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Meredith Broussard, PhD

@merbroussard

Critical AI, data journalism, literary nonfiction. Professor at NYU. Author, "More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech." meredithbroussard.com

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Latest posts by Meredith Broussard, PhD @merbroussard

Some religions sort of leave you alone to think for yourself most of the time. Then there are sects that won't let a single meal, snack, piss, or even breath go by without inserting a ritual to remind you of your obligations to their God. The tech religion is increasingly determined to be the latter

05.03.2026 18:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 156 ๐Ÿ” 53 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 3
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GREAT new resource from us:

You can now flip through the financial disclosures of Trump officials.

See what they own --and how much they're worth.

See who's worked where-- and how much they banked.

Want the folks connected to Palintir? Please enjoy.

projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

05.03.2026 13:47 ๐Ÿ‘ 438 ๐Ÿ” 200 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 8 ๐Ÿ“Œ 14

84% of the time, โ€œChatGPT Healthโ€ killed a customer using their paid service as advertised

01.03.2026 23:27 ๐Ÿ‘ 1619 ๐Ÿ” 799 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 37 ๐Ÿ“Œ 50
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WSJ reporting that the U.S. used Claude for the air strikes in Iran. Centcom has been using Claude "for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios" www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

01.03.2026 05:41 ๐Ÿ‘ 2284 ๐Ÿ” 947 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 156 ๐Ÿ“Œ 394
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Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life. Kate Fox says Joe Ceccanti was the โ€˜most hopeful personโ€™ before he started spending 12 hours a day with a chatbot

โ€œItโ€™s difficult to understand the scale of the problem, but OpenAI itself estimates that more than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT.โ€

28.02.2026 15:39 ๐Ÿ‘ 476 ๐Ÿ” 207 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 16 ๐Ÿ“Œ 42

Stewart Brand finding out about maintenance theory (minus you know all the feminism) in his late 80s is still incredibly funny to me, like yeah man you gotta take care of your knees

27.02.2026 14:15 ๐Ÿ‘ 27 ๐Ÿ” 1 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

Look around. The case for more, not less, liberal arts education is stronger than ever.

27.02.2026 13:49 ๐Ÿ‘ 61 ๐Ÿ” 22 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Why AI Companies Are Suddenly Worried About Theft Models built on scraped material are now getting scraped themselves.

โ€œThe scrapers have become the scraped, their own powerful distillations of the worldโ€™s information sampled, reconstituted, and distilled once more.โ€

nymag.com/intelligence...

26.02.2026 18:08 ๐Ÿ‘ 19 ๐Ÿ” 10 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 8
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The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. @evystadium.bsky.social has more.

Story by @josephcox.bsky.social www.404media.co/this-app-war...

24.02.2026 18:42 ๐Ÿ‘ 432 ๐Ÿ” 186 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 8 ๐Ÿ“Œ 20
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It's Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto - FuelArc News We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. Thatโ€™s more than enough data to comp...

The Ford Pinto had a death rate of 85 people for 10 million cars sold. The Cybertruck hasn't sold 10 million, but the fatality rate so far maths out to 1,452 people killed per 10 million sold.

The Cybertruck may be the deadliest road car, for the occupants, ever sold.

fuelarc.com/evs/its-offi...

23.02.2026 21:24 ๐Ÿ‘ 9113 ๐Ÿ” 4208 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 249 ๐Ÿ“Œ 517
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Police are finding suspects based on their online searches as courts weigh privacy concerns Criminal investigators hoping to develop a suspect are turning to a powerful cyber tool by asking Google to disclose who had been searching for relevant information.

There are privacy implications raised by this, but ingenious investigating to find a serial rapist by asking Google for IP addresses of those who looked up the address of a victim's house apnews.com/article/goog...

24.02.2026 18:25 ๐Ÿ‘ 41 ๐Ÿ” 25 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3 ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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I'm celebrating 400 episodes of Techtonic - with handpicked excerpts of past interviews, featuring @merbroussard.bsky.social @jasonkoebler.bsky.social @writearthur.bsky.social @byrontau.bsky.social & more.

Full episode:
techtonic.fm/episodes/202...

24.02.2026 16:24 ๐Ÿ‘ 8 ๐Ÿ” 2 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

23.02.2026 23:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 4288 ๐Ÿ” 1767 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 42 ๐Ÿ“Œ 52
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A New Wharton Study on AI Warns of a Growing Problem: Cognitive Surrender Casual users should pay special attention

โ€œPeople followed wrong AI answers 80% of the time. The effect size for the gap between AI-accurate and AI-faulty trials was massiveโ€ฆEssentially, AI determined the outcomes more than people.โ€
www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/a-new-whar...

24.02.2026 03:04 ๐Ÿ‘ 232 ๐Ÿ” 114 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 7 ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations โ€œscrewed upโ€ giving students access to so much technology: โ€œI genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.โ€

"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"

23.02.2026 19:16 ๐Ÿ‘ 98 ๐Ÿ” 46 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 10 ๐Ÿ“Œ 5
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The boysโ€™ club: How Epsteinโ€™s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested itโ€™s โ€œhard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.โ€

Oh, the full coverage of this exchange is even worse:

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

23.02.2026 19:25 ๐Ÿ‘ 4 ๐Ÿ” 7 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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The Lesson of A.I. Literacy Class: Donโ€™t Let the Chatbot Think for You

โ€œAre you steering the technology or is it steering you?โ€ asked a slide on the classroom whiteboard at Washington Park High School. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/t...

23.02.2026 19:25 ๐Ÿ‘ 7 ๐Ÿ” 3 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

Donโ€™t think people realize how much journalism has almost never paid for itself. The work of news gathering has almost always required some kind of subsidyย โ€” either by bundling, licit government support, or a de facto monopoly on local info distribution โ€” and usually works in firms as a loss leader.

23.02.2026 19:17 ๐Ÿ‘ 163 ๐Ÿ” 26 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 12 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Meta Director of AI Safety Allows AI Agent to Accidentally Delete Her Inbox Meta Superintelligence Labsโ€™ director of alignment called it a โ€œrookie mistake.โ€

NEW: Metaโ€™s director of AI safety, supposedly the person at the company who is working to make sure that powerful AI tools donโ€™t go rogue and act against human interests, had to scramble to stop an AI agent from deleting her inbox against her wishes...

23.02.2026 15:23 ๐Ÿ‘ 1851 ๐Ÿ” 705 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 63 ๐Ÿ“Œ 284

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know donโ€™t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.

22.02.2026 19:50 ๐Ÿ‘ 3817 ๐Ÿ” 879 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 38 ๐Ÿ“Œ 29
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How to Get Paid to Polarize on TikTok Spanish nonprofit Maldita.es uncovered how TikTok's algorithm pays creators to spread AI-generated political disinformation and fuel polarization across Europe.

Spanish nonprofit Maldita.es uncovered how TikTok's algorithm pays creators to spread AI-generated political disinformation and fuel polarization across Europe. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to Malditaโ€™s Carlos Hernรกndez-Echevarrรญa and Marina Sacristรกn. www.techpolicy.press/how-to-get-p...

22.02.2026 16:35 ๐Ÿ‘ 89 ๐Ÿ” 53 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

everyone loved the tech industry's free music and friendship machines of 20-30 years ago. it's unclear what could be causing people to feel the opposite about the industry's new racism and insanity machine

21.02.2026 21:47 ๐Ÿ‘ 10076 ๐Ÿ” 2274 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 52 ๐Ÿ“Œ 14
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Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand โ€˜Search Partyโ€™ Surveillance Beyond Dogs Ring's CEO told staff the feature is โ€œfirst for finding dogs,โ€ indicating a plan to expand.

Yeah so that Ring ad that aired at the Super Bowl about 'Search Party?" 404 Media now has proof that it won't just be used to locate dogs...
www.404media.co/leaked-email...

22.02.2026 15:32 ๐Ÿ‘ 254 ๐Ÿ” 123 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 11 ๐Ÿ“Œ 8

Love this exercise idea!

22.02.2026 16:16 ๐Ÿ‘ 3 ๐Ÿ” 0 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Some Reeseโ€™s Treats Drop the Milk Chocolate. Mr. Reese Disapproves.

When I raid my kids' holiday candy stashes, I usually think to myself, 'This doesn't taste as good as it tasted to me when I was a kid.'

I thought it was because my taste buds had changed, but it's actually that the candy is not as good: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/c...

20.02.2026 14:43 ๐Ÿ‘ 44 ๐Ÿ” 8 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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Silicon Valleyโ€™s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher Nick Land believes that digital superintelligence is going to kill us all. In San Francisco, his followers ask: What if, instead of trying to stop an A.I. takeover, you work to bring it on as fast as ...

We should be talking a lot more about how the San Francisco tech scene is populated by a strange cult of doom acceleration nerds who fantasize about using computers to destroy humanity.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

19.02.2026 18:53 ๐Ÿ‘ 858 ๐Ÿ” 313 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 33 ๐Ÿ“Œ 62

โ€œAmbient AI listening in the hospitalโ€ what could go wrong

17.02.2026 14:18 ๐Ÿ‘ 62 ๐Ÿ” 16 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 3 ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen and paper instead Parents are forming a loose network teaching one another how to get their children off school-issued Chromebooks and iPads.

Parents are increasingly opting out of mandatory school laptops for kids. Surprised this article didnโ€™t mention the privacy and security risks that should also make parents concerned. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

16.02.2026 22:52 ๐Ÿ‘ 113 ๐Ÿ” 37 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 5 ๐Ÿ“Œ 2
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Exclusive: OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team Joshua Achiam will become the company's chief futurist

OpenAI has disbanded the team it formed in 2024 to advance the company's stated mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

Theyโ€™re speed running the rise and fall of Googleโ€™s reputation down to when they got rid of โ€œDonโ€™t be evilโ€ as a company motto.

11.02.2026 17:00 ๐Ÿ‘ 95 ๐Ÿ” 32 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 2 ๐Ÿ“Œ 1
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CBP Signs Clearview AI Deal to Use Face Recognition for โ€˜Tactical Targetingโ€™ US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.

NEW: CBP signs a new deal with Clearview AI to access its scraped image database for "tactical targeting," including efforts to โ€œdisrupt, degrade, and dismantleโ€ networks of people labeled security threats.

11.02.2026 16:37 ๐Ÿ‘ 956 ๐Ÿ” 670 ๐Ÿ’ฌ 27 ๐Ÿ“Œ 93