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Sam Shorey

@samshorey.bsky.social
236 followers 248 following 48 posts

Asst. Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh • Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute • Researching technology design & innovation labor: robots, hype, AI, trash, DIY, repair • 🤖+🚮

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Reposted by Sam Shorey
Anil Dash @anildash.com · 15/05/2026
Millions of people learn to play the guitar, or DJ, even though it’s hard. Tens of millions taught themselves HTML + CSS on MySpace, Neopets, LiveJournal, etc. They just did it for a culture or fandom, not for… enterprise productivity. And fandoms don’t want output that disrespects creators.
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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
📣 Join us for #CASPR2026 — CASTAC in the Spring! "Labor and Technoscientific Worlds: Historical Encounters and New Directions in the Field" — a roundtable with Kalpana Shankar, David Nemer & Lilly Irani honoring David Hakken. 📅 May 29 | 10:30AM–12:30PM CT 🎟️ Register: caspr2026.eventbrite.com
Promotional graphic for CASPR 2026 — CASTAC in the Spring. The image features a vintage botanical illustration of two platypuses on a branch surrounded by orange and pink flowers on a cream background. Text reads: "Labor and Technoscientific Worlds: Historical Encounters and New Directions in the Field. Friday, May 29, 2026, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM (Central). Join us for a roundtable presentation and breakout Q&A discussions with panelists Kalpana Shankar (University College Dublin), David Nemer (University of Virginia), and Lilly Irani (UC San Diego) in memory of David Hakken. Register: caspr2026.eventbrite.com.
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Sharita Gruberg @gruberg.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
New from NPWF: While women make up 47%of all workers, they account for 83% of those employed in AI-vulnerable occupations. The report has more on what AI means for women at work and what policymakers need to do. nationalpartnership.org/report/ai-em...
nationalpartnership.org
AI and Emerging Risks for Women Workers | National Partnership for Women & Families
New data on how women workers are overrepresented in occupations where they may be particularly affected by AI in the workplace.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
👏🏻 "They’ve stolen all the works of humanity, the books, the art, everything we’ve ever put on Reddit. They’ve turned around, tried to monetize and sell it back to us and defund education, libraries, public health institutions. People are not stupid." Safiya Noble www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
rollingstone.com
The 'Techlash' Against AI Is Here. Have We Hit a Tipping Point?
As backlash against AI increases, it has also turned violent, unveiling a deep mistrust of a system that would benefit from guardrails, say experts.
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Hannah Groch-Begley @grouchybagels.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Applications OPEN for the Graduate Humanities Internship at the Roosevelt Institute! We teach current humanities grad students how to think and work in public policy spaces. Real-world alt-ac training. Paid, remote, part-time over two-semesters. See more here! rooseveltinstitute.org/roosevelt-so...
rooseveltinstitute.org
Programs - Roosevelt Institute
Ideas alone will not move the needle—people are key to innovation and success. The Roosevelt Society’s mission is to expand the network of those working toward a new vision for our economy and democra...
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
A really cool example of investigative reporting from @businessinsider.com, mapping (the often undisclosed) locations of US data centers by tracking permits for the diesel back-up generators they use: www.businessinsider.com/data-center-...
businessinsider.com
Are you living near a data center? Our interactive map shows where construction is skyrocketing.
Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are rapidly building data centers amid the AI boom. Our interactive map shows where they are.
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Grace Panetta @gracepanetta.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization
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Luke Stark @lukestark.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Yeah, there's a lot of slippage between "you must pay attention to these technologies" and "you must submit to the current political economy of these technologies," and those are not the same thing at all
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”
futurism.com
It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines
During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.
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Michelle Miller @michelleimiller.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
The real appeal of AI is that it’s a way to make it even harder for people to use basic services that might cost a company some money. None of the people promoting this will ever have to go through an AI agent for anything, especially not healthcare.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
the Executive Order overriding AI regulations from the states will make Americans vulnerable to technological harm. On Austin's @kvue.bsky.social this week: www.kvue.com/article/tech...
“We don't know about the safety of this technology, especially when it comes to young people interacting with it. We don't know if we can trust this technology to make decisions about our health. We don't know if this technology is going to consolidate data to the point where governments and corporations can surveil American citizens,” Shorey said. “In a lot of ways, the states have been little laboratories for figuring out what this can look like? In what ways do we encourage businesses and encourage development and progress while also protecting basic human rights of the people who live here?”
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Kim Kelly @kimkelly.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
The AFL-CIO should start throwing some money towards labor journalism. If it was done right (i.e. with them accepting that journalists must have full editorial control over what’s published, whether or not union leaders like what they have to say) it could really have such a hugely positive impact
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
25% of U.S. data workers at AI companies (valued at 5 trillion+ dollars) are paid so little they have to rely on public assistance programs like SNAP. #AICorporateWelfare via the new report from @techequity.bsky.social and CWA: techequity.us/2025/09/30/g...
techequity.us
Ghost Workers in the AI Machine: U.S. Data Workers Speak Out About Big Tech's Exploitation - TechEquity Collaborative
Alphabet Workers Union-CWA and TechEquity interviewed U.S. data workers to shed light on the working conditions of the people powering AI.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
man, it's not looking good for the billionaires. All the public speaking students who used to recite the Wolf of Wall Street monologue are now picking Fight Club.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
the conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, two friends who fundamentally disagree, is a remarkable read. Ta-Nehisi's clarity has been carrying me after weeks of feeling defeated by the techno-political moment. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...
Screen shot: "I am descended from people who, in their lifetime, fought with all their might for the destruction of chattel slavery in this country. And they never saw it. They never saw it. In my personal belief system, they died in defeat, in darkness.

So I guess the privilege that I draw out of this, the honor that I draw out of this, is not that things will necessarily be better in my lifetime, but that I will make the contribution that I am supposed to make."
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
first day of the semester and in the words of Kerri Colby: I'm here to wake it up!
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
*presses play on Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight*
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
"How to live? Be soft, get by, go slow, open up, find others, try to be kind, funny if you have it in you. Get things done, think justly, create, learn your corner as best you can." Lisa Henderson, Every Queer Thing We Know
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Reposted by Sam Shorey
Roosevelt Forward @rooseveltforward.org · 07/08/2025
Headlines say AI is replacing workers, but beneath the headlines is a more sinister truth—they're being reorganized, outsourced, and devalued to make automation possible. @samshorey.bsky.social lays it all out in the latest #FiresideStacks 🔥 www.firesidestacks.com/p/patchwork-...
Promotional graphic for fireside stacks
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:" 📰 10 years of news stories 📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots 👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers doi.org/10.1080/2167...
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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.
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Roosevelt Institute @rooseveltinstitute.org · 15/07/2025
NEW 📰: AI automation is making government jobs more stressful & error-prone, hurting workers & constituents. @samshorey.bsky.social offers a scan of the existing landscape of AI implementation from across the country & the true impact on workers & efficiency. rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...
[T]he public sector should not be a testing ground for tools that haven’t been evaluated, tested, and established as truly beneficial.
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Chuck A @candersonjax.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
This hands unchecked power to tech firms aligned with Trump, silencing local oversight and boosting political manipulation. This will impact our elections and explode the amount of misinformation reaching Americans.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
The current version of the One Big Beautiful Bill still includes a provision that prohibits any state from regulating AI for the next ten years if they want access to the $500 million allocated for AI infrastructure.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
every one of us is all we need 💛
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
this interview with Ocean Vuong pulled and pulled at my heart-strings. And the comments section too (a rarity) sharing in the loneliness and grief of class mobility. whew. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/m...
 don’t fetishize an identity of “writer.” To me, what you and I are doing is the same work. My teaching is the same work. When I give a talk at a university, it’s the same thing.

How do you characterize that work? A kind of sincerity, of figuring this out. I think that’s it. A Buddhist sutra says to engage the phenomena of the world with earnestness. I’ve always valued that.
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Reposted by Sam Shorey
Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 08/05/2025
Sen. Schatz (D-Hawaii) is the first senator to go hard on AI training data and intellectual property, saying what we're really talking about is training AIs on all of human achievement up to now — spitting out "what appears to be knowledge" without compensation for the humans who generated it.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
My students taking the final exam after enduring a semester of in-class critical engagement activities:
theonion.com
Students Thankful Standardized Curriculum Sparing Them From Free-Spirited Teacher’s Antics
HAVERHILL, MA—Conveying their eagerness to dodge the possibility of any classroom role-playing exercises or featured guest speakers, 10th-grade students at East High School told reporters Thursday the...
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Reposted by Sam Shorey
Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Imagine if projector salespeople told you projectors were great in the classroom not because they let everybody see an image better but rather because now every course could be about projectors, because projectors are the future and the time to opt out of talking about projectors all day has passed.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
📑 teaching tip: On the final exam, include a question that asks "What is one piece of advice you would give a future student about how to succeed in this class?" (All answers get full credit, unless they're rude). Then compile the most actionable responses into a doc for students next semester.
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Roosevelt Institute @rooseveltinstitute.org · 02/05/2025
The future of AI shouldn’t be left in the hands of tech billionaires and corporations. Workers must have a real voice in how AI is deployed. Explore more on why we need a pro-worker agenda for AI that includes real safeguards and worker-centered policies. #restoringdemocracy
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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
The bipartisan belief that America would be a better place if *other people* worked in a factory. www.ft.com/content/8459...
80+% of both Democrats and Republicans believe America would be better off if more Americans worked in manufacturing, but < 30% say that about themselves.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
No matter how cool the videos look, the important thing about this robot "poised to move into our homes so it can help with the daily chores" is actually 10+ paragraphs into the article: It is controlled by a Norwegian guy in the basement!
nytimes.com
Invasion of the Home Humanoid Robots
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 04/04/2025
I spend so much time trying to get people riled up about terrible "AI" so we can work on different, non-terrible ways to build "AI," & also be informed enough about "AI" to be able to call our reps or stand up in town halls & council meetings & talk about why shitty "AI" shouldn't be woven into govt
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AFL-CIO @aflcio.org · 13/03/2025
The labor movement will not stand by and let Elon Musk and DOGE gut the essential services that working people rely on without a fight. Join AFL-CIO President @lizshuler.bsky.social, labor leaders, and allies TONIGHT for a webinar on how we stop their power grab: actionnetwork.org/events/mar13...
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Arvind Narayanan @randomwalker.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Years of constant AI hype + deliberate use of the umbrella term AI to refer to wholly unrelated applications such as text generation and values-based decision making (the main point of "AI Snake Oil") has confused the public enough that replacing civil servants with AI seems at least plausible. 1/2
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Ami Fields-Meyer @fieldsmeyer.com · 06/02/2025
1/ I suspect we are days away from hearing Elon is "using AI" to “streamline” benefits programs. You should know why fully automating decisions about who gets critical assistance is a terrible idea that will have disastrous consequences. A 🧵 based on work I’ve done with the great @awhf.bsky.social
nytimes.com
Musk Allies Discuss Deploying A.I. to Find Budget Savings
A top official at the General Services Administration said artificial intelligence could be used to identify waste and redundancies in federal contracts.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Robots are widely marketed as "time-saving" devices. This efficiency-based perspective makes sense for managers in workplaces, but what about our choices at home? I've learned a lot researching with this interdisciplinary team! Here is a preview of our project (graphic by @wolfchirp.bsky.social):
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
📙 currently reading: Buy Now by Emily West. The smartest observer of consumer culture bringing her point-of-view to tech! She flips the typical critique of digital surveillance (as hidden from users), arguing that companies like Amazon have actually branded "surveillance as service."
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
📙 currently reading: The Fight for Privacy by @daniellecitron.bsky.social and it would be a fabulous addition to any undergrad syllabus — a discussion of digital privacy through the lens of relationships, dating apps, and love.
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 04/11/2024
academics freaking out about this are acting like they haven't been telling grad students for two decades that to succeed in academia they should never actually read an article, but rather skim and "just read the first sentence in each paragraph, the abstract and discussion." 🙄
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 06/09/2024
I was setting a deadline with a research team and our senior collaborator asked us how much time we would need to accomplish our tasks AND keep the joy in our work. 🤯 game-changing question!
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Tim Dawson @ironicaccount.bsky.social · 02/09/2024
lot of negativity towards AI lately, but consider : are these tools ethical or environmentally sustainable? No. *but* do they enable great things that people want? Also no. *but* are they being made by well meaning people for good reasons? Once again, no. maybe you're not being negative *enough*
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 28/08/2024
As a scholar, my research interests lie at the intersection of Critical Technology Studies and this:
Amanda Seyfried giving an interview on a red carpet in full glam stating "Everybody needs to be compensated for their work. That's [f-word] easy."
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 29/07/2024
10/ We presented ‘Patchwork: The Hidden, Human Labor of AI Integration’ at CSCW. It’s about the ingenuity and efforts of essential workers who adopted AI technologies that were widely hyped as solving the problems of the pandemic. dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...
dl.acm.org
Patchwork: The Hidden, Human Labor of AI Integration within Essential Work | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
This paper examines the rapid introduction of AI and automation technologies within essential industries amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on participant observation and interviews within two sites ...
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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 28/07/2024
It’s been a big year! But in this phase of my professor-life, I find myself constantly getting caught up in the climb (🧗🏻‍♀️ ← me, climbing / hanging on by a thread) and forgetting to appreciate the peaks. Here is a thread to record and celebrate some of those moments:
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