Never underestimate employers' tolerance of mediocrity

doge's sahil lavingia’s prompt from propublica article

Human care reduced to five categories, three of which were deemed expendable.

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

#booksky

The squirrels in my neighborhood are so literally overburdened with food that i routinely find whole slices of pizza in roof gutters and crooks of trees. But a full sized croissant abandoned in the geraniums, that’s new!

Palantir Is Going on Defense Palantir threatened to call police on a WIRED reporter and kicked out other journalists from a recent conference following reports of the data analytics firm’s work with the Trump administration.

"On Tuesday, a Palantir employee threatened to call the police on a WIRED journalist who was watching software demos at its booth at AI+ Expo. The conference, hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is free and open to the public."

How Big Tech Got Scammed by an 'AI' YouTube video by Slidebean

Not what's meant by human-in-the-loop www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP1t...

Two people seated on either side of a wooden conference table with a screen behind them with people on a Zoom meeting.

People in a zoom meeting on a TV screen.

Only nine (!!!!) days left in our contract. We’re still here bargaining for a fair contract from Vox Media.

I said there were no examples of productive use of genAI in a panel recently and was corrected. Ad companies are making bank on genAI with hyperpersonalization. Just the sector we want to valorize...

Watermelon aurora during a full moon in Alaska

“I found that on Bluesky.” “People were discussing your article on Bluesky.” “Too bad I couldn’t tag you on Bluesky.”

I have become totally shameless

Missed opportunities in AI regulation: lessons from Canada’s AI and data act Ana Brandusescu and Renée E. Sieber Abstract We interrogate efforts to legislate artificial intelligence (AI) through Canada’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) and argue it represents a series of missed opportunities that so delayed the Act that it died. We note how much of this bill was explicitly tied to economic development and implicitly tied to a narrow jurisdictional form of shared prosperity. Instead, we contend that the benefits of AI are not shared but disproportionately favour specific groups, in this case, the AI industry. This trend appears typical of many countries’ AI and data regulations, which tend to privilege the few, despite promises to favour the many. We discuss the origins of AIDA, drafted by Canada’s federal Department for Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED). We then consider four problems: (1) AIDA relied on public trust in a digital and data economy; (2) ISED tried to both regulate and promote AI and data; (3) Public consultation was insufficient for AIDA; and (4) Workers’ rights in Canada and worldwide were excluded in AIDA. Without strong checks and balances built into regulation like AIDA, innovation will fail to deliver on its claims. We recommend the Canadian government and, by extension, other governments invest in an AI act that prioritises: (1) Accountability mechanisms and tools for the public and private sectors; (2) Robust workers’ rights in terms of data handling; and (3) Meaningful public participation in all stages of legislation. These policies are essential to countering wealth concentration in the industry, which would stifle progress and widespread economic growth.

Missed Opportunities in AI Regulation: Lessons from Canada's AI and Data Act

New from me and @resieber.bsky.social for Data & Policy @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org

We draw out the problems with AIDA and ways forward to shift decision-making and control from AI companies to the people!

ESA's Advanced Concepts Team's ELOPE challenge

🌕 📷 Mapping the descent of a lunar lander, using nothing but data from an event camera – this is the next challenge presented to the space community by @esa.int’s Advanced Concepts Team 👉 www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

National Science Foundation stops www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"We don't have bros or oligarchs making the rules. We don't invade our neighbours, and we don't punish them. On the contrary, there are 12 countries on the waiting list to become 🇪🇺 members.

In Europe, children can go to good schools, however wealthy their parents are"

President von der Leyen

Because a single hard drive for the cloud storage saves so much money.

Preach! This means-ends flip also shows up in AI governance: "all that is required of civic participation in AI governance is an AI literate public." Accountability? Political influence? Unnecessary.

two photos side by side. in the left photo, a dog is leaning out the driver window of a red vehicle toward a drive-thru window. in the right photo the dog has entered the establishment through the window, only his hind end sticking out.

This dog got a little impatient waiting for his pup cup. Decided to make sure everything was going alright in there. 14/10

"One can only imagine the horror the late Iain Banks would have felt on learning his legendary Culture series is a favourite of Elon Musk"

Given the rapidly evolving political landscape in the United States and reports of individuals encountering difficulties crossing the border, CAUT strongly recommends that academic staff travel to the U.S. only if essential and necessary.

Read more: www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...

🇨🇳 China imposes export controls on rare earths, threatening US tech and defense supply chains.

Google AI Search Shift Leaves Website Makers Feeling ‘Betrayed’ In March 2024, website owner Morgan McBride was posing for photos in her half-renovated kitchen for a Google ad celebrating the ways the search giant had helped her family’s business grow.

"the search product had fundamentally changed in the AI era" Let me fix that for you "the search product had fundamentally enshitified in the AI era" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A geosurveillance public private partnership that you might not be aware of. Add to that questionable accountability when you have to rely on the private sector to protect your privacy www.cnn.com/audio/podcas...

AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right.

"The right wing aesthetic project is to flood the zone with bullshit in order to erode the intellectual foundations for resisting political cruelty."

Union asks Commission to reassess public contracts amid trade war European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted at a “strong plan to retaliate” to US tariffs.

“We cannot afford to place our digital sovereignty, workers’ rights, and democratic values in the hands of a corporation that has repeatedly demonstrated hostility to the European model.”

@euronews.com covered our statement calling on the European Commission to review AWS public contracts.

I had the chance to present at the AAG on Transjurisdictional AI Governance, alongside Renee Sieber, Pamela Robinson and Margath Walker.

I guest lectured on Socio-economic Issues in AI Governance for Ana Visan's Interdisciplinary Seminar at the Balsillie School for International Affairs.

I presented my dissertation research on Partnerships and Privatization in AI Governance for the Starling Centre.

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of presentations and discussions on my research in academia and policy. One of the common threads is the need for pragmatism in academic research, now more than ever.

Excited to share more soon. For now, I will be retreating to my writing cave 🧛🏻‍♀️

I'm waiting for someone to say reinforcement learning can't be added to foundation models bc it's biased

OpenAI’s Sora Is Plagued by Sexist, Racist, and Ableist Biases WIRED tested the popular AI video generator from OpenAI and found that it amplifies sexist stereotypes and ableist tropes, perpetuating the same biases already present in AI image tools.

"OpenAI’s Sora Is Plagued by Sexist, Racist, and Ableist Biases" - WIRED tested the video generator and found that it "stereotypes and ableist tropes, perpetuating the same biases already present in AI image tools."
So appreciative that journalists are running evals.
www.wired.com/story/openai...

Introducing: Complybot! The first chatbot that preemptively complies so you don’t have to. Why resist when you can pre-surrender? Complybot: Because nothing changes if you do nothing!