A case for inclusive climate-disaster communication for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, from Abigail Block and @kstackwhitney.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/cse....

They Thought What? Unpacking the history (and present) of science

"Brushing off these practices as unscientific implies that 'true' science is, and always has been, unimpeachable. It denies us a chance to examine what flaws may fuel our own ways of thinking."

A new mailbag from @wbarlowrobles.bsky.social

The cover of Rua M. Williams' book "Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI". The cover image is a spiral of yellowish orange leaves set against a red background.

Come join @civicsoftech.bsky.social's May book club on Wed, May 20, at 7pm ET. I'll be leading a discussion of @fractalecho.bsky.social's Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI - and Dr. Williams is joining too!

Register at: www.civicsoftechnology.org/book-clubs

OBEY THE INSECT GOD

Getting some thought provoking emails this morning

OpenAI is planning to discontinue the app for its Sora video platform, a product it released to great fanfare last year that has since fallen from public view, according to the company. The move is one of a number of steps OpenAI is taking to refocus on business and coding functions ahead of a potential initial public offering as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. CEO Sam Altman announced the changes to staff on Tuesday, writing that the company would wind down products that use its video models. In addition to the consumer app, OpenAI is also discontinuing a version of Sora for developers and won’t support video functionality inside ChatGPT, either.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has relinquished direct oversight of the company’s safety and security teams so he can focus on raising capital, supply chains and “building datacenters at unprecedented scale,” he told staff on Tuesday. At the same time, he said the company had completed the initial development of its next major AI model, codenamed Spud, and would wind down the Sora AI video mobile app, which employees had complained was a drag on the company’s computing resources during a time of heightened competition with foes such as Anthropic and Google.

Both the Wall Street Journal and The Information confirming that OpenAI is killing Sora - both the app and *access to its video-generating model for developers*. This is a huge move that suggests things are a bit desperate
www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...
www.theinformation.com/articles/ope...

"If AI is writing the work and AI is reading the work, do we even need to be there at all?" Education workers reveal a growing crisis on campus and off AI Killed My Job: Educators.

Three years into the AI era, educators say they face a major crisis. Bosses and clients replacing tutoring jobs with AI. Replacing *athletic coaching* with AI. Many students now cannot grasp why they would *not* use AI for schoolwork. And worse.

The 5th installment of AI Killed My Job—educators:

can we talk about how many entomologists were foundational to ZPG... 😬

‘This was forged’: Residents deny sending emails pushing Bay Area air policy change At least 10 people listed as sending letters in favor of an air quality policy change said they have no recollection of doing so and weren’t even aware of the proposal in the Bay Area.

🚨 A new frontier of coordinated disinformation.

Fossil fuel industry front groups are using AI platforms to flood clean air regulators with fake public comments—submitted under real residents' names, without their consent.

@robbonta.bsky.social

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

really appreciated. for the consideration/discussion of how people are perceived by their language, esp DHH folks and signers, suggest the work of @deafkilljoy.bsky.social and Dr. Jon Henner on modality chauvinism
criticalstudycommunicationdisability.org/index.php/jc...

more here: www.rochesterfirst.com/monroe-count...

the county is putting public records behind a paywall online, in large part due to bots/scrapers 😕

AI autocomplete doesn’t just change how you write. It changes how you think AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users’ beliefs

“Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI.”

Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors The Grammarly "Expert Review" feature uses AI to provide feedback on papers using the name and work of real professors, dead or alive.

Daily reminder that calling ai dead labor and stolen labor is literal.

I have said this before, but eliminating programs that teach a lot of students but don’t have many majors is like a restaurant not buying flour in its grocery delivery because people aren’t ordering flour on the menu.

over and over they say it out loud: big ideas for the elite class, and only widget grunts for the working people.

ideas are for everybody. art is for everybody. education is for everybody.

gallaudet.edu/education/wh...

A view up grey river from the gorge edge, under a grey sky, fog apparent in the distance upriver. Brown dead leaves on some of the trees in the foreground and across the river. A light snowfall is dusting on top of crunchy old snowy ice from a few weeks ago.

foggy rainy afternoon, no blizzard here, alas

The Athletic has an interesting profile of her and "work life balance" as a working mom - but talks about her kids and their disabilities in gross, reductive ways so not linking here..

a man in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair holding a cup and pointing Alt: a man (Leonardo DiCaprio ) in a yellow shirt is sitting in a chair holding a cup (beer) and pointing at a screen in recognition. Popular meme gif

the closest I've ever felt to an Olympic athlete = Elana Meyers Taylor signing to her kids

“why do you hate technology” as though “technology” were some discrete entity divorced entirely from the context of what it does and what it creates, rather than a category so broad as to constitute reality itself

“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. Yet few people realize that some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools. “Zero percent of my emotional needs are met by A.I.,” an executive who ran a team mitigating safety risks at a top lab told me. “I’m in it up to my eyeballs at work, and I’m careful.” Many others said the same thing: Even as they build A.I. tools, they hope they never feel the need to turn to machines for emotional support. As a researcher who develops cutting-edge capabilities for artificial emotion put it, “that would be a dark day.”

Developers I spoke to said the same incentives that make bots irresistible can stand in the way of reasonable safeguards, making outright abstention the only sure way to stay safe. Some described feeling stuck between protecting users and raising profits: They support guardrails in theory, but don’t want to compromise the product experience in practice. It’s little wonder the protections that do get built can seem largely symbolic — you have to squint to see the fine-print notice that “ChatGPT can make mistakes” or that Character.AI is “not a real person.” “I’ve seen the way people operate in this space,” said one engineer who worked at a number of tech companies. “They’re here to make money. It’s a business at the end of the day.”

But even if companies can curb serious dependence on A.I. companions — an open question — many of the developers I spoke with were troubled by even moderate use of these apps. That’s because people who manage to resist full-blown digital companions can still find themselves hooked on A.I.-mediated love. When machines draft texts, craft vows and tell people how to process their own emotions, every relationship turns into “a throuple,” a founder of a conversational A.I. business said. “We’re all polyamorous now. It’s you, me and the A.I.”

A genuinely alarming piece in the NYT about how the developers, scientists and assorted techbros behind "AI companions"/"synthetic care" do not even know or understand the potential harms of the tech they're developing but they're too greedy to stop themselves from developing it.

only saw 1 with, an NFL commercial (and they were delayed/not synced!)

can't find a single *local* #ROC TV or print clip covering this! (plz send if you see one!) more info: www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

and the national anthem was signed by Fred Beam- super accomplished artist, performer and staff w/ Sunshine 2.0 here in #ROC at NTID 🙌

great performances! (folks who didn't watch the [sadly separate] signed stream may not know that the halftime show was signed in Puerto Rican Sign Language by a Puerto Rican deaf interpreter who tours with Bad Bunny!)

👀

Every morning I wake up with a hollow anger that I have been enrolled, as a university worker, into a long-term objective of “enhancing” AI integration (“where appropriate”) into my undergraduate teaching

just finished @thewaroncars.bsky.social 'Life After Cars' - so good, myth-busting and oriented towards action + community building. excited to co-host a book club discussion w/ local walk/bike grp at library next month and dream up next steps for our (car-centric 😭) town

reciting those Frost poems memorized in elementary school

My glove-clad arm holds a cross country ski pole and the tips of two skis are in the foreground, with a snowy flat trail between trees ahead

how your email finds me (until everything starts up again tmw...)