iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Keza MacDonald @mackeza.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Six months of Super Nintendo! And it's my birthday this week! This book is the culmination of 20 years' work as a games journalist - all the time I've spent interviewing Nintendo creatives and thinking deeply about games and the place they occupy in our lives. Pick up a copy linktr.ee/super_nintendo

Keza with the colourful UK and US editions of her book Super Nintendo, a cultural history of the world's most beloved game company

2137652

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Andreas Kirsch @blackhc.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting: 2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight 2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose" Not one safeguard survived intact

Collage titled "Trust is not Governance — an essay from inside Google DeepMind, written in personal capacity."

A 2014 memorandum, "Conditions of the Acquisition," lists: military applications of DeepMind technology banned; deployment decisions before an independent ethics board (as reported in Mallaby's The Infinity Machine).

Red threads lead to a 2026 U.S. Department of Defense agreement for classified networks reading "any lawful government purpose," with safety settings and filters adjusted at the government's request and no contractor veto (reported terms, The Information, Apr. 2026).

Below: a 2018 AI Principles strip ("no weapons, no surveillance") stamped DROPPED 2025, and a Project Mario 2016–2021 tag stamped ABANDONED.

171273435

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Rajiv Moté @rajivmote.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

In this article, @kellybclancy.bsky.social provides some important context for the wishes pinned on LLMs. As early as the 13th century, thinkers were trying to find Truth through atomic concepts and their symbolic manipulation through math. nautil.us/the-perpetua...

nautil.us

Truth Machines, from Llull to Boole to ChatGPT

Why human attempts to mechanize logic keep breaking down.

123

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Climate.us @climate.us · 23/06/2026

Climate.us is live. Built by members of the team behind Climate.gov, this new independent nonprofit website keeps trusted climate information easy to find, easy to use, and harder to erase. #ClimateForUs #ClimateUS

601548978

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Piotr Mirowski @piotrmirowski.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Call for tech companies and states to halt the provision of AI systems for use in the military kill chain and to take all steps to ensure that other AI systems they provide do not cause or contribute to violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws. www.accessnow.org/press-releas...

accessnow.org

Access Now - Joint statement on AI in warfare

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, are deeply alarmed by the rapid militarization of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. AI systems embedded into military kill chains are accele...

021

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Christopher @ll-christopher.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Hot take of the day: investing in an AI company with posted results in benchmark X is equivalent to investing in the theory of intelligence belied by benchmark X. I.e. benchmarks are "mini-theories" of intelligence. (PS: we are biasing ourselves towards a quantitative theory of intelligence.)

011

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Journalists interested in AI--here's a great paid training fellowship with applications due Jan 7: www.tarbellcenter.org/fellowship

tarbellcenter.org

Tarbell Fellowship

A one-year program for journalists interested in covering artificial intelligence.

010

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

This will be a fascinating read!

020

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Hadn't seen this "Cartography of Generative AI" before. From Estampa, a collective of programmers, filmmakers and researchers working in the fields of audiovisual media and digital environments: cartography-of-generative-ai.net

“Cartography of Generative AI (2024)” shows a sprawling, diagrammatic ecosystem of how generative AI is produced and maintained. The background is light pink with turquoise and yellow highlights. The left side has a turquoise vertical sidebar with labeled sections such as AI imaginaries, Critical expertise, Data sciences, Silicon Valley, and AI harms.

The main diagram maps the flow of generative AI development from top to bottom:

Top left: A globe icon with arrows represents global energy consumption, linked to servers and calculation power (chips, GPUs, and companies like TSMC).

Top center: Rows of red server racks show data centers, connected to big data platforms and pipelines of training data (shown as orange blocks).

Top right: Yellow stacks and schematic diagrams depict the supply chain of raw materials (e.g., cobalt, lithium) and scenes of mining.

Upper right corner: A vignette labeled digital colonialism shows resource extraction sites and cables crossing oceans.

Middle section:

Blue isometric office-like spaces labeled AI start-ups and Silicon Valley venture capital, with tiny illustrated workers at desks, computers, and whiteboards.

Orange and yellow arrows and blocks represent the movement of datasets, training, and alignment processes.

A section labeled human labour shows rows of workers annotating data.

Lower section:

Gridded platforms in orange and yellow depict data extraction from the internet—social media, images, sound, text—and web scraping from sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube.

Groups of small figures interact with large wireframe cube models labeled generative AI engines.

Other vignettes show AI products (like chatbots), digital gig work, and consumer use.

Far right:

Layers of stacked chips show advanced chip production and global supply chains.

A blue network node diagram illustrates the infrastructure economy behind AI technologies.

Boxes at the bottom describe research and governance structures.

58330

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Keith Law @keithlaw.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

I reviewed two books about games, @kellybclancy.bsky.social's superb Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Marcus du Sautoy's more superficial Around the World in 80 Games, which come at some of the same subjects from different angles: meadowparty.com/blog/2025/09...

meadowparty.com

Two books about games.

2103

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Any rich dems want to fund an independent science news and commentary outlet, hmu (climate, vaccines, energy, public health, biomedical research, assults on science writ large, etc)

26552116

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

What do caribou bones have to do with AI? Graphic artist Drew Dernavich made an awesome comic explainer for part of my book, Playing with Reality, and did an amazing job of crystallizing dense ideas into lovely art! whisperbubble.substack.com/p/the-dice-r...

whisperbubble.substack.com

The Dice Roll On

What do caribou bones have to do with AI technology?

141

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

There's gotta be a German word for the phenomenon whereby I like a particular book/show/media but consider it a red flag if someone else likes it.

110

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Sergi Valverde @svalver.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Yes! What’s exciting is how cultural and technological systems can display macroevolutionary patterns we usually associate with biology — diversification, collapse, persistence. Arcade games are just one tractable case study.

192

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

In a crazy 1960s experiment, a patient was implanted with 50 different stimulating electrodes in his brain--including in an area that gave him orgasmic feelings. He could stimulate any of these at will.

110

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Support indie magazines and pick up @thebeliever.net! I have a little story in this delightful new issue, which was mainly an excuse to get a cute illustration of my cats into the magazine. But every issue is packed with goodness! Why not subscribe and get strange and profound observations all year?

0195

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Those who have incorrectly ascribed much of the progress made in the last century to capitalism are about to learn where it really came from.

040

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I recommend everyone consider reading the United Nation’s charter these days. I wonder why we don’t talk about it more. Imagine the world if we truly resolved ourselves to join efforts toward the aims of the UN charter. www.un.org/en/about-us/...

un.org

Preamble | United Nations

0266

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Yarvin attempting to justify autocracy with word play has precisely as much explanatory power as a New Age healer willfully mispronouncing disease as “dis-ease”

020

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

I wrote a quick-start guide for people to replicate this across the country. It was, in our experience, a very effective way to get real action in a short amount of time. People are willing to talk to scientists! And when you provide everything, they are happy to contact their reps too. Try it!

docs.google.com

Postcard Drives for Science Instructions

Postcard Drive Instructions The main goals for this outreach are: A.) Get the public to (continue to) trust in and care about federally-funded science. B.) Get individuals to contact their Senators...

215355

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Pleased to say "Space, Time, and Memory", an academic book by Oxford University Press edited by the inimitable Lynn Nadel & Sara Aronowitz is now out. I contributed a chapter, "Memory and Planning in Brains and Machines". You can download the entire book for free: library.oapen.org/bitstream/ha...

710031

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

🚨 New preprint! 🚨 I looked at 400+ years of cumulative cultural evolution in the Game of Go from feudalism to superhuman AI. Did AlphaGo etc. completely disrupt human play? No! More like human-machine convergence, rather than revolution. Check out these decision trees! osf.io/preprints/ps...

decision trees in human play in the game of go before and after the arrival of superhuman AI, showing gradual change rather than revolutionary disruption

36025

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

AI is moving forward at the hands of people utterly ignorant of 2500 years of epistemology. I beg philosophers to stop thinking that the only issues with AI are ethics issues.

083

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

An absolute honor to be included among these authors 🙏

160

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Chris Rodgers @chrisxrodgers.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Inspired by @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social , I wrote an op ed for my hometown newspaper (the Lexington Herald-Leader) about the importance of protecting science and universities from destruction by the government. Think about writing one of your own! www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-e...

kentucky.com

Kentucky needs to stand up for science; ask lawmakers to stop federal research cuts | Opinion

OpEd: In particular, the University of Kentucky’s federal research funding generates medical breakthroughs, sustains thousands of Kentucky jobs, and trains Kentucky students to be the leaders of tomor...

093

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Jason Hickel @jasonhickel.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

What a world. Capitalism "externalizes" costs to the point where the costs are "externalized" into our own bodies.

6320111

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Sergi Valverde @svalver.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

I just received my copy of "Evolution Evolving," and I read chapter 1 and loved it: "nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of development." @kevinlala.bsky.social

1293

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Dan Levenstein @dlevenstein.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Truly believe that the ability of optimization-like processes to develop brain-like properties in sufficiently-complex distributed systems is one of the biggest insights in theoretical neuroscience.

15610

Reposted by Kelly Clancy

Adithya Narayan @adithyanarayan.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Just finished 'Playing with Reality' by @kellybclancy.bsky.social. Loved it! I picked it up because I thought it was about the history of games, which it is... but it's also so much more than that. Touches upon game theory, minimax, RL, economics, auctions, evolution, Simcity, and more.

231

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

15 years ago I published a graphic novel about the US wars in the Middle East/Central Asia from the perspective of civilians. This page seems apt today.

Picture of dictator surrounded by his officers and lackeys holding mirrors up to their faces to reflect his, text reads: "The successful dictator sets up an elaborate series of mirrors such that his image is reflected down upon even the pettiest official and police officer, who carry our his will exactly. By this method, he is ever-present, and his image pesists, even when he is no longer there."

170

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Well this is an incredible opening paragraph

060

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

I've long wondered why indigo is considered a separate color in the rainbow. Is ROY G BIV just a pedagogical mnemonic for kids learning their colors? Nope! Turns out Isaac Newton wanted there to be 7 colors in the rainbow for the number's mysticism: 7 musical notes, 7 days for biblical creation, etc

240

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

So proud that my book is included among these amazing works!

040

Kelly Clancy @kellybclancy.bsky.social · 19/03/2024

I'm delighted to share that my debut book, PLAYING WITH REALITY: HOW GAMES HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD will be out June 18.

4182