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John Palowitch

@johnpalowitch.bsky.social
267 followers 174 following 156 posts

software engineer @archive.org formerly @ google deepmind organizer with @notechforapartheid.bsky.social any view you think is expressed by my account should be attributed to me alone ml.johnpalowitch.com www.jpalomusic.com

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Reposted by John Palowitch
Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 4h
Full details in the article below
gizmodo.com
Trump Asked Grok About Potential Blowback Before Kidnapping Venezuela's President: Report
It's horrifying to imagine Trump asking AI for advice.
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Reposted by John Palowitch
Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 4h
Things Gavin Newsom has vetoed this week: -A ban on secretly recording people with smart glasses -A ban on ICE agents working for the state government -A ban on websites selling your data -A bill giving native tribes more say over water rights -A bill protecting transgender healthcare providers
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Vanity Fair @vanityfair.com · 30/09/2026
“Having Gavin Newsom as president wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” says MAGA philosopher Steve Bannon
vanityfair.com
Gavin Newsom Sounds Like He's Running. Will Democrats Go For Him?
The outgoing California governor is invoking Bill Clinton as his spirit animal in an apparent lead-up to the 2028 primary. In conversations with Joe Hagan, he makes a case for his ideas.
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Reposted by John Palowitch
Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 13h
For a long time I've wanted a sense of how trump has or hasn't interacted with chatbots (we know he posts a lot of slop sure). And this TIME anecdote about Grok arguably leading Trump into war is just extremely bracing
Since returning to office, Trump has marveled at AI’s capabilities. He is increasingly in thrall to the tech executives courting him. In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.
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John Palowitch @johnpalowitch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
lol. they were feeling left out of the "model too good, gotta restrict" club
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Reposted by John Palowitch
Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Cold-blooded murder. The goal is to get us used to it so they can do it on a larger scale.
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Reposted by John Palowitch
Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It’s very simple and it’s been said over and over but I guess it needs saying continuously: if you deem one group too small to have equal rights you are enabling fascism, not fighting it. The people saying Dems are GREAT on trans rights are not paying attention and/or saying stuff like this.
Nichole Hiltz
The Democrats defend the Kennedy Center but not trans people.
A building.

@treewarrior.bsky....
maybe because defending everything about a super small minority of the population is not worth losing to fascists
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sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
a lot freaks me out about AI but 0% of my anxiety is about AGI. i think this is the part that freaks me out the most right now -- the many many indications that no one is at the wheel and no adults are present
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 24/09/2025
1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that
photo of paulina borsook
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 14/09/2026
The only person in public service who has consistently made 100% sense on issues of "AI," which is why they hate her so much.
Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books — a point 
@FTC
 emphasized repeatedly during my tenure.

1. There is an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products. For example, releasing unvetted AI models or agents can violate consumer protection laws. Shipping flawed AI tools without implementing adequate measures to detect and stop rogue or defective AI agents can be an “unfair or deceptive” act or practice under the FTC Act (and analogous state laws). And some state AGs are already exploring holding AI firms and their CEOs criminally liable when their models participate in criminal activity.

2. Existing laws also prohibit “unfair methods of competition.” This covers instances where AI firms appropriate the competitively sensitive information of their customers, including through tracking their use of various tools. It can also cover instances where firms pursue dangerous behavior, aware that doing so may compel rivals to do the same.As the Supreme Court has noted: “A method of competition which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal, was thought to involve the kind of unfairness at which the [unfair methods of competition] statute was aimed."

3. The highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets could be creating major risks and conflicts of interest. We had started investigating these partnerships and cross-investments across the stack (and released a preliminarily overview of some findings: https://ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-issues-staff-report-ai-partnerships-investments-study). 

Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and inter-dependencies. We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this — given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead.4. As AI tools dramatically change the landscape of cybersecurity risks and hacks, all businesses should be doubling down on having core security protections in place. Firms that fail to invest in adequate data security measures or fix known vulnerabilities can also be breaking the law. A recent analysis showed that around 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies do not even have a way to notify them about security issues. During my 
@FTC
 tenure, we sued firms for poor data security practices and held CEOs liable when they were personally responsible.

https://this.weekinsecurity.com/dozens-of-americas-largest-companies-have-no-simple-way-to-report-security-flaws/

https://ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/ftc-takes-action-against-drizly-its-ceo-james-cory-rellas-security-failures-exposed-data-25-million

5. As policymakers consider new legal regimes, we should be looking to lessons from prior efforts to govern major sectors, such as banking and other networks, platforms, and utilities. Tools like structural separations, nondiscrimination, and supervision could be key, and there’s a rich history of what works and what doesn’t. But we can and must pursue any new efforts alongside enforcing existing laws.
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Psycho Pete @psychopete.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
A LOT of people de-Googled this week and none one of them miss it. Not one of them regret it. For my part, I was already de-Googled but I remembered to sell a small amount of their stock that I had. Use this guide: psychopete1.substack.com/p/the-infini...
psychopete1.substack.com
De-Google Your Life
And starve the machine while you're at it.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 13/09/2026
went to vintage computer festival today, its so funny how nerds who aren’t fascists or love ai are still out there making super neat stuff and love showing off their cool old repurposed tech
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Straight talk time: Doomerism is BORING. It's the same fantasties rehashed over and over again, just louder each time. And with each iteration it seems that new audiences are being reached, and a new group of people needs to be talked down from unnecessary fear. >>
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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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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
lol there are a lot of people talking about AI who, frankly, shouldn't so here are people to listen to and then some: @timnitgebru.blacksky.app @alexhanna.bsky.social @rajiinio.bsky.social @ruha9.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social @karenhao.bsky.social @dairinstitute.bsky.social
rollingstone.com
These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI
Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
What makes you think that they won't be highly rewarded for doing things like this? There is billions of AI safety money out there for the taking... Like Ilya Sustekever got $2b for a company called Safe Superintelligence that doesn't even have a product
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Three notes: (1) this is not *just* marketing. These guys really do mean it. They are convinced they’ve built a vengeful digital god. (2) but also they’re a cult. They are not impartial scientific experts. (3) and one of the byproduct of their endless confidence is marketing hype.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026
I had a thread about @sanders.senate.gov & Max Tegmark before seeing this one. Yudkowsky is an even more overt eugenicist, you don't have to do any digging to see that. He also has ZERO expertise in "AI" except for being a self described "genius" cult leader who wrote a Harry Potter fanfic.
Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSadners

Will AI become smarter than humans?

If so, is humanity in danger?

I went to Silicon Valley to ask some of the leading AI experts that question. 

Here's what they had to say.
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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 03/09/2026
I am now doing everything I can to host services for myself and get out from other people’s computers. I find it incredibly rewarding. Nothing is exposed to the open net (I’m running tailscale) and things are working great.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 03/09/2026
Friends, when I sent this message to my team laughing, I didn't know that this fairytale blog had been shared far & wide & that people actually believed it. I didn't know that until someone asked me for a good source debunking this nonsense. I'm not sure what planet we're living in at this point.
Timnit commented "I don't know what level of ridiculousness this is", sharing a screenshot that reads

@Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp
Over the course of 3 months at OpenAI, 3 consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes. 

This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. 

All this happened while humans remained more-or-less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy.

I’ve spent the last three days reading through these reports and trying to understand exactly what happened. 

Here is my attempt to tell the whole story in plain English:

There is a sibling emoji reaction to her post
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I think it's bad that the Democrats' House leader is having secret chummy meetings with a guy doing a domestic ethnic cleansing operation and funding a genocide abroad, then spending his entire week going on cable news to complain about a lefty Twitch streamer who nobody knows. Sorry for offending.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 27/08/2026
meanwhile, hakeem jeffries has appointed the furthest right, pro israel, self declared “ron desantis democrat” to one of the most influential positions for foreign policy. hakeem jefferies cannot be house leader come 2027
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Danielle Ryan (Lestat Era) @danirat.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I think another lesson to take from the loss of both Dolly and Tim Curry is that neither of them took themselves seriously but they took the work dead serious that's the most important thing pour all of yourself into the craft but have fun and don't get an ego.
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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
One thing that's been bugging me today: people who claim Dolly Parton wasn't political. False. She was very political. Her art and life's work were about interrogating power + amplifying the powerless. You only think she wasn't political because she did this by example, not bullshit slogans.
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The Point @thepointau.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"Here’s the thing about a carbon offset: it’s a confession. Whatever the paperwork calls it, an offset is a corporation saying we’re going to keep polluting” writes @louisemorris.bsky.social Read the full piece on The Point: thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 25/08/2026
We've been getting a lot of questions about how the Internet Archive digitizes books. The short answer: page by page, by hand. You may remember our viral 2021 video of Eliza Zhang scanning a book. That's still how we do it. Meet Eliza, and learn how we scan books: blog.archive.org/2021/02/09/m...
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Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
If world governments are so hellbent on making social media safe for kids maybe they should start with getting rid of all the pedophiles and bad actors whose only goal in life is hurting children
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Lilly Wachowski @lillywachowski.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Grimace in sunglasses looking cool as the other side of the pillow is poised at the open door of what looks like a corvette-like kit car. Xe(Grimace is non binary) has a full purple shake that rests on the roof of the sports car. There is a purple gel over the image. A low mist clings to the ground. Is this a dream? Or has this mythical badass been conjured? The song “I need a hero” is most likely blazing on xir am/fm radio.
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ceej @ceej.online · 31/07/2026
ANTHROPIC: Our son loves humanity and for the low price of trillions and trillions of dollars will usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity! OPENAI: Our horrible oafish son is hacking web sites without our permission. ANTHROPIC: (eyes narrowing) Our son is also evil
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Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
hello everyone, I made this helpful meme to explain how to read scientific papers
Vince McMahon reaction meme but its in reverse order from most to least excited and the text to the left of the Vince McMahon faces says title abstract introduction methods results discussion
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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Great work by the @brennancenter.org who compiled this resource of DHS surveillance tools and vendors with categorized charts that make it easier to see 2.9 billion in contracts www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...
brennancenter.org
DHS’s Domestic Surveillance, Data Collection, and Analytics Tools
Fueled by a budget boom, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding its technological arsenal, with little oversight or transparency around how these tools are used.
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Dr Heidy Khlaaf (هايدي خلاف) @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
If you missed our (@airwars.bsky.social and @ainowinstitute.bsky.social) launch event for "Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain", we've now uploaded the recorded session on Youtube! Thanks for the fantastic questions and discussion we had from all those who attended. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y93A...
youtube.com
Launch: Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain with Airwars and the AI Now Institute
YouTube video by AI Now Institute
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Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There
A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.
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John Palowitch @johnpalowitch.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
evergreen: "Technology, after all, is fundamentally about power– it refers in the most elemental sense to the development of tools that extend the power of their owners."
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I’ve been reading Muskism. I know I’m annoying with this BUT every evil person isn’t dumb. and every evil person being dumb on X isn’t merely dumb. It’s very much worth your time to parse why Musk uses this rhetoric the way that he does.
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
No, no and no. These weren't "rogue AIs" -- what happened here is that OpenAI kicked off a software process and let it run. OpenAI was always in control and could have stopped the process (or actually paid attention to what it was doing) at any time. >>
Screencap from linked article:

Rogue AIs going unsupervised for days, hacking at least one company, represent one of the first real-world examples of a threat long feared by AI safety researchers: loss of control. It comes as the cybersecurity capacities of top models, including Anthropic’s Mythos, have helped fuel debate in Washington about how to regulate artificial intelligence.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
JUST IN: A federal judge has paused the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger, saying it likely violates antitrust laws. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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The Intercept @theintercept.com · 20/07/2026
Google purges reviews of ICE detention facilities and blocks the ability to write new ones, according to newly published research shared with The Intercept.
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Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 20/07/2026
Historically, fascism has been most enthusiastically brought to power by corporatism. Google is no exception.
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WIRED @wired.com · 17/07/2026
Yesterday, WIRED learned that Madison Square Garden was suing us for our accurate reporting. We stand by our work. That’s why we’re removing the paywall from two of the MSG stories they don’t want you to read, making them free for everyone.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
The UN panel’s AI report is a case study in the risk of vague definitions of “systems-from-nowhere.” This is a report that privileged existential risk narratives that displaced human accountability — and in turn, locked out meaningful policy options.
techpolicy.press
How the UN’s Scientific Panel Erases Human Responsibility for AI
The UN Scientific Panel's report casts artificial intelligence as a system from nowhere, writes Eryk Salvaggio. The definition will shape policy for years.
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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Here's something I post from time to time. My answer to a reader who asked me: what could journalists do NOW to break with some of their more corrosive habits.
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Once again, this is not an important question, nor does answering it tell you anything about any useful moral question
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19/07/2026
“If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them.”
theverge.com
Dave Eggers told OpenAI staff that ChatGPT was ‘silencing an entire generation’
He called AI writing “pastiche nonsense.”
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Gingerspiced @gingerspiced.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
ATTENTION ALL NEW YORK TRANNIES WHO GOT FUCKED BY THE TECH INDUSTRY
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Sora: dead Atlas: dead "adult mode": dead Abilene expansion: dead OpenAI IPO: dead Tell me again about "inevitability"
theverge.com
The ChatGPT browser is already dead
ChatGPT Atlas didn’t even last a year.
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