🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
New paper from team @aial.ie! aial.ie/research/gpa...
EU's AI Act Article 53(1)(d) is an obligation for GPAI model providers to publicly provide a 'summary' on their model’s training data. The team assessed published summaries along 6 dimensions & found that all big providers failed on all 6.
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This was a fun and really wide-ranging conversation! Thanks @davidvitale.bsky.social and @cccwarwick.bsky.social for hosting us!
Honestly I am surprised this most basic of regulations has taken so long to enact. I cannot understand why regulated professions everywhere, including in Canada, are not pushing for similar.
I understand the sovereignty push of Canada’s tech industry (and other industries), but we need to grapple with a more fundamental question: What kind of tech do we want, sovereign or otherwise?
As Bianca Wylie noted, sovereign bad tech is still bad tech.
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...
#LunarEclipse FAQ:
Q: Is it safe to look at?
A: Absolutely! Unlike a solar eclipse, there's no UNsafe time to look at a lunar eclipse.
Q: Do I need a telescope?
A: Nope! Best view is with naked eye. Just look up!
Q: Does the eclipse portend terror & doom?
A: Not at all! The news has that covered.
Monochrome photograph featuring two women climbing on a rock face with ropes both wearing long dresses and hats
Rock climbers Lucy Smith and Pauline Rankin of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club, 1908, Salisbury Crags, Scotland #WomensArt
Welcome to #WomensHistoryMonth
It's been a long time coming. Canadian independent bookstores have banded together to create an online book buying source so you can avoid the behemoth in the room. (Here are the titles published by CMU Press, which I run.)
Spread the word #booksky!
www.booksellers.ca/publisher/cmu-press-18021
"Our product kills kids" makes for a hell of an advert.
“UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has shown that deep reading, defined as sustained immersion in a text, builds the cognitive circuits required for critical analysis, empathy and perspective-taking in ways that skimming, scrolling and short-form video simply cannot.”
This is one of the key reasons that I have a no generative AI policy in each of my classes. I do not want students, many of whom are already stressed and vulnerable, slipping into this predicament. It is also why I design my classes for students to talk to & work with each other to reduce isolation.
Well, it wasn't only that the administration was demanding that they be able to use the AI models to autonomously kill people; they also want to use AI to assemble and deploy a comprehensive surveillance database on the behavior of all Americans. What's to worry about?
you think you've seen the whole movie, and then the alt text reveals you haven't even finished act two
this is extremely dangerous.
Men studying a dragon
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
My home department at Uppsala University is advertising an endowed professorship in the history of science. This is the best position in the field in Sweden, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Apply before 30 April 2026. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
🎉🎉🎉
here’s my latest on how Minister Solomon can’t just be the Minister for AI Ribbon Cuttings, he needs to work with Minister Miller to ensure consumer facing AI products like chat bots are folded into online harms & subject to a duty to act responsibly
www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/25/o...
when people talk about AI used in moderation of social media posts, you must remember there is always the human-in-the-loop, often a woman, often in the Global South, always dehumanised and forgotten
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www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
The layers of a floppy disk are exploded so that each is visible.
schematic illustration of a cathode ray tube, with each element labeled.
I often find myself wanting to explain to students how things like floppy disks work. Great series of explainers with really helpful illustrations. Just gotta remember where this is next time I need it! www.makingsoftware.com
I've shared similar thoughts with reporters this week. The "reporting to police" question overshadows other tightly woven, vital issues here. Focusing on OpenAI also conveniently redirects attention *away* from Canadian govts (fed and prov) when they have many creative regulatory options at hand.
I was asked for thoughts on Open AI / Tumbler Ridge and sent 4-5 paragraphs of comment. I think the current discourse around whether they should have reported to the police, even though I agree 100% w/ negative sentiment twds AI cos, puts us on a dangerous precipice in terms of human rights. 🧵 1/??
“Insisting on technical precision when it matters can help us resist the easy idea that AI is a helper, ready to assist. Instead we must keep our focus on the uncomfortable thought that these systems partly and covertly structure what we say, think and learn.”
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. “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”
It is really amazing to see something that you helped create and put out into the world, take on a life of its own. There are at least four independently organized upcoming micro-consultations for the #PCAI! Linking them below, if you're in the area, want to join, or as examples to follow:
>they're going to vibecode cobol
so, who's stocking up on canned food and shotguns?
Ontario's Curam fiasco was the subject of a provincial audit and even an external report by KPMG. But somehow Curam has failed forward into a new federal contract, putting more vulnerable people's wellbeing on the line. The digital dystopia continues.
What's old is new again: My jaw dropped when I saw that Curam, the system that wreaked havoc in Ontario's social assistance program *in 2014* is now doing the same in Canada's old age security program. 85 000 benefits requests delayed as of late Jan! ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/223...
This is a good thread & I hope people reflect on how it relates to what happened in 2020-2022, and the ongoing pandemic—how most people, at the Democrats’ urging, decided to throw anyone who might need airborne virus mitigations in the trash🚮. And in doing so helped our slide into more brutality:
This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen
