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Andrew Selbst

@aselbst.bsky.social
4.3K followers 1K following 2K posts

UCLA Law Prof. Focused on law, tech, and justice. Posting is mostly rage at fascists, their journalist enablers, and feckless Dems who need to retire. Sometimes I even post about things people call me an expert in. He/him. ssrn.com/author=1328346

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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 6h
FWIW, the first time I heard this was from a woman excitedly doing a sales pitch. I think the link between patriarchy and capitalism exists, but in this case it might be operating at a higher level of abstraction than whatever social disorders are driving this particular claim.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 6h
As a parent of young kids I’m shocked how often this is stated as a use case for AI. It says to me that while surely patriarchy is part of it, it’s evident that lots of AI folks don’t understand the value of human connection, and that some things, like bonding with your baby, can’t be automated away
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Look at this, a nation state, nationing and stating.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 12h
Yeah this is probably right. I don’t know if it’s right as a matter of law and policy or a matter of parenting, but it’s probably right overall. And keep it the fuck out of schools.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 18h
Trump: *says horrible thing* the media: he didn’t actually mean it Trump: no I definitely one hundred percent meant it
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 22h
Yeah, I think that makes sense, though the AI trash talk has tended to go the other way in the past: “Hahaha you got beat by the autodrafted team. Guess you’d have been better off skipping the draft too!” Etc.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
IME half the social interaction in fantasy football is trash talk. Hard to really trash talk much when an AI makes your moves unless you’re like, Sam Altman
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Got into an argument over dinner at a recent conference with a newer L&E scholar who seemed to legitimately not understand why I called L&E a RW political project. I think this is why—they saw L&E as a collection of empirical methods and didn’t appreciate the history or perception of their own field
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Agreed strongly with the main point. If modern L&E scholars want credit for being enlightened rather than standard right-coded hackery, they need to actually grapple with the damage that earlier L&E caused in the law. They can’t just associate with the influential label and wish the problems away
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Oh yeah, parts of torts are more obviously so. And I explicitly bring critical race theory readings into torts because oh look, weird, turns out race matters in hidden ways in law, who knew? And yeah that is clearly read as partisan today.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Of course, in my torts course, I’m usually talking about the deontological and utilitarian views of tort law, which yeah, doesn’t seem as obviously partisan as con law. In AI law and privacy law though the political valence is usually more salient and thus comes out.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
If someone is worried about not appearing partisan today, it requires taking seriously offensive and fundamentally unserious positions (usually offered in bad faith anyway). In the face of that reality, a view from nowhere is a distinct negative.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Yeah, I’m not out there like “vote Dem” but opinions come out in critiques of the law related to class. But also, in our era, some uncontroversial things that have become partisan. Embracing the rule of law—a basic prerequisite view in a law class—requires condeming a political party’s views.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
For all that I’m a lot more measured in torts class than my AI Law class, where I can’t help but sneer when I discuss grok the Nazi LLM
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Julian Davis Mortenson @jdmortenson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Now I’m feeling somewhat serious Like yall track what serious *lawyers* the good crits were??? That ish was earned not asserted
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
But in this I suspect I’m closer to the norm than you—if perhaps more critically oriented than average—as my conclusion is not “juristocracy bad” but “this is just kinda the nature of the thing”
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Im teaching torts so it’s different but I spend a *lot* of class making the point that judges are making arguments to an audience of the public as much as lawyers make arguments to judges—examining rhetorical devices that may or may not actually be relevant to the case and asking why they’re there
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I had fewer. It was largely view-from-nowhere. Not that it was super hard to puzzle out—like if you’re critiquing originalism in Heller, you could be on the left or right because it’s transparently nonsense, but both sides *dont* treat it the same so
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
That was my stance long before the magic machine could tell them my views too.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I am transparent about my views in class and I emphasize that they are mine and people are free to disagree if they have reasons. I think being intellectually honest about arguments’ strengths and weaknesses is what most important to learning both sides, not appearing to lack opinions.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It’s governance by the maxim of “I’m not touching you”
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Evan Hurst @evanhurst.substack.com · 05/10/2026
Do it. Whoever is keeping The LIst of all the things we have to do, put it on there.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A competent Democratic Party, seeing the probability of retaking both houses, would absolutely be doing this. So of course there’s no way they are.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Haha yes very true!
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
They’re making the same mistake journalists have. It’s not partisan to speak out and defend your institutions against threats, even if those threats are partisan in nature. If you’re in university leadership, doing so should be considered part of your job, not something to avoid.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
David’s essay reveals clearly that this is not the priority of OpenAI. The “alignment problem” here is that the values of human wellbeing and humility are misaligned with the risk culture and social indifference of some in Silicon Valley. This is the first order problem.
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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The New York Times has a choice of whether to cover Trumpism as A) an amusing and colorful example of the oddity of American politics, or B) an existential threat to the future of everyone you know and love. Over and over, they choose A. They trivialize themselves.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Man, imagine telling the pope to shut the fuck up. I’m not one for deference to anyone out of politeness, and I swear way too much where I shouldn’t, but—if you’ll excuse me here—JFC. I’m nowhere near catholic & I’m more likely to tell a US president I actually like to STFU than the pope!
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Most importantly, his response makes a ton of sense—more caution and safety redundancy to avoid catastrophe, new science to figure out how to protect the future But I have to ask—if the head of safety couldnt get it done internally bc of culture, is any response left other than shutting them down?
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Completely agree. I’ve tended to be a little dismissive of the superintelligence talk, and even this piece raises my hackles on the amount of rhetorical buy-in to the project it displays….but i take what David says seriously and given the source, i have to wonder if it’s time to reassess my priors.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
If it’s not being manipulated intentionally, @margotkaminski.bsky.social and I think there’s a good chance it’s not going to be speech at all under current doctrine. See our paper: papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=... But that just gives them all incentives to make sure it’s doing the bad thing.
papers.ssrn.com
AI and the Doctrine of Speakerless Speech
What makes speech “speech” for purposes of the First Amendment? Although the Supreme Court has developed elaborate doctrines governing when speech may be regula
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The scarier thing about all this is that the more this is about political propaganda the more likely courts are to find that it’s a form of protected speech. If it’s just subtle manipulative ads, then it shouldn’t be an issue to stop as deceptive commercial speech. But if it’s subtle RW propaganda…
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
JFC
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Definitely a concern but if we have even a modicum of functional consumer protection law it won’t get to this right? Right?
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is the same court that “overruled” Korematsu in a decision upholding a case using the exact same reasoning. Not looking good.
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Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Ed @sfndhe.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Same in CT. It's cuts cuts cuts ideology at extreme. Society way past 1980s tax/welfare revolt, past peak neolib austerity of early 2000s. Now completely culturally+socially submerged and political-economically engaged in race of cuts. No space for other creative thinking. Only cuts. @aaup.org
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This can’t be justified by “freedom” to buy kill your defenseless kid by feeding them contaminated black market milk.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This is enraging.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
How many times now have we heard a version of AI solving the “problem” of needing to read to your kids? I don’t think you’re far off here.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
this really is impeachable for any president, but really grotesque coming from a regime that cut life-saving development aid because they said it was not efficient
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
They’re just really not bothering pretending to do law any more, are they?
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I was just thinking about whether it actually fits mine or not. Probably not so it’s all yours. :)
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I feel like this could be cover art for a book on tech fascism.
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b9a1baa8.bsky.social @b9a1baa8.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is literally just the oversized Florsheim shoe loyalty test, but for tech CEOs.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The term “artificial intelligence” is now wrongthink
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Thanks. I’ll give it a read for now. For my purposes, I’m writing about the special treatment law has given to the software industry, formally or informally. So I was curious about a potential example I wasn’t aware of, but it seems that’s not the case. Still interesting tho.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I just looked at the abstract after the screenshot. Seems like the answer is to read your article! :) So I shall. Thanks!
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Is there any actual legal basis to complain about such things? Is there an extreme at which point it tests limits of what’s allowed? Or is it really just up to the companies to draw it up as they see fit and be disciplined by the market? (Again, total novice - never even took the class.)
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Awesome, thanks!
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Law folks: Is this unique to the tech companies or an example of something more widespread? Anything you’d suggest to read related to this for a complete novice on corporate structures? (I’m curious for my own research of it’s another case of the law carving out special rules for the tech industry.)
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