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🌶 David Gray Widder

@davidthewid.bsky.social
3.2K followers 654 following 475 posts

Assistant Prof at UT Austin's iSchool. Big Tech, political economy, AI hype, AI in War trying to help computer ppl think more critically about computer, including me exCornell/CMU/NASA/MSR/IntelLabs. davidwidder.me

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"We analyze 550 recipients of four globally prestigious STEM awards… We find that nearly half of U.S. awardees are foreign-born—and that most first arrived as students, postdoctoral researchers…" "These pathways [are] critical to U.S. scientific leadership." Damn right!
cset.georgetown.edu
How Global Talent Pathways Shape U.S. STEM Award Achievement | Center for Security and Emerging Technology
Immigrants make up nearly half of U.S. recipients of the world's most prestigious STEM awards, yet little is known about how this talent first arrives in the country. This data brief analyzes 550 reci...
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Every day, a new crop of technologists discover that their precious artifacts DO have politics, yet every day, a new crop of technologists discover that their wallet depends on pretending otherwise.
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Abstract Tesseract @abstracttesseract.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
politics? in MY artifacts?
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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is legalese for “we checked and we absolutely fucking did scrape the chats in question and include them in the training run of the checkpoint that was used to produce the solution” bsky.app/profile/pond...
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yorick @helloyorick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
lmfao dudes rock
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Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Next week! Hosting an @aaup.org webinar with Britt Paris on our new Toolkit for Activism in AI. 9/9 3 PM. Presentation portion recorded. More events and demos through the fall. What your dues fund! www.aaup.org/event/introd...
aaup.org
Introducing the New Toolkit for Activism on AI
The new toolkit for activism on AI shares best practices on technology procurement, auditing, bargaining, conducting information requests, and developing campaigns around technology demands for chapte...
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Kavi … @geryon.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Nvidia buys Hugging Face: Yeah ok @davidthewid.bsky.social @meredithmeredith.bsky.social & @smw.bsky.social had the full story in “Open (For Business)” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Under the at least US-led political economy “open” projects WILL be tools of big SV tech & (the DOD) by default
papers.ssrn.com
Open (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI
This paper examines ‘open’ AI in the context of recent attention to open and open source AI systems. We find that the terms ‘open’ and ‘open source’ are used in
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This was unironically me in my undergrad sociology course. I wrote my professor an apology note a few years ago for once shilling for Big Number despite now being mostly a qual methods researcher.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
qualitative research is biased and subjective. instead, we have Number, which we will make sense of in a way that surely is unbiased and objective.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Super excited to be chairing the panel the on Political Economy of AI for Wesleyan's annual Sasha Seminar!!!
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Basak Kus @basakkus.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This November, I’ll have the honor of hosting the 2026 Shasha Seminar on The New Global Economic Order At Wesleyan. I can’t quite believe we’ve managed to bring all these brilliant minds together. I’ll share the website and registration details soon. For now, a little teaser!
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Micah @rincewind.run · 31/08/2026
canada: "fuck you, americans!" americans: "yeah, that's fair, fuck us up"
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Jay D. Aronson @jaydaronson.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
CMU friends and colleagues: we now have an @aaup.org advocacy chapter on campus. Reach out to me if you want to join or just learn more. We are stronger together! triblive.com/news/educati...
triblive.com
Carnegie Mellon faculty form advocacy group amid increasing pressures in higher education
More than 40 Carnegie Mellon University faculty members have formed an advocacy chapter, an effort they say gives them more teeth to respond to university decisions during a time of increasing pressur...
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United Academics @local6741.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Woot woot! Welcome CMU AAUP!
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I'll again note that the folks willing to sign a letter supporting a raging eugenicist (purportedly in defense of his academic freedom to be racist) aren't nearly as motivated when it comes to *actual* threats to academic freedom, like this.
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blair @blairaf.com · 24/08/2026
📣🚨 AI guys calling for moratoria to stop "rogue superintelligence" 🦗🦗 AI guys when governments pass moratoria on data centers
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Shuxian Liu | 刘 姝贤 @shuxianliu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
DeepSeek was a “wake-up call” in the US, but a “national-destiny light” in China. One model, radically different realities. In work w/ @davidthewid.bsky.social, we compare official vs public DeepSeek discourse in the US and China, focusing on AI infrastructure. Paper link: ssrn.com/abstract=726...
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I am teaching an undergrad course called "🤖AI, Hype, and Capitalism 🤑" — yes, the emojis are mandatory 😤. I was told undergrads are Not Well. But after reading responses to the intake survey, I am SO EXCITED FOR CLASS TOMORROW:
I saw the title and was genuinely interested. I have seen so much AI hype from large companies/institutions, yet most of the people I know personally are not as excited.
It’s one of the most interesting subjects available in informatics and one of the most time relevant topics for modern society. I am extremely curious about the content we’ll cover, but specifically from someone highly educated and professional, as opposed to varying information from echo chambers and questionable personas online.
Social informatics + interest in the topics!
I’m obsessed with AI and love learning about it
Sounds like a fun title and interested in all aspects that surround AI
I’m studying Informatics with a concentration in Data Science, so AI comes up constantly in both my classes and the career paths I’m considering. I wanted to take a class that looks beyond just how AI works technically and focuses more on its impact on businesses, the economy, and society.
In this class, I am excited to learn about these topics in particular…
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What do people expect will happen when the AI bubble pops? Both from an economic perspective and what would be done with the infrastructure created.
AI, tech related hype, and capitalism are all topics I’m quite interested in talking about and listening to, especially their connections to one another.
How these concepts intertwine with current politics, and how this varies different countries.
How will new EU regulations and other global regulations affect AI progress.
When will everything stop being propped up. Shift in enterprise tokenomics
I’m especially interested in the AI hype cycle and whether the amount of investment and attention AI is receiving actually matches its current capabilities. I’m also interested in how AI is changing Big Tech, startups, jobs, and the way companies make decisions.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Very excited to be working with Ali, and looking forward to sharing what we've got cooking 🥘
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
👋 Also, please welcome brilliant 3rd year PhD student @shuxianliu.bsky.social to Bluesky! 👋 We began working together in my Political Economy of AI PhD seminar, & she has an impressive oeuvre covering STS, geopolitics of tech, and critical and decolonial theory.
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ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 21/08/2026
Hey, I'm in Austin Texas now. I'm pursuing a PhD at UT Austin, working with @davidthewid.bsky.social, where I'm going to be thinking about AI and tech refusal (which, in my mind, is very broad and generally inclusive). lmk if you're in the area.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
📣 I am super excited this preprint with @shuxianliu.bsky.social is out - our attempt to problematize the "US-China AI arms race" discourse, and generally, better ground critical AI discourse in actual infrastructure and other material realities.
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Shuxian Liu | 刘 姝贤 @shuxianliu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
US & Chinese official discourses strategically converge—shaped by where each sits in the global AI stack (chip dependency vs. compute ambition). But technically literate publics on Reddit & Zhihu? They fracture both official stories by injecting grounded skepticism. One interesting example:
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19/08/2026
The response to Flock as the visible signifier of oppressive surveillance is….something. Someone should write a book about it.
gadgetreview.com
Flock Cameras Are Affecting the Housing Market: Homebuyers Are Checking Surveillance Maps, Then Canceling
Flock Safety ALPR cameras are now influencing home-buying decisions, with buyers using DeFlock to map neighborhood surveillance before scheduling showings.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
📣 I am super excited this preprint with @shuxianliu.bsky.social is out - our attempt to problematize the "US-China AI arms race" discourse, and generally, better ground critical AI discourse in actual infrastructure and other material realities.
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Just got back from a book event for this, and the event was packed with tech organizers who were all invited to share their experiences, and strategic insights (failures AND successes) in an atmosphere of optimism, solidarity, generosity, and intellectual seriousness. Really excited about this book
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 13/08/2026
🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....
Cover of my new book, Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and The Radicalization of a Tech Idealist. 

There are two concentric circles in the book, the left being circuits in black an white, and the right being a bunch of dots with orange accents. The cover background is cream. And the words are written in black except for "Un" which is in orange.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
A lot of power to hand over to Sam Altman’s optimization & training priorities
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11/08/2026
In the end, it's all pretty simple: hyperscaler growth is now tied to the ability of OpenAI and Anthropic to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, requiring both the demand, funds and completed capacity to do so. Their futures depend on the impossible. www.wheresyoured.at/dont-look-up/
In the end, it’s pretty simple: Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s hypergrowth era ends if Anthropic and OpenAI can’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on compute, and companies like Oracle, CoreWeave, Nebius, and IREN face apocalyptic circumstances when they fail to do so. NVIDIA’s future is entirely dependent on these companies’ abilities to convince the credit markets that everything will go fine, and its circular financing operations are both sustained and continue to expand.

And every VC invested in AI needs a miracle, because there are few signs that these companies can be sold to anyone or taken public. 

When it becomes safe to do so, many will attempt to either rationalize ignoring reality or pretend they saw it coming. 

If they did, they chose not to tell you. If they didn’t, they chose not to look.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Sometimes there's a good news day :)
Screenshot of this page: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/someone-cut-down-every-single-195606685.html
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AAUP Alabama @alabamaaaup.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Please fill out this survey and share your experience as a faculty member in the South.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 04/08/2026
“If faculty are constantly looking for the exit door, that’s going to have devastating effects on the quality of teaching and research that takes place at that institution.” — Isaac Kamola, director of the AAUPs’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom.
news.bloomberglaw.com
Professors Notch Court Wins Over States Banning ‘Woke’ Teaching
Courtroom victories for public university professors over state teaching restrictions on race, gender, and unconscious bias are beginning to define the bounds of unlawful political oversight of higher...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Rest in power, Johanna. 🖤
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Often my academic friends ask how they can help when they learn how Texas is restricting teaching and denying tenure. The answer: Join AAUP. Your dues—small as they are (~$30)—help build collective power to fight for legislation, policy, and in the courts for students, faculty, & staff. Join us!
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Meme with Terminator protagonist Sarah Connor pictured in an insane asylum below white on black text: "Remember in terminator when Sarah Conner was thrown in a mental asylum for destroying data centers owned by Skynet?"
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Hauke Sandhaus @sandhaus.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Not sure if you missed this, but our paper "Making Indecent Persuasion Visible: How Evaluation Metrics Shape UX Designers’ Ethical Reasoning" with Rhomberg, and Nissenbaum was awarded the *best late breaking work* (1 out of 25 accepted). dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... hauke.haus/assets/pdf/P...
from 30% rejection to 56% rejection in the persuasion metrics condition.
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Sireesh Gururaja @siree.sh · 24/07/2026
It's finally out! At a time when basic research funding through the NSF and NIH in the US is under threat, it's important to understand what "basic" means in the context of more available DoD funding. For a lot of academics, the DoD's "basic" might not be be as basic as you think!
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Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Dr. Iván Chaar López: “If you want a productive university…that supports the state, its citizens, its neighbors, I’m not sure that you want the workers in this institution to be nervous, to be looking over their shoulders… Academic freedom is not under duress—it’s being dismantled.”
insidehighered.com
Prof Denied Tenure: Academic Freedom at UT Being Dismantled
Border-surveillance researcher Iván Chaar López received a near-unanimous recommendation from faculty and outstanding external support letters. Still, he was denied tenure without explanation.
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
"AI is, above all else, a weapon of class war from above. Whether it’s the state that wields it or corporations does little to change that fact." A nice corrective in Jacobin by @hagenblix.bsky.social and Ingeborg Glimmer jacobin.com/2026/07/ai-n...
jacobin.com
The Socialist Case Against Nationalizing AI
AI is not a neutral technology whose benefits need to be redistributed. It is a weapon of class war from above, designed to cheapen labor and concentrate power. Nationalizing it does nothing to change...
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 21/07/2026
for the record, Dublin's housing crisis has become severe and immigrants, not big tech all with European headquarters in Dublin, are blamed for it
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CJ @virmalised.us · 21/07/2026
the constant fearmongering about chinese AI is so stupid. dawg they have like at least three times as many people and a functioning economy and they actually teach math there. of course they're going to be better at this
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
This is a great read, and it's also a lesson. This is what everyone could be doing, at every level. This is the possibility open to every one of us, while every single cry of "we had no choice" was and is a cowardly lie.
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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
2/4 AIES accepts. Kinda bummed about the rejected two, which are good work and got good reviews, but oh well! More time to make good work into excellent work.
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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“Rather than rushing to monetize content, ACM prioritized protecting the integrity of the ACM Digital Library and understanding the views of authors and volunteer leaders.” friendly reminder that ACM are an educational and scientific professional organisation. no kudos for not ‘monetizing content’
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Bolts @boltsmag.org · 17/07/2026
The LAPD announced on Saturday that it will not renew its contract with Flock Safety, after an audit found that officers had investigated 161 people within a two-month period whose cars Flock cameras had mistakenly flagged as stolen.
404media.co
LAPD Regularly Pulled Over Innocent People Because License Plate Readers Flagged Their Cars As Stolen
The Los Angeles Police Department let its Flock contract expire over the weekend in part because it was regularly "investigating" and surveilling innocent people.
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Dawn Nafus @dawnnafus.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Excellent account of the doublespeak necessary to make it possible for researchers to agree to do the science of killing more people faster.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 14/07/2026
I love it when companies offer free shovels to dig your own grave.
9to5mac.com
Anthropic is giving teachers free access to premium Claude features, details here - 9to5Mac
Anthropic is providing free access to premium Claude AI features to K-12 teachers in the United States. The effort is...
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AAUP @aaup.org · 14/07/2026
Ah, the freedom of choice in the marketplace of ideas… If you build a conservative think tank on campus & no students want to attend, just make a law forcing them to. 👀 #academicsky
axios.com
Cirino wants university civic center classes to be mandatory
The new bill would broaden the authority of Ohio's controversial civics centers despite low enrollment so far.
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