The world before containerization

(Retable of Saint Nicholas, ≈1479/1505)

Great interview with @emilytav.bsky.social and @kathypham.bsky.social on “civic tech.” Love the comment that civic tech = civic duty + technology.

US Digital Service Origins An oral history documenting how the United States Digital Service came to exist, and the initial days of building its foundation.

1/ 📚 Today we're sharing something we've been working on since 2019: an oral history of how the U.S. Digital Service came to be.

Nearly 50 conversations with the people who were there from 2009-2015, telling their stories in their own words. 🧵

Love the new brand and website. Found a glitch: nothing happens for me when clicking on any of the "help us help you" options.

𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐀𝐈 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐞

At the AI Action Summit in Paris, the world signaled its readiness for a new future, one where AI is open, inclusive, and aligned with democratic values.

www.currentai.org/latest-updat...

1/n

Astronomers Detect a Signature of Life on a Distant Planet (Gift Article) Further studies are needed to determine whether K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years away, is inhabited, or even habitable.

120 light years from Earth, there's a planet that may be covered in a living ocean. Here's my story on a tantalizing hint of life beyond the Solar System. Gift link: nyti.ms/3GbrEaZ 🧪

Services that serve? A conversation with the former Head of Design of the Italian Government

"Public services aren’t about that. They’re not lifestyle upgrades - they’re rights and responsibilities. We need to treat them as such when we design digital systems. They have a higher order of priorities." 💯
artifactstech.substack.com/p/services-t...

The current situation in the US is a unique opportunity for Europe to reverse decades of brain drain. It would be wise of European leaders to seize this moment and invest accordingly.

This is more important than you realize. Bluesky doesn’t downgrade links. Which means news sites will get more traffic from here than other sites.

Which gives them economic reasons to post here first.

I was listening to Trevor Noah interview Robert Putnam of Bowling alone while making Ilhan Omar's hot dish. Putnam says that Trump weaponized the nation's loneliness to come to power and that even if we get through this US democracy remains vulnerable until we fix that (interview was in January) /1

1 reason @wired.com is leading is b/c they have long understood that tech is the infrastructure of *everything* & as a result is *the* invisible lever of power.

Control the infrastructure & you control everything.

The entire policy establishment (gov, media, academia) is still catching up to this.

👗📊✨ Bonjour, hier soir c’était les Oscars et c’est donc l’heure de mon désormais traditionnel thread

🍿 LES TENUES DES OSCARS AS GRAPHIQUES DE L'@insee.fr, version 2025 🍿

Je commence avec Mikey Madison as Une pyramide des âges proche de celle de l'ensemble de la population

⬇️⬇️⬇️

former colleagues from 18F have asked me to share this open letter widely - please pass on 🙏 🇺🇸 💻💪 18f.org

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org

AI Data Transparency: The Past, Present and Beyond (AAAI 2025 tutorial) AI Data Transparency: the past, the present and beyond 1 AAAI 2025 tutorial, 26th February 2PM - 6PM EST David Piorkowski IBM Lucie-Aimée Kaffee HuggingFace Shayne Longpre MIT, Data Provenance Initiat...

If you’re curious about the AI Data Transparency Index, the Data Provenance Initiative, or ways to make transparency truly user-centric, take a look at the slides:

docs.google.com/presentation...

Thank you to the incredible team that made it happen: Sophia, Lucie, Omar, David, me, and Elena.

RFK Jr. thinks that a clinical trial should be done for the entire childhood vaccine schedule. Here’s why that will never happen.

1. You can’t do a randomized trial of something that we already know is safe and effective. There would have to be a placebo group that didn’t get vaxxed. Unethical.

Three Fallacies: Alondra Nelson's Remarks at the Elysée Palace on the Occasion of the AI Action Summit | TechPolicy.Press Dr. Nelson was an invited speaker at a dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palais de l'Élysée on February 10, 2025.

I was pleased to attend a State Dinner, hosted by Pres. Macron, for participants of the AI Action Summit. It was an honor to be invited to deliver remarks at Elysee Palace on Three Fallacies in how we think about AI, now published @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/three-fallac...

♥️♥️ Let's not forget that Valentine was martyred for standing firm in his values/beliefs and doing what was right when faced with a tyrant's decree. ♥️♥️ Forget the commercial holiday, but send a love letter to people who are fighting for others to have the freedom to love. ♥️♥️

Big Tech’s Other Big Battle Is for the Box The tech giants all say they’re chasing AGI, but they’re also fighting over something we all use that’s already here.

Smart read nymag.com/intelligence...

Reid Hoffman, Clem Delangue among tech entrepreneurs and VCs calling for AI 'public goods' Ten prominent tech entrepreneurs, investors release open letter ahead of Paris AI summit.

1/ Grateful to the incredible leaders who have come together to support CurrentAI and the vision for AI in the public interest. 🧵

fortune.com/2025/02/09/l...

Current AI | Building Public Interest AI Technology Together Join a global initiative building open, fair AI technology that serves the public interest. Through collaboration and local action, we're creating AI solutions that benefit everyone.

1/ AI should serve the public good. Today, we take a major step toward making that a reality. 🧵

At the AI Action Summit, @currentaioffical.bsky.social officially launches. It is a global partnership dedicated to ensuring AI benefits everyone, not just a select few.

currentai.org.

"We have gone a long way from 2 years ago when there were a lot of lobbyists again openness, in its many shades: openness of weight / AI system / data." - @clem.hf.co

"Power needs to be shifted. We need to call on the government to govern." - @janethaven.bsky.social

"Since the release of DeepSeek, we have seen a boom of users on Hugging Face, from tech companies but also developers. I am excited to see how we are going to distribute benefits of AI, thanks to open source." - @clem.hf.co

"The benefits and harms are not distributing equally. We have seen companies move back from their commitments, for instance on responsible AI." @abeba.bsky.social

"In the North, it takes 15 min to get food to your place. But who is investing in the type of solution that will change the lives of billions of people? It is a conversation about a new shared social contract." #VilasDhar

"Who is participating? Whose public interest are we favoring?" - Provocative questions from #AmandeepSinghGill

Bending the arc of AI towards Public Interest: towards a resilient and open AI Ecosystem. The final plenary session is on at #AIActionSummit with #MartinTisné, @abeba.bsky.social, @clem.hf.co, #VilasDhar, #AmandeepSinghGill, @janethaven.bsky.social

Congratulations @camillefrancois.bsky.social for having build such an impactful coalition 💪🏼