officers for their roles in a massive city scandal where officials invented a fake gang and then falsely charged protesters as members back in 2020”

Lorien Foote is one of my favorite Civil War historians. This is a book that deserves more attention and was really helpful in researching my biography of Robert Gould Shaw.

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

Update: Today, the Georgia Supreme Court issued an order directing counsel for the state to file a sworn affidavit providing a “complete explanation” for the filings that included non-existent cases and other errors.

The war in Iran could trigger a global food shock
• More than 1.1mn tonnes of fertiliser and fertiliser inputs is currently stuck in the Gulf
• Shortages are starting during northern hemisphere’s planting season, raising the risk of lower harvests for staples like rice
www.ft.com/content/1054...

Awful. A teenager, dead by suicide in an ICE detention center. There is now a crisis of suicide inside the detention system; I have never seen anything like it. Suicide has happened before, but they were very rare. This is the third or fourth this year.

The Iran war disrupts global helium supply and artificial intelligence chip makers The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped a third of the world’s commercial helium, threatening the irreplaceable coolant that makes MRI scanners and advanced microchips possible

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped a third of the world’s commercial helium, threatening the irreplaceable coolant that makes MRI scanners and advanced microchips possible

So many great things to photograph there! The concrete cacti in the Foundation Park, the Egyptian accents on the old newspaper building (if it's still there), the old Coke distribution building...

It is the anniversary of the My Lai massacre today. I'd say that even more than most years, it's important to remember what happened.

And the role Hugh Thompson, an active serviceman, played in both stopping and publicising it. Despite enormous military, political and public pressure to stay quiet.

Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”

How did these men know to stay away from Epstein? One googled him, one asked his mom for advice, and one actually listened to what Epstein said to him and quickly realized he was a witless misogynist.

It wasn't that hard, and every scientist who claims they didn't know is either lying or stupid.

ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony Under oath, officers said they were told to make eight arrests a day and given special tech to help choose ‘targets’

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

It's all three, but there's also something else: weak, atrophied brains.

Typos are one thing but elite messages go beyond that, they show an inability to communicate beyond mere urges and feelings, and the reason they can't communicate beyond those is because they can't think through those.

I planned to share my report on the body cam footage early next week when I learned that a DC news station had obtained some of the footage as a result of my lawsuit and they were going to scoop me. After working on this for a year, I couldn't let that happen. Published 2 mins before they aired :)

'UNIMAGINABLE CRUELTY': Judge Gary Brown, a Trump appointeee from NY, thrashes DHS' treatment of a man who came to the US at 9 as an abuse/neglect victim, has no criminal record and became a college grad.

"The laws of decency condemn such villainy." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

As part of an AI committee at my university, I spent this weekend trying out Claude (Opus 4.6) for writing, and I have to say, far beyond its hallucinations and the usual complaints, it is a baffling experience cognitively. I want to be more precise in my evaluation here than I usually am about AI.

Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $

trump is calling for banning congressional stock trading, but he leaves out the key detail: the reason there's a standstill right now is democrats want it to apply to trump and the white house, but trump issued a veto threat over that.

Vatican News No to homilies prepared with Artificial Intelligence The Pope therefore invited the priests to enter into real life and called for vigilance when confronted with artificial intelligence and internet use. He warned against "the temptation to prepare homilies with Artificial Intelligence". "Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity," he said. Moreover, "to give a true homily is to share faith," and Al "will never be able to share faith," he insisted. "If we can offer a service that is inculturated in the place, in the parish where we are working, people want to see your faith, your experience of having known and loved Christ." vaticannews.va

PAPA LEONE YES

Pope Leo tells priests not to use AI to write homilies or seek likes on TikTok "To give a true homily is to share faith," and artificial intelligence "will never be able to share faith," the pope said.

“Pope Leo XIV has urged priests to not to use artificial intelligence to write their homilies or to seek ‘likes’ on social media platforms like TikTok.”

“‘To give a true homily is to share faith,’ and artificial intelligence ‘will never be able to share faith,’ the pope added.”

Exclusive | OpenAI Employees Raised Alarms About Canada Shooting Suspect Months Ago The ChatGPT maker opted against informing Canadian authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of violence last June.

OpenAI employees pushed for the company to inform Canadian police about a user they thought would engage in real-world violence months before the person did just that, killing eight people in a horrific attack in Tumbler Ridge.

The company only reached out to police after the shooting had occurred.