iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 5h

Please help us RT our study and sent to CV friends!

Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder

I am running a study on how computer vision researchers perceive dual-use risks of the field. If you work in CV, and would like to help us, the survey takes less than 3min. Reply or DM me for the link. You will be helping us a lot! Reposts are much appreciated 🙏

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The iSchool at UT is hiring up to 4 tenured or tenure-track faculty! open area! Please RT/ forward this to folks on the market, happy to answer questions!

picture of the jobs page at the UT iSchool, with the UT tower on right, and the Information word mark in top left.

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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 Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

🎶 The club isn't the best place to find TSH, so the lab is where I go…

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

but we must find Hegseth a husband! an impeccably groomed one!!!

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

what a wonderful policy!! who ever could disagree w such policy!

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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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Aaahh!!! bstract 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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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

hi Gregory! I recruit for my local AAUP and we certainly don't exclude- all instructors, professors, staff and even PhD students are welcome. Also, you'd know better, but it appears even AAUP@U Delaware also welcomes all faculty?

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

yeah. hacking is illegal. prosecute!

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Gonna stay there for a month for AIES? Please???

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Dan "Mr. Bones and Me" 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

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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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Yeah exactly. What state are you? I'm TX, but frequently in PA, NY, and OR.

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

idk, but can I buy one? where are they?

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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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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Also I thought we agreed Bill Gates wasn't a thought leader anymore because his thoughts included hanging out w Pedos? Why is he everywhere again?

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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I literally moved from CMU where I sat in the Tata Consultancy Services building, to Cornell Tech where I sat in Bloomberg hall, next to the Tata Consultancy Services building. I wonder where we got the dismal academia we have?

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Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder

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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Reposted by 🌶 David Gray Widder

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

Watch out AI, you are about to be deleted!!!!

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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

THIS!!! A history of FOSS is a history of these fractures.

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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

But Dawn its a race! Do you want to lose the RACE?

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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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🌶 David Gray Widder @davidthewid.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

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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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