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Ana Brandusescu

@anabrandusescu.bsky.social
6.2K followers 744 following 1.5K posts

Researcher, policy analyst, social scientist. PhD-ing on political power and privatization in the scale of AI governance. she/her | Montreal | anabrandusescu.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Rine Vieth @rinewithoutacat.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Not to take away from celebrating Carson, but she's a "former professor" here in large part because the university shut down her department and cancelled its classes. What pride does the institution claim now—years later—when austerity is forcing other scholars out? What does that 'pride' do?
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We have a new campus cat She is so cute 😻
Turtle cat walking around on campus
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...
fnl.mit.edu
How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Touché
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Critical (AI) studies are apolitical by design.
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
lol you'll have to wait
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Recurring
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Thank you Bhaskar! So appreciate it
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Thank you Michèle!
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Submitted a full draft to committee 🌞
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
blair @blairaf.com · 04/09/2026
Announcing non-binding agreements with industry and telling Indigenous & rural communities with concerns about local infrastructure projects "we're the government you can trust us" is probably not a wise approach and is certainly not grounded in strong historical self-awareness
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Same! Wish I was here for it
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
If you're in Montreal on September 16, ditch ALL IN and go to ALL OUT
posters for the ALL OUT protest against the AI conference ALL IN

mercredi 16 septembre 2026 @ 16H30

metro: Square-Victoria-OACI
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I can't wait to finish writing my dissertation 🫠
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"A federal docket shows the Foundation retained Littler Mendelson, the firm Starbucks used against its baristas, to face its employees’ union."
medium.com
The Wikimedia Foundation Hired the Union Busters Its Own Encyclopedia Warned About
A federal docket shows the Foundation retained Littler Mendelson, the firm Starbucks used against its baristas, to face its employees’…
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Those who know me well, know how much Wikipedia means to me. I was disheartened to learn about their leadership consulting with the biggest union busting firm in the US. If you have a Wikipedia account, please sign this petition: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...
en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia:Wiki Workers United solidarity - Wikipedia
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"Lobbying, advertising, think tanks, supportive research, campaign donations, and personal relationships. This $63 billion gamble, regardless of its success on the global stage, will empower this industry to exert its influence over our government for decades."
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"When these private companies take their government subsidies and massive government contracts and invest billions of dollars in the Canadian arms trade, they’ll also be bankrolling long-term political support for the industry."
therover.ca
Inside CANSEC: the Military Trade Show Where our Government Spends Billions on Tanks, Guns, and Drones – The Rover
There were over 300 companies at the show this year, all trying to cash in on Canada’s newly lucrative war business. Almost all were peddling the same fantasy: mass surveillance, automated weapons, an...
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
blair @blairaf.com · 18/08/2026
There's no such thing as rogue AI, whenever you see this term the subject is actually rogue AI developers www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-...
wsj.com
How AI Models From OpenAI and Anthropic Went Rogue
Watch to learn how an AI agent escaped “sandboxed” environments and hacked a separate company—leading to calls for regulation.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 02/08/2026
If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?
olivia.science
Anxiety
Reasoning (and crying) my way through fascist AI-induced anxiety.
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
🔴 For the past year @lucasamin.bsky.social and I have been investigating Palantir in the UK What we found was a company with unrivalled political access, selling a product many data experts in the NHS don’t use, and don’t rate Please read and share democracyforsale.substack.com/p/its-just-a...
democracyforsale.substack.com
"It's just a waste of time": inside Palantir's £330m NHS failure
Our new investigation reveals the problems with Palantir’s NHS tech - and the unrivalled political access that fuelled the firm’s march into the British state
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 14/07/2026
“'They’re becoming further and further reliant on American tech companies to consolidate and make value out of all these massive data sets... [Palantir will] offer services relatively cheap up front, and then [they] get that organization or government hooked,' Doctor said" theijf.org/article/defe...
theijf.org
Defence department to buy Palantir software for $7.4 million each year
Government says it ‘inadvertently omitted’ to announce contract with controversial American tech company
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 13/07/2026
The fact that J.K. Rowling successfully bullied Amnesty International into taking down a report that accurately called out her attack on trans people, especially trans women, is so repulsive and such a display of the power of her money, and her choice to put her vast fortune behind persecution.
thepinknews.com
Amnesty removes report that called JK Rowling's centre 'anti-rights'
Amnesty International UK has removed a report which labelled JK Rowling's sexual abuse crisis centre Beira's Place as "anti-rights".
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tante @tante.cc · 10/07/2026
The amount of money that the effective altruists can just spend on all their "research labs" and think tanks to influence (tech) policy is really baffling.
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
ok bye again, back to my writing cave!
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
I have a foolproof way to make sure that your papers contain absolutely no fake references . . . . . read the papers you cite.
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 07/07/2026
it's all just two sides of the same ol colonial coin bsky.app/profile/core...
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 07/07/2026
bsky.app/profile/jeff...
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 07/07/2026
"digital colonialism" eh, I wonder where I've heard that before www.mediatechdemocracy.com/all-podcasts...
mediatechdemocracy.com
Big Tech S4E9: The Entrenched Colonialism of Tech, with Jeff Doctor — Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 07/07/2026
oh I can't wait to listen to this
Meme of Willy Wonka giving a condescending look. The caption says: "Canada won't be a digital colony? Please, tell me more about how colonization works"
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/07/2026
New preprint! So honoured to have worked with Ishani Ray on providing vital critique on "AI literacy" & correctives for those interested in understanding why "just use the newest version of an LLM" is nonsense Contra Literacy-Laundering: Mechanistic Critical AI Literacy doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/
Critical discourse on large language models (LLMs) has bifurcated between epistemic dismissal that invokes some form of the stochastic parrot metaphor to puncture hype, and pragmatic accommodation that treats LLM capability improvements as grounds for updating the critique. We argue that both misdiagnose the problem as the issue is not whether or not LLMs work, but what kind of working is happening and at whose cost. Drawing on meta-theoretical frameworks of cognitive science, feminist labor analysis and critical pedagogy, we propose a conceptual reorientation. We develop this claim through registers of (i) the cognitive, examining what is forfeited when statistical pattern-matching substitutes for the iterative, grounded processes that constitute thinking; (ii) the pedagogical, examining how “AI literacy” as currently deployed is itself a symptom of the confusion it purports to address; and (iii) the political, examining how the infrastructure framing of AI naturalizes asymmetric labor displacement, particularly of feminized cognitive and reproductive work. The stochastic parrot, deployed with mechanistic precision rather than mere rhetorical convenience, specifies what is forfeited when cognitive labor is delegated, who bears the cost, and why a literacy adequate to this moment must begin from the epistemology of those most harmed by the systems it describes. We conclude with underlining that critical AI literacy, which this paper embodies an instance of, is the only sensible way forward.
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
can I just say again: lol
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
"The US, home to Silicon Valley, billion-dollar aid packages to Israel, & lonely but powerful backing against war crime investigatory bodies like the ICC. This week marks both 250 years of US “independence” and 1000 days of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. The latter milestone is more important."
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
cats not cops

cats for palestine

all cats are beautiful
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
death is america

regime change now
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Heather Hill @rollin-academic.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Can Canadian universities quit pushing this scam industry too? Please
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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
@evansolomon.bsky.social Can the Canadian government please quit pushing this scam industry run by billionaires out to destroy knowledge and the planet? “He seemed to use it more as a digital priest whose primary purpose was to confirm that he was right and everyone else was mistaken.”
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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Listen to our conversation from www.concordia.ca/cuevents/art...
concordia.ca
So an AI Data Centre is coming to your community? | Events - Concordia University
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Mich Spieler @michspieler.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Quite fitting actually, the strategy definitely needs a check up. How it jumps from "risks of AI are real" to wanting to supercharge adoption while calling upon the holy trinity of literacy, privacy and transparency to save us from the risks, points to some health issues.
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Patiently waiting
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Reposted by Ana Brandusescu
Cynthia Khoo @cyn-k.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
For more on Canadian tech complicity w/ ICE & Israel, connected back to Canadian genocide of Indigenous peoples, see this brilliant panel that @kristenthomasen.bsky.social organized earlier this year: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGr... (And which I livetweeted here: bsky.app/profile/cyn-...) #FAccT2026
youtube.com
Technical Collaborators: Canada's Tech-Facilitated Complicity with ICE and Beyond - Panel Discussion
YouTube video by Windsor Law
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Teresa Heffernan @tjheffernan.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Palantir's collaboration with ICE and Thiel's wannabe Sauron fantasy should be enough to make clear that Canada should have nothing to do with this company. Canadian citizens did not vote for a Trump/Maga/Big Tech/Oil Industry corporate welfare model.
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
bonjour hi tile
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
It is profoundly dystopian that Canada's PM and the Minister of AI and Innovation unveiled the new national AI strategy at a hospital.
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Luke Stark @lukestark.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
It's really notable how much the tech sector has just tossed aside any pretense of ethical, environmental, social, or personal responsibility over the past five years. Explicable, but still head-spinning #facct2026 #facct26
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Luke Stark @lukestark.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Alright all, it's that time: if you've ever taught my work, would you be so kind as to DM me with details? I (and my tenure file) appreciate it!
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
"What does target generation even mean when the settler-colonial policy is one of elimination? And since Israel has been bombing everything, why hype stories about AI targeting? The focus on target generation minimizes the genocidal intent, painting perpetrators as victims, pawns of the machine."
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Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 27/06/2026
today btw
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Love all of this. A special shout out to the Prothonotary warbler 😍
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