I'm really glad that Palantir's mask off evil is finally getting wider play, but I sigh when folks start saying "THEY'RE ALL OVER THE NHS!'
Because my cousin and his colleagues have been trying to warn both the public & Westminster for OVER a decade about these bastards. Have a 🧵
A culture of violation of consent is rife in the tech world, a place where you can't "opt out" of being data mined, where you're surveilled and abused with advertising and the entire model is built on holding your attention captive.
Excitement at the #CHI2026 keynote squashed. Spectacular research on bionics.. but can't afford an artist to make a handful of concept images – AI slop.
Personally I prefer my actual job.
I'm starting to believe that people who schedule a lot of meetings do it not because meetings are useful, but because they are entertaining.
I feel like I'm at the fucking circus.
It's basically all software now which is exhausting. Ten years ago be my eyes wouldn't have called their new iteration AI yet it doesn't use anything that didn't exist ten years ago other than the data set they spent most of those years extracting for free (and if it does it doesn't need to).
When I said that I did mean the volunteer aspect but also yes. All of these systems are people. From design, training, to the initial data set (collection and those datafied).... It's people all the way down. We shouldn't forget that.
So, be my eyes extracted free labor from blind people and the general public, sold it to Open AI, and now uses that same community as free testers, where the user group cannot verify if the output is incorrect without greater than minimal risk.
I need to have a fist fight with these people right now.
For that example about blindness.
I've actively not been able to get any of the assistive tech I need funded through any of the funding sources that I'm supposed to get it from in the last 8 months because of the assumption that I can just use AI to do everything if I can't see it.
Oh thank you :)
By using the volunteer data to train it.
Drink water, have a snack, take a shower, then be mean
Also I have an entire book on this if you are interested in something beyond my rage skeet
I am grateful for your comments but I want to clarify that screen readers are not AI and be my eyes is people.
Where as a society are we investing our resources if the labor of caring for and accommodating disabled bodies is labour worth automating?
This is the insidious ableism in the rhetoric of pro-AI apologists who hide behind positive disability principles.
Very unimpressed by pop neurodiversity influencers and their AI apologia.
More bullshit claiming that anti-AI stances are classist and ableist and racist.
Meanwhile, AI is built on exploited black labor, kills disabled people every day, disposesses the working class, and drinks all our water.
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
It's such a small book with very little press. I drive it's circulation almost entirely by my own social media. So many academics have championed my work through their speaking invitations. I'm so grateful.
I just, I can't believe the book might actually be working.
It's really something special when my friends, colleagues, and people I admire offer praise for my book. But when people I absolutely did not know at all tell the internet that they love my book? That's wild.
This looks eye opening
The Black Communication and Technology Lab Presents: DISABLING INTELLIGENCES LEGACIES OF EUGENICS AND HOW WE ARE WRONG ABOUT A.I. Guest Speaker Rua Williams Friday, April 3 2026 12-2pm Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University, and a former Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council. Dr. William's work explores how disabled people imagine and build their own socio technical worlds. Join us for conversations around Dr. William's forthcoming work: Disabling Intelligences (Palgrave Macmillan). REGISTER TO JOIN THROUGH ZOOM! bcatlab.org
It's me and that damn book again
umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
I literally laughed out loud. I'm a scientist. It is literally my job to study this problem. :)
I did not say you harassed me. This conversation, which has been exhaustively pinging my mentions for a week, is harassing me.
I should have said harried.
"actual" - this is the core of the misunderstanding.
"actual" science can and did and has and does create racist and eugenical outcomes.
This is not an anti science take. This is a pragmatic explanation of how disciplines function in an entangled sociotechnical reality.
The "cycle" is literally dozens of people across several threads over the past, what, week now?
I didn't respond to you either. I'm clearly talking to my friend.
This is the longest and most insufferable cycle of bad takes I've been harassed by possibly ever?
