China's AI Ethics Governance Many will be surprised to learn that China's approach to AI ethics is more comprehensive, structured, and pragmatic than what we find today in the United States and the European Union | Edition #285

#AI
#AI_Risks
#AI_Ethics

open.substack.com/pub/luizasne...

Language modeling is a useful component of many technologies that can be built without extractive, exploitative means. Take the automatic transcription built by and for the te reo Māori people -- there's te reo Māori language model that's part of that.

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I also want to point out (again) the ways in which lumping together all uses of LMs (like the lumping of technologies into "AI") obscures the issues at hand.

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On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots | Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

In this context, I feel like reminding people (again) that the stochastic parrots paper was not primarily a response to synthetic text extruding machines (not at all popular in late 2020), but an exploration of the range harms that had already been documented in the pursuit of LM scale.

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It was particularly disappointing to see Doctorow misconstrue (and thus, if he is believed) undermine the work that many of us are doing to shine a light on the ways in which the ideology of "AI" and the specific ways in which LLMs and other "AI" products are created do real harm.

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Acting ethically in an imperfect world Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somew...

I was disappointed to read Cory Doctorow's post where he got weirdly defensive about his LLM use and started arguing with an imaginary foe.

@tante.cc has a very thoughtful reply here:

tante.cc/2026/02/20/a...

A few further comments, 🧵>>

Have Fun Dismantling Fascism It's been done. Here's how.

open.substack.com/pub/cmarmita...

HOTHOUSE 15 - SPRINGRISE | Full Animated Film | National FIlm Board of Canada YouTube video by NFB

#Animation

youtube.com/watch?v=aH49...

The Global Sumud Flotilla Is Making History Corporate Media is ignoring the largest civilian flotilla to ever send aid to Gaza, with activists from 44 countries uniting to break Israel's illegal 18 year blockade—here's how you can get involved

#SailToGaza

open.substack.com/pub/qasimras...

This makes no sense militarily, logistically, or economically. Space Force inherited a huge infrastructure of systems to track objects in LEO from Air Force and NORAD bases. I doubt moving them makes much sense; replicating them in Alabama would cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.

Help an Elderly Couple Survive in Gaza My elderly parents live in northern Gaza, one of the most dangerous areas still under constant bombardment. My name is Duaa, and I am desperately trying to save them.

Help an Elderly Couple Survive in Gaza chuffed.org/project/1466...

Phyllis Young: Thank you from Lakota Law YouTube video by Lakota Peoples Law Project

A request by an Indigenous leader and lawyer that we all send messages to our governors and state attorneys general that concentration camps like “Alligator Alcatraz” are not acceptable normalize in our states.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GM8...

Bad Spit (@badspit) Amazing shot of a fiddlehead fern adorned with morning dew drops

substack.com/@badspit/not...

#Photography
#Ferns

James Lucas (@jameslucasit) Roman mosaic found beneath a vineyard

substack.com/@jameslucasi...

A grand day out Redeeming the moon landing

#History
#ColdWar
#ApolloMoonLanding

A grand day out
open.substack.com/pub/malmesbu...

Inventing the Renaissance: Ada Palmer A fun conversation about history

“Dear Mom, I left my favorite purple bathrobe at home. Please bring it when you come visit. Sincerely, Lorenzo de Medici.”

#Renaisance
#Florence
#GreatPersonTheory
#AbstractForcesTheory

open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Automatic Noodle A website about a novella, by Annalee Newitz, pretending to be a website about a noodle joint.

#AI
#Bots
#Noodles
#SFF

Bots should be free to open noodle shops in San Francisco. Here’s a website for such a shop, from a novella by Annalee Newitz (spoiler: you should preorder this book if you support the civil rights of all persons, human or otherwise).

www.automaticnoodle.website

The Age Of The Slop-Hustle Is Here The screen-cap below (I’ll be damned if I’ll give this abomination link-fu) is a detailed description of how AI will be used to commodify and mediocritize the internet.

#AI
#AIHarms
#AIAgents
#Internet
#Slop

open.substack.com/pub/speakert...

Alexander Verbeek on Substack From birds performing mating dances to this man learning moves from 2,500 people all over The Planet: humans and animals share the language of dance. 🕺

#Dance
#Dancers
#Joy
substack.com/@theplanet/n...

ANYWHERE CAN HAPPEN Director’s cut visuals. Version edited with the music from the amazing Reuben and the Dark x AG. Directed by Fernando Livschitz www.bsfilms.me www.instagram.com/ferliv/ US…

vimeo.com/533086714

#FX
#SpecialEffects

Against AI literacy: have we actually found a way to reverse learning? So let’s get one thing out of the way: I think “AI literacy” is a dangerous device of neoliberal education and it deserves to be dismissed out of hand.

#AI
#AILiteracy
#AgainstAILiteracy

open.substack.com/pub/themindf...

Cursor’s AI support bot made up a policy. The bot, identified as “Sam,” invented a policy that said Cursor’s AI code editor tool could only be used by “one device per subscription,” causing users to say they were canceling their subscriptions...

Customer support AI of coding AI company hallucinates and pisses off customers.

#AI
#AIRisks
#AINotReadyForPrimeTime

www.theverge.com/news/651651/...

A plant CLE peptide and its fungal mimic promote arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis via CRN-mediated ROS suppression | PNAS CLAVATA3/EMBRYO SURROUNDING REGION-related (CLE) peptides have emerged as key regulators of plant–microbe interactions, including arbuscular mycorr...

A possible replacement for energy-intensive and polluting fertilizers.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Animation Obsessive Staff on Substack A snippet of the stop-motion film Clothes (1988) by Osbert Parker.

Damn, but this is great. I watched it several times. then looked at a few sections frame by frame. I am in awe!
substack.com/@animationob...

Hmmm… Could this be a big part of why govts aren’t doing anything to mitigate Covid? 🤔

It’s assholes all the way down.

Andy Williams on Substack This is a stop-motion animation. It must have taken the creators hours and hours to meticulously and laboriously produce this animated street art. Why didn’t they just use AI? You know why, it would h...

#Animation
#StopMotion

substack.com/@creativelyc...

On Kobo, not Amazon.

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My name is Neralis. Im a freelancer from Austria who creates stained glass styled illustrations.