Bailey 🕸️🕷️🦇

🚨 Registration is now open for PETS 2026 in Calgary!
The 26th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2026) will take place in Calgary, Canada, from July 20–25, 2026.
Join the community and be part of the conversation about PETS.
🔗 Get your spot: petsymposium.org/2026/registr...

The deadline for the 2026 FAccT DC is next Tuesday, February 24! If you are a student working on topics relevant to the FAccT's scope, this is an opportunity to interact with a diverse set of peers and mentors! #facct2026 #facct26 #facct

Details here: facctconference.org/2026/callfor...

Canada's federal gov has a new program to bring researchers to Canada & my uni is starting an internal nomination process for chairs. If you are a full or associate prof working on AI/democracy/community engagement/environmental justice and you may be interested in moving to Canada, dm me

As a person who does believe capable AI risks are real, it’s frustrating to see the community not exactly behaving responsibly. If you can’t find it in yourself to say or do something about a literal, present, AI harm (Grok being used for abuse) what is the point of you

Excerpt from an article entitled AI Regulation in a Post-Reality World

Didn't share this short essay on genAI & the erosion of reality when it was published earlier this year, but it introduces some concepts like intangible/ontological harm that I want to revisit in 2026

Full article here as part of a fantastic collection: libraopen.lib.virginia.edu/downloads/cc...

Tenure-Track Position in Networking & Cyber Security This position is part of the Association of the Academic Staff of the University of Alberta (AASUA). The successful candidate will be offered a tenured or tenure-track appointment with the rank of Ass...

Networking & Cyber Security position:
iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Theory position:
iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Robotics, Computer Vision and Graphics position:
iaejup.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

We are hiring!!

University of Alberta in Canada has three faculty positions open this cycle: one in network security, one in theory, and one in robotics/computer vision/graphics.

Deadline: January 12, 2026

Happy to answer any questions about UofA or Canada academia!!

Please share!! 😁

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people," Westwood said in a press release. "With survey data tainted by bots, AI can poison the entire knowledge ecosystem.” www.404media.co/a-researcher...

As I settle in to Calgary, I am looking to hire one MSc and one PhD student to start in Fall 2026. These positions are fully-funded. My research is at the intersection of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) and software engineering, with an emphasis on human-centered approaches. [1/6]

Hell yeah

If anyone at CSCW is doing or knows about work studying how athletes are dealing with online security/harassment issues or how sports (like the WNBA) become focal points for clickbait, AI slop, or political propaganda… come find me, I want to chat!

Don’t do anything silly with our AIs YouTube video by ReplacementAI

Loving this approach to AI safety youtu.be/c4aEj41Q7Q0

You, too, can beg for a place in the bunker! replacement.ai/safety/

Announcing (w @adamsmith.xyz @thejonullman.bsky.social) the 2025 edition of the Foundations of Responsible Computing Job Market Profiles!

Check out 40 job market candidates in mathematical research in computation and society writ large!

Link:
drive.google.com/file/d/1zvsr...

TMLR is looking for additional reviewers and action editors! Please sign up to keep the initiative strong and vibrant.

This is the advice I consistently give people about trying AI: use something you know very well already, so you can actually determine the quality of the output for yourself, and get some idea of how the sausage is being made

OpenAI's new Sora video generator to require copyright holders to opt out, WSJ reports OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora generator that creates videos featuring copyrighted material, unless right holders opt out of having their work appear, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

this is not gonna go down well

www.reuters.com/technology/o...

The dark history of Canada's Food Guide: How experiments on Indigenous children shaped nutrition policy | CBC Radio Nutritional experiments were performed on intentionally malnourished Indigenous children in residential schools in the 1940s and ’50s. These experiments are directly connected to Canada’s Food Guide, ...

Yeah. They found much higher rates of diabetes in the descendants of residential school survivors in Canada.

CW: very dark history & systemic starving of Indigenous children.
www.cbc.ca/radio/unrese...

2.
Dr. @danyaalraza.com recently warned that the growth in private for-profit primary care clinics is a slippery slope that includes the potential to monetize your health and Rx data with big pharmaceutical companies.

www.pressreader.com/canada/toron...

floating a thought for feedback:
if the liar's dividend is the benefit bad actors can receive from a world in which there is so much doubt about what is real and what isn't,
I was thinking about "the librarian's dividend" re: the value of the people and institutions who help us evaluate information

I think I am wonderful person, who is never inherently malicious , and should always be thought of wonderfully

AND

If you designed a system around that being true I would cuss you out because if I am those things ?

I want you to be protected if I’m NOT

This is too real right now

Guiding PhD Applicants with Clear Communication: CRA-E Calls for Openness in Computing Admissions By Evan Peck, Associate Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, CRA-E Board Member; Michael Hilton, Teaching Professor, Institute for Software Research, Carnegie Mellon University, CRA-E Co-Cha…

Given funding uncertainty, we wrote about why depts & faculty should try to communicate openly with PhD applicants about any changes to their admissions processes, including if it's "nothing has changed".

Let's do what we can (when we can) to prevent cascading anxiety.

cra.org/crn/2025/09/...

Why do you constantly act like the only danger is them willingly turning it over ?

Oh right because you need the straw man argument to be condescending

And live the idea of avoiding

- social engineering
- malicious hacking
- long term observation
- general human error

📢Adam Smith, @gautamkamath.com, and I are putting together a list of job market candidates in Foundations of Responsible Computing! Last year's list was a great success so we're keeping it going!

If you want to be included, or nominate someone, see link in the replies!

Aerial photo of UW campus with Mt. Rainier in the background

Job alert! 🌸🏔️ The UW iSchool is hiring for *two* TT faculty positions, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence, broadly defined. It's pretty here!

Applications due November 15th 2025 (priority deadline).

Link: apply.interfolio.com/171020

Can You Choose an A.I. Model That Harms the Planet Less?

Oh and coincidentally, huge all-purpose models also have more environmental impact than smaller models. (Was thinking of @sashamtl.bsky.social's work but here's a recent overview of this topic: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/c...)

Having seen much of the discourse around the new ChatGPT release, I think that a huge part of the problem is the idea that big commercial LLMs should be all-purpose.

It is absolutely absurd that the exact same technology would be used as a companion chatbot AND as an enterprise productivity tool.

Abstract page from a dissertation by me entitled "The Impacts and Governance of Artificial Intelligence: A Transfeminist Perspective." The excerpted abstract reads: "This thesis investigates the impacts and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) systems through a transfeminist lens, focusing analysis upon challenges of power, exclusion, and injustice alongside opportunities for advancing equity, community-based resistance, and transformative change. AI governance is a field of research and practice seeking to maximize benefits and minimize harms caused by AI systems. However, AI governance is frequently ineffective at preventing AI systems from causing harm to society and the environment, with historically marginalized groups being particularly vulnerable to harm. Applying a framework of theories drawn from service science, feminist studies, and trans studies, I analyze relationships between AI governance and harm prevention in three separate co-authored, peer-reviewed articles. The first article develops a theory linking beneficial and harmful impacts caused by AI systems to the value chains through which various actors integrate resources and co-create value throughout the AI system lifecycle. This theory is applied to an integrative review of ethical concerns implicated in AI systems and to discuss future directions for intervening in the impacts caused by AI systems. The second article presents a semi-systematic review and content analysis of 84 AI governance initiatives launched by federal and provincial governments in Canada from 2017 to 2022. AI governance initiatives are used to organize many types of interventions, and Canada’s initiatives favor intervention in the impacts of AI on Canadian industry, innovation,"

My dissertation is now available online! The diss applies trans and feminist theory to analyze structural injustices in 3 of my empirical studies of AI governance & policymaking. Give it a look if you're concerned about power dynamics in AI policy

www.proquest.com/docview/3234...

Gender, Online Safety, and Sexuality (GOSS) Workshop is back at SOUPS 2025! Research on GOSS-related topics is more important than ever.