britt paris

They want to get rid of faculty so bad, they are like slavering at the prospect

People Have the Right to Refuse AI Britt Paris is the author of Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up, a new book published by the University of California Press.

"If AI is inevitable, why is it being shoved down our throats? What options do we have?" writes @hellobrittparis.bsky.social in @techpolicypress.bsky.social. Refuse! Don't be a mark!

Thank you so much, Shannon! 💙

Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism | Rutger Bregman As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman

Just shared this piece with a friend and he replied back with a screenshot cancelling his subscription.

BOYCOTT BABY!

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"AI is not simply a discursive formation that stands as a ‘common sense’ foregone conclusion, it also obfuscates large-scale, transnational coordination of resources, labor & people who make up the infrastructures that are required for artificial intelligence." journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

@emmamay.bsky.social, Serita Sargent, and I analyzed the 2023 SAG AFTRA contract on AI to inform bargaining around AI across sectors as a lever for more meaningful worker control technology in the workplace. Out today in Big Data & Society

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Cover of "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" by Lindsay Weinberg

“AI might have arrived in higher education without invitation—but not without resistance,” writes Robert Ovetz in a review of Lindsay Weinberg’s Smart University, which forecasts what "awaits us if we do not organize and escalate our refusal of AI." www.aaup.org/article/refu...

ugh i kno. I cleaned out my car. it always brings "the weather".

I spent a year inside the content moderation workforce in Nairobi and Manila — the human cost of making AI 'safe' is a class story nobody wants to tell - Silicon Canals The people who teach AI the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable content earn $230 a month in Nairobi and Manila. The companies whose products depend on that labor are worth trillions. This is...

“the story of making AI ‘safe’ is fundamentally a story about class, about which humans absorb the costs so that other humans never have to think about them.”
siliconcanals.com/sc-d-i-spent...

Radical Infrastructure by Britt Paris - Paper Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

My book Radical Infrastructure came out last week! It goes deep into the political and economic roots of technological infrastructure to explain hype around various technical projects, and counters it with cases of people pushing back.
Download OA: www.ucpress.edu/books/radica...

Telling that this attack on good scientists doing good jobs, without any pretense of due process is 1) at an HBCU 2) in the agricultural extension. Decades of underfunding mean HBCUs are testing grounds for the austerity we all get later. Ag stations are isolated and full of workplace abuse.

Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage. PLUS: 10,000 drivers call on Uber to repay stolen wages, a man is arrested at a public hearing about a data center and more.

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.

"As AI trans­forms academic labor, much more is at stake than the terms & conditions of our employment. At stake is the very integrity of the teaching & learning process & the notion that all humanity—not just a few individuals—should benefit from the production of knowledge at our universities."

ICE’s growing surveillance state - The Boston Globe ICE has constructed a digital dragnet that captures and retains massive amounts of data about all of us, citizens and noncitizens alike.

“These surveillance tools are an authoritarian’s dream…”

We tried the carrot. Here’s the stick.

#ICE is ramping up attacks against immigrants and American citizens— and #Palantir is their surveillance backbone.

Go to www.purgepalantir.com/the-palantir-payroll/ for the list of dirty politicians trading our rights for Palantir $$$ — then call them out.

university admins will no more acknowledge their complicity in the damage done by AI than they did with covid

Cancel ChatGPT Edu. Invest in Humans. In February 2025, the California State University system announced a $17 million contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu to all faculty, staff, and students on its 22 CSU campuses as part of a lar...

Sign this letter by @heavyredaction.bsky.social and Martha Kinney to support CSUs demands to divest from ChatGPTEdu
actionnetwork.org/petitions/ca...

Old Dominion University is trying to compress 16-week courses into 8-week online courses for the 2026 fall semester — and fully integrate AI without faculty input.

Isaac Kamola, AAUP’s Director of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, explains why this is a “nightmare.”

I talked to experts about steps scientist can take to improve their cybersecurity.

Fav quote: “Every time you order food, you are spraying data into the world"

Many thanks to @isaackamola.bsky.social, @hellobrittparis.bsky.social, @gleemie.bsky.social & others!

Resisting School AI Mania Help Sheet Help Sheet: Resisting AI Mania in Schools K-12 educators are under increasing pressure to use—and have students use—a wide range of AI tools. (The term “AI” is used loosely here, just as it is by man...

I've updated my document that tackles four of the common arguments used to encourage teachers to use AI.

I hope this will be helpful to those educators wanting to push back on AI mania.

Michigan Offers Handouts for Data Centers Promising Jobs. Will Those Jobs Come? | TechPolicy.Press Nathan Kim and Ira Anwar say current state incentives for data centers reflect a false binary between new jobs and detrimental community impacts.

Considering developments in Michigan as a case study, Nathan Kim and Ira Anwar say current state incentives for data centers reflect a false binary between new jobs and detrimental community impacts.

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: AAUP Press Conference: Why is the ED Contracting with Palantir?. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are convening a press conference on the urgent concerns about Palantir Technologies' involvement in the ...

Join leadership and experts from @aaup.org AI team and Mijente for an online press conference on the urgent concerns about Palantir Technologies' involvement with the Department of Education. fedscoop.com/palantir-edu...

TOMORROW Wednesday, December 17, 4PM ET
Register here: bit.ly/4p3iCh7

Well good news is EOs (like this new state law AI moratorium EO) are relatively toothless and we can do things to thwart them, like push elected a to pass better laws that people actually want. 👇 It’s hard but can be done. @aaup.org ai cmte will be working on this. Join us if it make you mad too 💙

A new kind of digital camouflage emerges from DARPA AI research | Biometric Update The technique, called DiffProtect, quietly rewrites a person’s face in a photograph using the same generative technology behind modern image creation tools.

👀👀

DiffProtect “rewrites a person’s face in a photograph using the same generative technology behind modern image creation tools.
The resulting photo still looks like the person to any human viewer, but to state-of-the-art facial recognition systems, the image becomes something else entirely.”

Text reads: “new report: turning the tide: climate action in and against tech by Tamara Kneese, Data & Society” with an image of Data Centers in front of an orange sky with images of protestors juxtaposed with tech work happening

This report is how I have channeled my rage as the tech industry has grown in wealth and power at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment. The old mechanisms of reform aren’t sufficient in a time of AI ascendance and data center accelerationism datasociety.net/library/turn...

haha and I meant to note that Lisa is the person that developed the Negotiating Tech inventory linked. 💙

Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions Educational technology, or ed-tech, including artificial intelligence (AI), continues to become more integrated into teaching and research in higher education, with minimal oversight. The AAUP’s ad ho...

Administrators are inking deals with OpenAI and inviting Palantir onto campus, ignoring faculty expertise and rolling out unproven data-thieving surveillance snake oil tech on our studens, staff and us. Enough.

We also have an ongoing archive of resources beyond contract bargaining for organizing to push back on uncritical tech/AI adoption in higher ed: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

AAUP AI Committee Policy Resources for AI & EdTech Contributors: Lisa Kresge, UC Berkeley Labor Center /AAUP ad hoc committee on AI Eric Rader, Henry Ford Community College/AFT Grace Musilli, AFT Monica Owens, AAUP Table of Contents Resource 1: Contra...

Hi Sarah! Check out our bargaining resources guide that Lisa Kresge (on our AAUP AI team) helped develop based on the recommendations we developed in the report you linked
docs.google.com/document/d/1...