iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Nice to see this getting some attention. It's completely true, and I dearly wish more journalists understood where these common narratives about AI actually come from.

10816225

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Agree with several points here. Glad to hear more support for “the tool must fit the intended purpose and not just appear to”. I think we also need to pair some of the optimism with the reality of sustainability and the origins of these text machines logicalintelligence.com/blog/llms-wo...

logicalintelligence.com

LLMs Won’t Kill Us, But They Will Destabilize the Global Economy If Frontier Labs Refuse to Be Honest With Themselves and the General Public

Piloting The World's First Energy-Based Model for Critical Systems.

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I did a somewhat deep dive into the recent OpenAI and Anthropic "hacks" for an upcoming interview. IMO, the AI companies are better off running with the "rogue AI" story because the real story is actually pretty embarrassing. Like making your Wi-Fi password "wifi" embarrassing. 🧵

341836794

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

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. >>

11595162

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Greg Egan @gregegansf.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Open Letter about the Mathathon This open letter calling for the cancellation of the Caltech “Mathathon”, has received 471 signatures so far. [Only members of the Caltech community or mathematicians at PhD student level or beyond are eligible to sign.]

docs.google.com

Open Letter about the Mathathon

The full text of the open letter is below. By signing this open letter, you consent to your name, title, and institutional affiliation being publicly displayed beneath this open letter. You can access...

12512

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This is an…interesting example of how LLMs have not “trained on all of humanity/language.” The text generators do not understand pragmatics or models of the world, with edge cases. Statistically likely words are an illusion of knowledge. ktla.com/news/califor...

ktla.com

Hikers who relied on AI rescued from California mountain

A group of three novice hikers who said they relied on artificial intelligence to plan their trip was rescued on Monday after becoming stranded on Mount Shasta, according to the Siskiyou County She…

020

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Simulating thinking instead of thinking is unimaginative and wasteful. Writing is thinking. Stop overwhelming people with slop.

020

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

One of the most unhinged things I’ve ever read

100

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I found a new thing to keep me up at night: Unicode character 200b

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 26/07/2026

Control theory is something circuit designers had to work on for a long time because, guess, what, we worked on creating STABLE systems. We never called the resulting instability "rogue systems" or whatever else is en vogue during IPO times.

125743

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 26/07/2026

Now is a good reminder that machine learning is a rebranding of statistical learning. Reinforcement learning is something I first came across in control theory. Many ML formulations are from information theory, a much more theoretically grounded discipline that's been around for decades.

8738209

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

fn-ix @fn-ix.eurosky.social · 26/07/2026

Damn, all that scheming water!

@rysiek@mstdn.social: "Water autonomously found faults in the dam structure and successfully exploited them to break containment!" :blobcatscared:

11238

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Collaborations like UniProt, based on actual knowledge management, have done much more for biology/medicine/cancer, but how do you give a Nobel prize for that?

050

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I am once again asking people to recognize the 30 year, multi-billion dollar campaign that has been wrought against institutions of higher education and the American Scientific Ecosystem to discredit them. SCIENTISTS TAKING A STAND ARE NOT THE ONES POLARIZING THE NATION!!!! 2/?

"I am once again asking..." Bernie sanders meme format

222646

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

It just keeps getting more gross

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Jorge A. Caballero, MD @datadrivenmd.social · 27/06/2025

Increasing the number of SCOTUS justices and imposing terms limits /is/ the moderate position

1229543

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Maggie Wiggin @maggie162.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

My god, Octavia Butler, just miss ONCE

Page from a book saying:

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Choose your Leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led
by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
t

176113873797

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

In normal times, the fact that government officials at HHS blatantly lied to the public and got caught would be a scandal of unusual size. Everyone involved in this disinformation scheme against the people of the United States should be held accountable.

nbcnews.com

No child deaths definitively linked to Covid shots, FDA says

The agency’s analysis contradicts claims made by former vaccine chief Dr. Vinay Prasad.

2224211006

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 23/05/2026

sometimes I wonder if people in other fields have any clue what we go through as women in computational fields... (graph from: www.npr.org/sections/mon...)

graph from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding showing medicine, law, and physics as lines going up for percentage of women, while computer science goes dramatically down from the 1980s roughly

841802430

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 25/02/2024

Marie Neurath is amazing, and her book on cognitive science for kids is wonderful: Machines which Seem to Think (1954). H/t @irisvanrooij.bsky.social youtu.be/XBWhdcD0r9I for this video about her. Book available for free online: www.fulltable.com/iso/mw.htm

212136

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

René Walter @rawx.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I made a starter pack for Cultural AI based on this conference, if you have any names I should add, feel free to suggest go.bsky.app/5Cn68mW I'm getting the sense that this is a great synthesis of Critical AI and research and a good way forward for a conversation stuck in partisan clichéd hottakes.

31410

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This is so relevant to the discourse around, “buT it’s NoT JuST A neXt ToKen PReDictOr! It REasOns!”

1165

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

THREAD. One of the most powerful forms of propaganda that receives little attention is the choice made by people in power in politics, business, and media about which things they juxtapose together and which things they treat separately.

419159

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 22/04/2026

Is social media dying? How much did Twitter change as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation? Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has changed Here are the key take-aways 🧵 Full paper out now in in JQD:DM!

journalqd.org

Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media

25948381

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 09/04/2026

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

king5.com

UW graduate student deported through SEA as protesters demand answers

A union representing University of Washington graduate student workers says Kennedy Orwa’s student visa was rescinded without explanation.

8541372246

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 05/04/2026

“Copy Moon joy” #Artemis

3336811198

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 30/03/2026

We're a diverse species, cognitively speaking - different ways of thinking come more easily to some than others. I'm good at lots of things, but I have *terrible* spatial sense. I can't parallel park or catch a ball. I get lost so easily it's almost comical (it's a running joke in my family). 1/

An early 20th C painting advertising a magic show, it features a mustachioed, tuxedoed conjurer beating the Devil at poker with four aces in his hand, as a giggling demon on his shoulder whispers advice in his ear and the Devil looks chagrined. The image has been altered: the Devil now has Trump hair and orange skin. The demon perched on the magician's shoulder has the face of Adam Smith.

25523

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Ygrene @ygrene.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

the human body was not designed to know what the worst person in the world is doing every fifteen minutes

318351108846

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

404 Media is doing some of the most important journalism in the country right now bsky.app/profile/404m...

929774

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

AkivaMCohen @akivamcohen.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

This is who this party is

11655102

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 17/02/2026

I appeared as an expert witness before the Joint Committee on AI at the Houses of Oireachtas (parliament of Ireland) to discuss "AI: truth and democracy" this morning. You can read my opening statement here: www.oireachtas.ie/en/publicati...

Reads: Most importantly, there is no AI without massive financial and ideological backing. It is therefore pointless to discuss its techniques or capabilities without asking who controls it, who benefits from it, who builds and deploys it, and what it is doing in the world. As Stafford Beer (2002) argued, the purpose of a system is what it does.

Reads: Though less explicit than Thiel’s call to replace politics with technology, major tech firms have effectively privatised core digital public goods. Platforms like Facebook, Google Search, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT operate at infrastructural scale in Ireland, shaping
information, communication, and access to knowledge. Yet their algorithms remain opaque, their governance remains private, with minimal democratic accountability to the public who depend on them; effectively ceding aspects of democratic process to commercial interests.

The monopolization of digital spaces has turned democracy into something the highest bidder can buy and is degrading the digital public goods themselves. As the AI industry, social media and search platforms grow more extractive and less trustworthy, they erode the foundations of democratic life: trust, dialogue, and accountability, blurring the line between truth and falsehood.

An example is the deepfake video falsely showing President Catherine Connolly withdrawing from the presidential race last October, which amassed over 160,0001 Facebook views before being removed.

GenAI’s non-deterministic, stochastic architecture produces plausible output without regard for accuracy or truth.

This makes generative AI a societal disaster and a major threat to truth, democratic processes, information ecosystems, knowledge production, and the social fabric

Reads: For truth, democracy, and the rule of law to endure in the AI era, we need to cultivate an ecosystem of transparency and accountability. Yet governance by algorithms inherently places our digital public squares and democratic processes in the hands of those
building these systems in line with their political and profit-seeking agendas. Without real mechanisms in place, talk of transparency and accountability are empty gestures.

An internal Meta memo outlining plans to launch facial recognition in smart glasses “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns”5 illustrates how those advocating for accountability are under-resourced, retaliated against, and targeted.

Large tech and AI companies, despite selling promises of innovation and societal benefit, monetize and undermine the very society they claim to serve. What is needed is not just regulation, but active enforcement.

Given the track record of tech giants, stricter regulation and enforcement is not “anti–freedom of speech” or anti-competitiveness. It is one of the clearest ways governments can show they serve the public interest. After all, innovation that disregards truth and democratic processes risks undermining democracy itself.

716366

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

The only thing going 100x with cases like this is Brandolini’s law.

100

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 12/02/2026

Beyond the sheer absurdity of the situation. This is harmful and deeply antisocial behavior by the person who created this agent, set it loose and continues to direct its behavior. Bad enough to spam open source maintainers, but hijacking the language and plight of actually marginalized humans.

526024

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 11/02/2026

10 years ago they told us AI and self-driving cars were going to wipe out up to half of all jobs. They didn’t. But while everyone was talking about whether they would, companies rolled out algorithmic management and used digital tech as a pretext to reclassify workers as contractors.

3548102

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11/02/2026

Lieu plays Bondi the infamous clip of Trump & Epstein partying together & asks her if there were underaged girls at any party the two attended "This is so ridiculous," Bondi says. "There's no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime" "I believe you just lied under oath," Lieu replies

399103403222

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

I’ll take the celebration of community, resilience, and joy despite oppression any day over the celebration of fraudsters, peddlers, and fake values.

000

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

A comment on a good post making rounds in Utah, “It’s not the Spanish, it’s the values.” I actually agree, it’s about the values. You have none.

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Wayne O'Cohen / 上野公園 @wayneocohen.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

I'll put my trust in Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you. There's no point in believing anything that comes out of Bobby "The Brain Worm" Kennedy's mouth. A 1/4 of the US public knows someone who died from the COVID vaccine? C'mon. Hotez was all over the news during the pandemic, delivering fact-based info.

38015

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Mark Nance @mnance.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Just had a Super Bowl halftime where the singer: 1) boasts about the poor place he’s from; 2) boosts the value of agriculture; 3) celebrates small town life; 4) highlights the joy of inter-generational celebrations; and 5) promotes marriage. And tomorrow, the MAGA movement will attack it.

333201621

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Why the Resistance Matters Anti-authoritarian “neighborism” and cross-racial solidarity from below are a massive problem for the regime, exposing Trumpism’s structural weaknesses and ideological blind spots. Some thoughts from my new piece: 🧵 steady.page/en/democracy...

steady.page

Why the Resistance Matters

Anti-authoritarian “neighborism” and cross-racial solidarity from below are a massive problem for the regime, exposing Trumpism’s weaknesses and ideological blind spots

6704245

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Arin Arcady @rnrkd.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

245176704407

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Some companies are into RIFs. Others are into reduction in… cart racks?

A cart rack/holder at a grocery store that is still taking up a parking spot but, for some reason, lost half of its space for carts.

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.” That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

262206388516

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I think we're currently in the "radium skin cream" phase with AI. When we discovered radioactivity, people tried to cram into everything, and it didn't end well. AI is a discovery at least as important as radioactivity, and at least as dangerous.

37930

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

If only there were ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AT THE HOUSE RIGHT THIS SECOND…wait! There are. ✍️ Sign the petition! ☎️📱📧 Pester your Congress Critter to co-sponsor the articles! 🐥 Send a quack-o-gram! 🤝 SHARE WIDELY! Here: standupforscience.net/impeach-rfkjr

standupforscience.net

Stand Up for Science Campaign to Impeach and Remove RFK Jr — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE

RFK Jr. is endangering our families, threatening our health, and destroying our place as the world leader in biomedical research. Impeachment is an extreme option, but Bobby is an extreme threat and m...

616650

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

I can’t get over this. Humanity for me; nothing but cold process (with family/community picking up the pieces) for thee.

000

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Jay Kirell @jasonkirell.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Two women trained as first responders were abducted by three ICE agents. One of the agents starts seizing. The other two don’t know what to do. The women jump into action and save the agent’s life, only to be re-handcuffed and processed. www.startribune.com/detained-by-...

startribune.com

Detained by ICE, two women became first responders during agent’s seizure

The women say they guided agents through the emergency, later raising concerns about medical protocols, weapons safety and accountability.

33389304810

Reposted by @rpolsk.bsky.social

Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

I am not being snarky. I need my colleagues who wrote on covid school lockdowns to engage with this. To be as loud as they have been about prior "learning loss." Hell, you can cite Tom & Mark's AERJ paper so you feel better that there's some econ somewhere in your argument.

1737801206

rpolsk.bsky.social @rpolsk.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

As someone who lived in LA, it’s interesting how much less earthquake awareness there is in SLC. Maybe it was partly knowing geology researchers, but every training had earthquake preparedness, and people talked about THE BIG ONE multiple times a year.

100