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cameron tonkinwise

@camerontw.bsky.social
579 followers 446 following 427 posts

transition design, service design, design philosophy, finitude - most of my occasional thinking these days takes advantage of the slightly longer form afforded by the truly awful linkedin, sorry: au.linkedin.com/in/cameron-tonkinwi…

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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 7h
Socialism-lite finally doing what too few interaction designers had the courage to do
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Rachit Dubey @rachitdubey.bsky.social · 20h
hello, so I got notified about this thread and I am one of the authors of the study and appreciate the criticism. I would like to offer our perspective with the hope to have a productive discourse. 1/n
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
“Inadvertently trained” seems like Altman was hanging with his bros and spilled ice coffee on the keyboard and hit some wrong keystrokes with a paper towel and a little less like a billion dollar company strategizing about post-training techniques & model architecture
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Pretty simple test as to whether the title Critical is meaningful or not - do you acceed to Trumpian dictates or not?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Let's refer to this El Niño locally as Minns in honour of @chrisminnsmp.bsky.social - as in 'This Christmas, watch out for devastating bushfires as a result of this unprecedented Minns.' www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Jaw-dropping’ El Niño bursts through temperature record months before peak
‘Godzilla-level’ phenomenon is supercharging the climate crisis and will have a huge impact on communities across the world
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Follows the history of plastic perfectly – quite amazing technoscience product, but experienced as awful, so turns into inescapable bags and wrap until infrastructural to all supply chains
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Baldur Bjarnason @baldurbjarnason.com · 09/10/2026
“Unity's New AI Thing Is A Soulless Joke” aftermath.site/unity-spark-ai-google > I find it both astounding yet also entirely expected that we are now years into the AI bubble and everything coming out of it still looks like complete shit.
aftermath.site
Unity's New AI Thing Is A Soulless Joke
'We made Unity Spark for the gamers who have spent a thousand hours inside a genre and know exactly what’s missing' OK man
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Amongst its various other impacts, the Coalition’s migration policy announced today will lead to thousands of job losses in higher education if implemented. Maybe that’s even something they’re pleased about
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The Kouk makes a great point here. Productivity in human services is extremely hard to measure; the class sizes for teachers example is a great one. Universities have been cramming more students into their classes for years — learning has declined — is that better ‘productivity’?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
from personal experience, it is true that 'free' for the supplier means 'negative price'
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The planning contradiction is impressively neat: it accepts that 809Mt of GHG emissions will worsen global warming. It says leaving the coal in the ground would make a difference …then approves the mine anyway. Climate science only matters up until the decision. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The green light for the largest coalmine in NSW history is shocking proof that our governance systems are betraying Australians | Georgina Woods
There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair?
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The "Head On" example is incredible given that it was a homeopathic product that was mostly made of wax and didn't do anything
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Mehreen Faruqi @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
August was the hottest month in global history and yet, NSW has just approved the biggest coal mine expansion ever proposed in the state. It is scandalous that Australia is leading negotiations at global climate talks, including in the Pacific next week.
theguardian.com
Approval of biggest coal project in NSW planning commission’s history described as ‘infamous betrayal’
Independent Planning Commission says climate change impacts from Hunter Valley project will be ‘outweighed’ by economic benefits
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
yes, agree 'someone prompted it to' is not right - was just trying out on you (as suspect you have a better sense than me) some language for describing what was happening that was less the projecting-deliberating of 'it wrote its own notes'?
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“We’re losing billions and we’re making a product that’s an existential threat to humanity” is a hell of sales pitch www.ft.com/content/c768...
ft.com
Anthropic warns of ‘existential risks to humanity’ in IPO prospectus
Long-awaited S1 filing reports Claude maker lost $8bn last year on $4.6bn in revenue
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gamera obscura october edition @ohrobin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Google earth has updated its satellite images of Gaza. The destruction is almost incomprehensible.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Doesn't 'wrote its own notes' = the program involves instructions to translate aspects of its processes and their outcomes into 'natural language' that other layers of the program then recursively take as prompts? Thinking about 'CoT is not Explainability.' share.google/KjpcWLd5yzCl...
share.google
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The idea of a "tech industry" has always relied on "computer" being a special kind of medium, akin to alchemy. And if tech demands to be king, AI hype has now elevated LLMs to a king of kings. But the solipsism has hit a dead end. The only way forward is to recognize that computers are not special.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.
The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.
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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 27/09/2026
Breaking News! Code: FUBAR!!! The preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature for September 25th was 29.822°C. This breaks the previous highest temperature ever recorded in the region of 29.815°C, set on November 17th, 2015. The Climate 8-ball is exiting, stage right.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
We all had this 'I didn't do the reading' twerp in some sophomore class that was only enjoyable after he stopped turning up.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The algo era really should be understood as a permanently manipulated form of “discourse” where your responses are genuine but arise from manufactured conditions, we are usually reacting to something somebody paid for us to react to and your attention matters far more than what you say.
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
gotta say there’s something almost poetic about Trump incentivizing less fuel efficient vehicles as the Iran war keeps pushing up the price of gas
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 27/09/2026
"we can't uninvent this" we can't uninvent my car either but it still doesn't go anywhere without gas in the tank
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
Buried at the end of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's NYT interview: the single most terrible yet somehow confusingly appropriate metaphor for fossil-fuelled AI I have ever seen ketanjoshi.co/2026/09/16/n...
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tante @tante.cc · 24/09/2026
I had a few thoughts on why techbros always say these embarrassing, weird things tante.cc/2026/09/24/the-test
tante.cc
The Test
Jensen Huang, the NVIDIA CEO and wearer of the most midlife crisis looking leather jackets in the world, was on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Now I don’t really want you do go through all of what was being said in that recording/writeup. It’s painful. You feel your mental capabilities decaying with every minute of listening … […]
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Scoiattolo @scarnecchia.net · 21/09/2026
Imagine if all the evidence for climate change was "a bunch of guys on a website thought very hard about it and agreed it was very bad and might happen" instead of empiricism.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
"I belong to a cult. Someone did some research that undermines the core tenets of my cult and came up with a catchy phrase that makes it harder to recruit more people to my cult. This makes me sad."
Screencap of tweet on X from @jackclarkSF (Jack Clark):

"stochastic parrot" was a mimetically-fit cognitive virus that spread from 2021-2025; it temporarily blinded many gifted people to the nature of AI progress, burning up crucial years in which they could have helped think through the response to the situation.
7:34 AM · Sep 20, 2026
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The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Good to see this finally get coverage in my old paper. This is the same mob who campaigned against me, but it wasn’t sufficiently newsworthy then.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Was invited to a conference session on AI and Design that appeared to have been designed by a so-called-AI as it was difficult to parse, but was themed 'dramaturgy,' so I sent this low production value 5min video in place of the one they extruded for/of me vimeo.com/1228457444
vimeo.com
If and only if Brechtian genAI
Short invited presentation to 'Always Question AI'
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
see also, with a tighter commercial coupling, this company that owns a piece of curriculum infrastructure for many universities in Australia (CourseLoop): www.mi-3.com.au/09-03-2026/t...
mi-3.com.au
Can unis use commerce media to help pay for new AI functionality? TechnologyOne believes so, but agencies warn of culture and strategy clash | Mi3
Universities used to see software as plumbing: Useful, unglamorous and safely hidden behind the walls of administration. TechnologyOne has a more provocative idea. By turning a student services platfo...
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 19/09/2026
people are always saying anti-AI arguments don’t understand the full nuances of the technology. which is correct. but only because it stole everyone’s work, exists solely to get you fired, has made the entire internet unusable and has been forced on everyone without consent
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Joe Lanman @joelanman.com · 19/09/2026
www.effort.news/irregular
effort.news
A Single Firm is Behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Hacking Scandals — Effort
The Israeli Effective Altruist firm Irregular caused unsecured AI models to hack real targets.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"We have created a super-intelligence. What can we do to save humanity from certain destruction." "I know. We'll hire Accenture."
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
You have no idea how hard I pray every day to any gods for that. It most surely will not happen though.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Are CEOs lying more now than previous decades or has the job always been to lie (to customers, employees, suppliers, investors)? If they are, is that a consequence of recent Finacialisation, or a decimation of (investigative) journalism, or just following hyper-politics' lead?
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In thisa piece for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social I express the wish for a better level of public discourse around AI that doesn't leave us hanging on every word of the alleged tech gurus. www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
thenewworld.co.uk
Apocalyptic AI fantasies are a stupid, annoying distraction from its real problems
The people who work in AI are not gurus and most of their predictions have been wrong. Working in the industry makes them less reliable commentators, not more
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I have only seen cis-men opining that AI is going to kill us all. Has anyone seen anyone with a different lifeworld professing that apocalyptic belief?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Any research on pharmaceutical usage by AI bros? Are we sure their AI-is-going-to-kill-us-all is not being induced by junior programmers overdoing gummies, elder founders microdosing psychedelics, and investors incoherently amphetamined?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Slow is still within Inevitable and Powerful. Do not have truck with Slow. The reframe should be: Your so-called-AI technology does not work and there are more significant things we should be investing in developing. anthonymoser.github.io/writing/rhet...
anthonymoser.github.io
The Kirby Frame
writing is a technology, frames are a frame. bespoke human content.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Have you read Ursula le Guin's a-bit-inappropriate-by-current-standards "First Contact with the Gorgonids" published in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fishe...
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
omg, we need to be researching an 'AI Kill Switch' now as we have no idea how safely to stop what we are choosing to do
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
fine, we will not cool your enterprise software chatbot with water you want to drink - we will instead bath it in Pfas. Are you satisfied? Now get out of the goddam way of our investment scam, will you www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Tidal wave’ of Pfas being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn
Big manufacturers planning to produce more of the forever chemicals to meet demand from datacentres
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Great and important episode. Send to all your students and their parents today.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Love how the example of 'good AI' that Mr 'AI is going to kill you' gives is 'it's so much more convenient than going to the library' (at 8min 30s) - "Please regulate us so that the only thing we kill are those awful libraries" www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
abc.net.au
Godfather of AI welcomes pause in development - ABC listen
The head of the Artificial Intelligence company Anthropic has called for a global slowdown in AI development, as concerns mount over the technology's potential risks.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Has anyone ever interviewed an executive or product lead at some other company that went all-in on the Metaverse? Really intrigued to know how they rationalise it: pissed off? 'well everybody else did'? 'it was a good idea just badly executed'? so embarrased, erased from portfolio?
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Pup Fiction @pupfiction.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
BREAKING Anthony Albanese promises every Australian voter 5,000 carbon credits available via the gambling app of their choice if Labor wins the next election
Anthony Albanese
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Tim Maughan @timmaughan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
what ppl forget about LLMs is that if you start every prompt with “i am an academic so a very special and smart person“ then anything that follows has no carbon or water cost, no refugees have to clean the data of violent child abuse imagry, and everyone is fairly compensated for their stolen work
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 12/09/2026
Also like radiation, prolonged exposure leads to cumulative damage rather than immunity
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 12/09/2026
If this is confusing, imagine your roommate is going to buy an Ikea Billy bookcase, and so you loan them $50 to pay for half of it, and they write an IOU on a post-it saying so. But then, before you get paid next week, you say "that bookcase is now worth $2M." and you both agree and update the note.
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