iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Hearing lots of discourse about "stochastic parrots" recently? Here's a discussion of the backstory, both of the phrase itself and what's going on now.

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Britt Paris @hellobrittparis.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Register for our AAUP webinar for the 3rd segment of our Toolkit series on intervening in institutional procurement TODAY Wednesday 10/7 at 3pm ET introducing our "Strategy Playbook for Addressing AI at Work" resource with Cynthia Conti-Cook! www.aaup.org/event/strate...

aaup.org

Strategy Playbook for Addressing AI at Work

This webinar spotlights a strategy procurement playbook that outlines various tools and strategies for workers in higher education to democratize procurement practices around AI and other technologies...

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

BREAKING: A federal judge has ruled for the first time that a Flock search was unconstitutional and violated a woman's Fourth Amendment rights. Oklahoma cop pulled over a woman and searched her in Flock "because he saw her license plate was from California" www.404media.co/federal-judg...

404media.co

Federal Judge Rules a Flock Search Was ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’ and Unconstitutional

Flock’s nationwide network is quickly “approaching dragnet-type law enforcement practice” and the cop should have got a warrant, the judge wrote.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

it's really not! no one ever really gave a shit that Al Gore inflated his role in funding the development of the internet, it was a goofy thing to make fun of, and everyone knew it wasn't true folks with vested interests in AI (Jack Clark, Stapp etc) bring up SP quite a lot, it really irks them

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

surprisingly poor metaphor for someone who is trying to play the role of a condescending AI understander

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Gef the Toking Mongoose @geftokingmongoose.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

God this shit was cool as fuck

Still from the movie Jurassic Park showing a raptor with genetic code projected onto it

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

ok a little hyperbolic but they really do hate it!

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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Announcing the merger with Titanic footage is an incredible bit

David Ellison • @ellisonskyd... 2h
What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.
Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren't rewriting history — we're equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first ho Show

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I don't actually know any critics going around saying "AI is just a stochastic parrot" in 2024 -- it's typically pro-AI folks who bring it up themselves, who *want* that to be the extent of critics' understanding of the current systems; a straw man that they can then more easily wave away

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Eli Valley @elivalley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Democrats caved and/or facilitated this monopolization of practically every major media property in the US into the hands of a MAGA fascist psychopath. If the US had an opposition party, each of its presidential contenders would would vow to dissolve this monopoly by any means necessary.

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Danya Glabau @allergyphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A great listen this morning!

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Kevin Barron @kevinbarron.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

“To have someone say that’s bullshit, here’s why that’s bullshit, and have a two-word phrase that encapsulates it, drives (those heavily invested in it) absolutely crazy”. This is a must-watch. @bcmerchant.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social are two of the best minds on this Ai insanity.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And none of this means there's nothing to worry about when it comes AI or the 'power' of the systems; these are enormous engines of surveillance, automation, and text/image production that can and are causing great harm. Anyway, we get into all this and more, this was a really great chat, imo:

youtube.com

The Two Most Dangerous Words to the AI Industry

YouTube video by Blood in the Machine

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think that's a big part of it too, and we discuss it as well

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

But LLMs are, to this day, still well enough understood as stochastic parrots. It's an accurate description of the technology. Many AI models involve more than LLMs, as fellow co-author Margaret Mitchell pointed out, but it's *still* a useful critical framework for understanding AI's limits.

medium.com

No, “AI” is not a Stochastic Parrot 🦜

I’ve recently come across a new flavor of AI denialism making the rounds.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

yeah I thought you were talking about the post at first

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It undercuts the entire project, both from narrative and marketing perspective—and injures the egos of men who imagine themselves to be playing a key role in the most important project in history in the process.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

she's a co-author of the paper though?

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My theory: More than critiques of circular financing, or of dubious product functionality, "stochastic parrots" undermines the foundation that the entire AI boom is built on: The story that the AI industry is building an unfathomably powerful machine god.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

No two words send AI industry advocates into fits of rage more than "stochastic parrots." The question is: Why? Why do they get so worked up over this particular critical framework time and time again? I sat down with @emilymbender.bsky.social, one of the coauthors of the original paper, to discuss

bloodinthemachine.com

The two words the AI industry hates more than anything

I talk with computational linguist Emily M. Bender, co-author of the influential 2021 “stochastic parrots” paper, about why AI industry leaders can’t stop seething over the term.

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Caroline Luce @lucecaroline.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The CalFed and UCB labor center have been doing such amazing work to make this happen and I am grateful!

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could they didn't stop to think if they should

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The fact that these surely exist and are almost certainly preserved on one of Musk's servers presents yet another wrinkle in this story

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

xAI employee leak Trump's chat logs with Grok challenge

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This Browns-Steelers game, with Deshaun "20 sexual harassment and assault allegations but no announcer ever mentions them" Watson vs Aaron "withered husk of an anti-vaxxing QAnon elder" Rodgers" may have the worst vibes of any primetime sporting event I have ever seen

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S.E. Sinkhorn @sesinkhorn.com · 02/10/2026

hell yeah

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"For sure there’s much more to be done to build out a robust set of worker technology rights for the 21st century labor market," she continued, "but California’s unions have put the first big stake in the ground."

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“This is a breakthrough moment in tech policy,” Annette Bernhardt of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, tells me. “Right now, it’s the wild west when it comes to how employers use electronic monitoring and algorithmic management, because there are literally no rules of the road."

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Furthermore, there's a new law that will provide annual tax credits for newsrooms that hire local journalists—a bulwark against the rise of AI-generated content, as @mattdpearce.com points out, and an investment in human journalists.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The laws include a ban on bosses using AI to fire workers, bans on AI surveillance in a number of workplace environments, including the bathroom, codification that healthcare professionals cannot have their decision-making outsourced to AI, and professors and teachers cannot be replaced by AI.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some good news for a change: Overcoming a massive and aggressive tech lobby and a squeamish, Silicon Valley-friendly governor, the labor movement has managed to pass a raft of first-of-their-kind AI laws aimed at protecting workers in California.

bloodinthemachine.com

California just passed the strongest AI labor laws in the US

Finally, some good news

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 30/09/2026

Eugenics 🤝 ai www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/h...

One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us, ‘Trust the experts,’” Mr. Kennedy said during the Tuesday session.

“If somebody tells you, ‘Masks work, trust the experts,’ A.I. may tell you otherwise,” he added. “If somebody tells you, ‘Social distancing works, trust the experts,’ A.I. may correct that. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, or you need to take it to protect your grandmother, A.I. may say it actually doesn’t do that.”

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

might as well light up a neon sign that says 'we're doing fascism' at this point

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

there's still this idea among some ai boosters that ai in law is gonna level the playing field for poor people/give them better access to law but so far it's been like: your state appointed attorney will shit out the worst possible ai-generated bullshit and you'll rot in prison

“It's little comfort to know that my stupidity is what brings us together this afternoon,” New Mexico attorney Stephen D. Aarons said in a hearing last month before five judges. He “assumed” ChatGPT would generate a “bulletproof summary of proceedings.” Instead, ChatGPT generated false testimony from “wholly fabricated witnesses,” according to an order of direct contempt from the New Mexico Supreme Court. Aarons was representing a man who was found guilty of killing his wife earlier this year; Aarons said he hadn’t told his client directly that he was caught using ChatGPT on the case because he’s currently serving life in prison.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If you were looking for an artifact that encapsulates this moment in time you could do worse than an official federal document signed by our top oligarchs that both declares AI is a "super intelligence" and is slop that misspells the country's name as "the Unites States"

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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There will have to be a reckoning with the role the press has played in amplifying Alpha School’s narrative. Many exceptions to this. But nonetheless, a reckoning is due.

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