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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk

@mbirna.bsky.social
190 followers 282 following 83 posts

Computer Scientist @utwente.bsky.social #LogicBasedAI #MultiAgentSystems | Intimate Computing #values #vulnerability intimate-computing.net | Disability | Towards a caring and inspiring digital society

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Reposted by Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk
Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
In other words: If AI does one thing well, it's making explicit what «being human» means under current conditions. The answer cannot lie in a return to a supposedly universal humanism, but rather in a radical critique of these conditions that understands the role of AI systems in maintaining them 5/
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
So-called «artificial intelligence» is essentially an explication machine, rendering explicit not only latent patterns in masses of data, but also fascist tendencies in liberal democracies as well as the exploitative, extractivist, and ultimately destructive business models of platform capitalism 1/
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
“the US has a history of eradicating the disabled. Eugenics – the pseudoscientific belief that humans should breed for “desirable traits” and suppress the undesirable ones – rose to popularity in the US and globally during the late 19th century.”
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Reposted by Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk
Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
The Ugly Laws, a series of state laws at the turn of the 20th century, banned disabled, mentally ill and unhoused people from public places. This + other eugenic law like forced sterilization and interracial marriage bans were such comprehensive body of legislation the Nazis studied and cited them.
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Ashlee 🤟🏻 @ashleemboyer.com · 24/07/2025
This is extremely fucking bad. It’s intentionally ambiguous. Language used: - addiction - homelessness - mental health conditions - substance use disorders - risk to self or public - living on the streets - cannot care for self Please study the American Eugenics Movement. They won’t stop here.
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Marieke van Vugt @mvugt.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
I signed this letter. Maybe worthy of your signage as well?
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Daniel B. @inmate37927.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Faschismus = Selbstentgrenzung - die Wirklichkeit trägt (zu Recht) zahlreiche ethisch-moralische Ansprüche an ein Individuum heran, diesen gerecht zu werden, kostet Energie. Eine faschistoide Absage an diese Ansprüche ist für manche wahrscheinlich eine Lusterfahrung.
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
This fits perfectly, as the default aesthetic of #AIslop already owes a lot to Kinkade: If you look at algorithmically curated databases used to fine-tune AI models such as «LAION aesthetics,» you'll find Kinkade's paintings ranked higher than almost anything else in terms of «aesthetic score» 1/
Aesthetic subset of LAION, above 6.5 predicted rating, the first image is a kinkade
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 11/07/2025
A short blogpost detailing my experience of censorship at the AI for Good Summit with links to both original and censored versions of slides and links to my talk aial.ie/blog/2025-ai...
aial.ie
AI for Good [Appearance?]
Reflections on the last minute censorship of my keynote at the AI for Good Summit 2025
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Sara Goudarzi @saragoud.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
I sat down and chatted with the AI for Good keynote speaker @abeba.bsky.social about how her talk was censored, how this undermines the spirit of the summit, and what the industry can do to build fairer, more just systems. thebulletin.org/2025/07/ai-f...
thebulletin.org
AI for good, with caveats: How a keynote speaker was censored during an international artificial intelligence summit
Q&A with Abeba Birhane on how she was censored during the AI for good summit and how the industry can do better.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
A strong statement of resistance to the relentless marketing of "AI" in education spaces. I encourage all educators to have a look and consider signing on: openletter.earth/an-open-lett...
openletter.earth
An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 07/07/2025
'Vacations.' The word is 'vacations.'

FAST COMPANY Article: 

While retirement typically occurs, after
completing a career and saving and investing for it, a new trend is emerging among Gen Z career professionals
called "micro-retirement." Micro-
retirements involve taking a one to two- week break from work every 12 to 18 months.
Gen Z is using micro-retirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work, and enhance their overall well-being. However, it's not just Gen-Z:
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Bo Salomons🔻 @bosalomons.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Dit is hoe je een statement maakt over fascistisch beleid: www.doorbraak.eu/verklaring-v...
doorbraak.eu
Verklaring van Doorbraak en De Fabel van de illegaal over de strafbaarstelling van ongedocumenteerden | Doorbraak.eu
Gisteren zijn de fascistische asielwetten van voormalig minister Faber door de Tweede Kamer geloodst. Wij zijn er woedend over dat deze afschuwelijke wetten, inclusief de strafbaarstelling van illegaa...
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
“De principes zijn: eerlijkheid, nauwgezetheid, transparantie, onafhankelijkheid, en verantwoordelijkheid. “AI” berust op oneerlijk verkregen data, nodigt uit tot afraffelen, is ondoorzichtig in plaats van transparant, maakt mensen afhankelijk, en leidt tot verlies van eigenaarschap.”
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Reposted by Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk
Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 02/07/2025
Wel heb ik ooit @aob.nl hoe komt die AI-prietpraat in het onderhandelingsakkoord, en hoe krijgen we die er zo snel mogelijk uit? #cao #universiteiten ideophone.org/waarom-ik-ni... (ht @irisvanrooij.bsky.social)
ideophone.org
Waarom ik niet instem met het onderhandelingsakkoord voor de CAO universiteiten – The Ideophone
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zeg maar Jet @jetwillers.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Goede ingezonden brief van Atze Lourens in Het Parool: www.parool.nl/columns-opin...
parool.nl
Opinie: ‘Met haar reactie op Douwe Bob maakt Yesilgöz maar weer eens duidelijk hoezeer ze verschilt van Rutte’
De tweet van Dilan Yesilgöz over Douwe Bob, waarin ze van ‘Jodenhaat’ sprak, is volgens Paroollezer Atze Lourens een nieuw voorbeeld van haar polariserende manier van politiek bedrijven. ‘Zelf neemt z...
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IIML @modernletters.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
A lot of the signatories to this letter are in the Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence department, and other scientific fields. They supply links to papers that support their concerns.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) als toekomstscenario voor AI zoals Alexander Klöpping betoogde bij Eva? Een ideologisch problematisch en technisch onjuist narratief, aangewakkerd door grote AI en tech bedrijven. Mijn reactie op mijn blog: intimate-computing.net/kritische-re...
intimate-computing.net
Kritische reflectie Eva-item Klöpping 'AI in de toekomst' | Intimate Computing
Op 22 mei 2025 was Alexander Klöpping te gast in het programma 'Eva' van de AVRO/TROS. Hij presenteerde daar een 'toekomstscenario' waarin AI 'slimmer'
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
It’s ok to rest. It’s ok to unplug. It’s ok to take a break. Rest is resistance. Ableism has conditioned us to believe that taking care of ourselves is somehow lazy or wrong. It’s not. It’s necessary. If you don’t take breaks, your body will force you. Give yourself permission to rest.
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 27/06/2025
Hello & HAPPY FRIDAY, as promised an open letter by my lovely colleagues and myself. Everybody, feel free to sign this even if you are not NL-based and ‼️ share ‼️ (anonymous signature is poss): Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia openletter.earth/open-letter-...
Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia
Our demands, see link
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Amnesty International UK @amnestyuk.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
“Transphobia is not f**cking feminist” Kate Nash's powerful speech during her performance at Glastonbury.
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Carissa Véliz @carissaveliz.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
"In our writing, we drew on our lives: the losses of our parents, the births of our children, every love affair we’ve lived or imagined. Stories of human heroism and human depravity. These stories were stolen from us and used to train machines" #AIEthics #authors lithub.com/against-ai-a...
lithub.com
Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers
To Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America: We are standing on a precipice. At its simplest level, our job as …
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Lisa Westerveld 🌱 @lisawesterveld.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Het is niét de schuld van jongeren zelf, wanneer je een beperking hebt, mentale problemen of chronisch ziek bent. En je uitvalt doordat passende begeleiding bij onderwijs, stage of werk ontbreekt. Daarom willen we betere begeleiding en voorzieningen. Zodat iedereen kan meedoen! 🙌🏽
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
The videos about our project Disconnections and Relationships mediated through Intimate Technologies (DiscReTe) are online! 💃 We investigated through dance how Intimate (Wearable) Technologies can support social connection through human-technology partnership. intimate-computing.net/news/videos-...
intimate-computing.net
Videos about DiscReTe published! | Intimate Computing
I am delighted to share with you that the videos of our project ‘Disconnections and Relationships mediated through Intimate Technologies (DiscReTe)’ have
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Many thanks Olivia and colleagues for the initiative and leadership! I wholeheartedly support this letter. Sign too if you want to resist the uncritical adoption of AI technologies in academia 👇
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Prof.dr. Beatrice de Graaf @beatricedegraaf.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
This thread! It cuts right through all the allegedly sophisticated comments from some of my (very liberal) academic colleagues who breezily wave warnings of the rising rode of disinformation away 👇🏼
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Berlin also described another kind of liberty, positive liberty, the freedom to act meaningfully in the world. It’s not enough to be left alone. People need the capacity to understand, reason, and participate.
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Dan McQuillan @danmcquillan.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I've posted my seminar on 'The role of the university is to resist AI', which takes as its text Ivan Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality'. danmcquillan.org/cpct_seminar...
A historical photo of Ivan Illich being interviewed by a camera crew. Speech bubbles have been added to the image. The speech bubble from the interviewer says "The role of the university is...?" and the speech bubble from Illich says "...to resist AI".
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
«The role of the university isn't to roll over in the face of tall tales about technological inevitability, but to model the forms of critical pedagogy that underpin the social defence against authoritarianism and which makes space to reimagine the other worlds that are still possible.»
danmcquillan.org
The role of the University is to resist AI
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Dan McQuillan @danmcquillan.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Q&A on AI and Disability - sharing the notes I made for an interview, in which I was trying to challenge the disability-washing of AI. danmcquillan.org/ai_disabilty...
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Nadia Bouras @nadiabouras.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Mansplaining op z’n finest: de baas van Signal krijgt uitleg over haar eigen app. Wild.
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Lisa Westerveld 🌱 @lisawesterveld.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Drie ministers op asiel. Maar voor het debat over gehandicaptenbeleid, heeft niemand tijd. nos.nl/artikel/2570...
nos.nl
Asielportefeuille verdeeld over drie ministers van VVD, NSC en BBB
De fractievoorzitters Yesilgöz, Van Vroonhoven en Van der Plas hebben een akkoord bereikt over de verdeling van alle PVV-posten in het kabinet.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
Mijn verjaardag! Ik hoop op een mooi cadeau Nederland! 🙏😊🎁 nos.nl/artikel/2570...
nos.nl
Tweede Kamerverkiezingen definitief op woensdag 29 oktober
Er is rekening gehouden met de herfstvakantie, met de taken van gemeenten en met de tijd die politieke partijen nodig hebben.
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
side effect of AI-in-higher-ed: having to spend my ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE googling footnotes for articles that I can't believe I missed off my reading lists only to discover that they aren't, in fact, real articles
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Ok, let’s go! Op weg naar een samenleving die zorgzaamheid, gesprek, en betekenis (weer) centraal stelt 🫶 met onderwijs en wetenschap als fundament van de democratie.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
I see so much research of the form ‘LLMs are not very good at X, how can we integrate another technique T to make LLMs better at X?’ Where my question would be: why even start from LLMs in the first place?! There often seems hardly a convincing argument for it.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Thank you @ruha9.bsky.social for the wonderful twin Tanner lectures: the first a critique of the ‘Artificial Intelligentsia’ and the destructive ideologies that fuel their technologies: youtu.be/ZseJigkUhuE?...
youtu.be
Tanner Lecture One with Ruha Benjamin
YouTube video by Mahindra Humanities Center
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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 27/05/2025
At our faculty we have guidelines on Generative AI and research integrity: osf.io/preprints/os... . Another example: ERA Living Guidelines european-research-area.ec.europa.eu/news/living-... I'm looking for other examples of guidelines like that, aimed at researchers. Hit me!
osf.io
OSF
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Anita Naidu @proximitydeclined.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
BREAKING: My exposé on Rutger Bregman’s billionaire-backed School for Moral Ambition is now free to read It’s not justice. It’s moral laundering. Crypto money. Trump ties. Celebrity endorsements. I was inside. What I saw shook me If you care about justice reshare #rutgerbregman#SMAexposed
counterpunch.org
How Elites Rebrand Power as Virtue
When billionaires fund the revolution, the outcome is already fixed Rutger Bregman, once hailed as the Dutch progressive mascot, rose to global attention
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
When a woman asks a question, it is not an invitation to mansplain her.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
This makes it so infuriating to hear people from majority groups say they ‘don’t have time’ to adress and fight racism, sexism, ableism etc. Many of us have no choice, we deal with it daily. It’s energy we cannot spend doing the actual work. Love the frame of it being part of our service load 👇
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 19/05/2025
When professors experience racism (sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) at work, that’s part of their service load. It takes work to deal with that and still come back and do your job. That’s service to the department. It’s deeply unfair service. But it is service.
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Dr. M. Birna van Riemsdijk @mbirna.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Writing is not the production of strings of words. It’s the articulation of _your_ thoughts and ideas resulting from a thinking process. #GenAI
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Marijn Sax @marijnsax.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Hey, mijn book review van MacAskill's What We Owe the Future (en longtermism als stroming) staat niet meer achter een betaalmuur. Nu gratis te lezen dus: www.nederlandseboekengids.com/20220125-mar... (Taalkundig niet mijn beste schrijfsel. Wel veel plezier gehad tijdens het schrijven).
nederlandseboekengids.com
Marijn Sax | Utilisme 'on steroids'
Marijn Sax | Utilisme 'on steroids'
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
I am seeing news that AI companies face “unexpected” obstacles in scaling up their AI systems. Not unexpected at all, of course. Completely predictable from the Ingenia theorem.
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
RFK Jr, Casey Means and those in the “wellness” crowd seek to place the blame for sickness on the individual. We should have tried harder. Lived cleaner. Done the “right” things. It makes it easier to usher in a eugenicist agenda when you condition the public to see disabled people as at fault
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Jennifer Kretchmer @dreamwisp.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
If you aren’t familiar with the social model vs. the medical model of disability (and most of the foundational principles of disability justice, like these from Sins Invalid), they are HIGHLY relevant to this conversation.
sinsinvalid.org
10 Principles of Disability Justice | Sins Invalid
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KNAW - Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen @knaw-nl.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Academische vrijheid staat onder druk en moet beter worden beschermd. Die conclusie lees je vandaag in dit KNAW-rapport: www.knaw.nl/nieuws/knaw-... Aanbevelingen o.m.: meer vrijheid van onderzoek, bescherming tegen intimidatie en minder inhoudelijke overheidsbemoeienis.
Rapport KNAW: Academische vrijheid in Nederland
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Julia Métraux @juliametraux.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
I'm able to report on disability as a disabled/chronically ill person because I'm able to manage my symptoms better remotely.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...
time.com
Why I’m Resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress
I cannot participate in systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging.
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