iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

If you think a distinct sub category of human exists because some medieval warlords agreed that the border of England should be on the River Tweed, you are, Im afraid, an absolute maniac bsky.app/profile/theh...

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Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Dear tv and radio producers. Thankyou for the invitation. But, no, I do not want to appear on your show to defend the idea that I am English, after 50 years of living and working here, because the increasingly feral right want to turn this into a "debate" and you cannot see how you're being played

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Steve Huntsman @stevehuntsman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Claimed proofs of: Unique games conjecture Matrix multiplication exponent bound of 9/4

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Steve Huntsman @stevehuntsman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

OpenAI doing a denial of service attack on mathematicians rn Like, spamming us with shit that nobody but us cares about or can grok as a flex is pointless outside of an IPO push If it matters to produce these, let the pros do it the right way, so they understand and don’t accrue tech debt

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Seb Tallents @sebtallents.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

@hugorifkind.bsky.social - maybe hope it's in the box because with all that other stuff out there, it's the hope that gets you!

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The idea of a "tech industry" has always relied on "computer" being a special kind of medium, akin to alchemy. And if tech demands to be king, AI hype has now elevated LLMs to a king of kings. But the solipsism has hit a dead end. The only way forward is to recognize that computers are not special.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.

The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.

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Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

NEW: I came across a bookseller who was afraid that a mysterious company trying to buy some of his rarest books was going to use them to train AI models. I went down the rabbithole with him, and was confused and altogether existentially weirded out by what I found www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.com

A bookseller confronts a mysterious company hunting his rarest books

Was a Kentucky retailer targeted by a destructive AI "predator"?

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Saaaaaaaaaaaaaam @samsamsamsamsam.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Are we sure this isn't the actor Kevin Eldon?

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Matt Anniss @sellbydave.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Check for a flask of weak lemon drink under Stewart’s chair. In the clip he looks like he’s about to bellow “What is the biggest leaf? ANSWER ME!”

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Seb Tallents @sebtallents.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Source: The Telegraph share.google/6skSIeoBA6p0... What a surprise that the minister that oversaw privatisation doesn't understand where the water companies debt comes from and that it was a deliberate financial engineering rather than necessary to raise capital for infrastructure investments.

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Media Diversified @writersofcolour.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A HMRC official was sacked because he was caught on camera saying he gives wrong information to black and brown people when they call for advice in a bid to sabotage them. He was a member of the far right group Patriotic Alternative. How many more?

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Ilikecaketoo (UK) @ilikecaketoo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Disgraceful that the RNLI have to say this today, but here we are 😞. If you would like to donate👇🏻. rnli.org/support-us/g... #RNLI #RNLISavesLives

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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 09/09/2026

mastodon post

Andreas Thom
@andreasthom@mathstodon.xyz
@tristanbuckmaster
1/3 I want to record a number of points that I realized after reading up on the controversy. In fact it recalls an exchange I had with OpenAl after its non-sofic-group announcement. It exposes a serious, unanswered question about whether researchers can trust OpenAl with unpublished mathematics.
I wrote in an email to Mark Sellke and Sebastien Bubeck shortly after the surprising finding of a non-sofic group using the methods of Kun and myself:
"Another point is that I and a colleague in Dresden were discussing the expander matching problem and various extensions of the work with Gabor Kun actively over the last months with ChatGPT, so that we are of course curious if that was part of the training data or accessible to the reasoning process. There is a certain (frankly unacceptable) lack of transparency here; and fear it will damage the communal process of math more than the new Al-generated results will benefit the subject."
Mark Selle's complete answer was: "Regarding your conversations with ChatGPT: that did not happen."
I had explicitly asked about two different things: (1) whether our conversations entered training data, and (2) whether they were accessible to the solving process. The categorical answer now looks as though it addressed only direct access under (2). No such qualification, explanation, or evidence was given. I take this as dishonesty to say the least.
OpenAl now says in the Buckmaster-Alpöge case that no specific user data was accessed, but adds that it "cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models."

Andreas Thom
©andreasthom@mathstodon.xyz
@tristanbuckmaster
2/3 OpenAl is drawing a distinction that its answer to me erased, despite the fact that my question explicitly made that distinction.
We are not required to reverse-engineer OpenAl's internal training pipeline to establish what happened. Only OpenAl has the relevant data for that. If Sellke and Bubeck give a categorical denial, it must disclose the basis: product and privacy settings, relevant datasets and checkpoints, and what "de-identified data derived from usage" means.
I disabled model training on 29 June. That control is still only a promise whose implementation users cannot audit, and it is prospective: it does not answer what happened to earlier conversations or to derivatives already selected. OpenAl's answer did not mention the setting or any account-specific check.
There is also a mathematical parallel, though a less explicit one. The approach of Kun and myself was not the main line of attack on non-soficity, in fact there were other more promising approaches along the line of quantum games etc. OpenAl's detailed command of our techniques therefore made me wonder how the model found this route.
If nonpublic research supplied by users improved a model and the provider then used that model to race those users to publication - without informed consent, disclosure, or credit - that would be ethically indefensible. De-identification may remove a name; it does not remove the intellectual content of a mathematical idea. Sellke and Bubeck seem to be blind to this simple moral aspect.

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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 09/09/2026

another researcher accuses OpenAI of training on conversations and then claiming a breakthrough

Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro
X.com
BREAKING: OpenAl might have stolen another major proot.
In a detailed Mastodon post, which I report in full in the comments, Andreas Thom presents several pieces of evidence suggesting that OpenAl may have trained Astra on conversations in which he and Gábor Kun were working on Gromov's soficity conjecture, one of the ten problems OpenAl later announced Astra had solved.
I know Andreas. We met several times early in our careers. He is an exceptional mathematician, a leading expert on sofic and hyperlinear groups, and one of the most respected scholars in the field. He has spent two decades working on this problem.
If his account is correct, this is not a minor dispute over attribution. It would mean that unpublished human work was absorbed into a model and then presented to the world as a breakthrough by the model itself.

And if the allegations raised by Levent Alpöge, Tristan Buckmaster, and now Andreas Thom are all substantiated, we are no longer looking at isolated incidents.
We may be looking at one of the greatest intellectual scandals in the history of science.
Al is not discovering new mathematics.
Al is stealing human discovery.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 08/09/2026

And I can't decipher my own pitch. Or have any idea what I meant by it.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 08/09/2026

The decades just rush by. There was a moment of optimism and possibility which #OneTeamGov embodied - still much needed, but feeling a bit more out of reach.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/09/2026

Even in that amazing future, the world should *still* race to build a post-American internet. The world should have built that internet after the Snowden revelations. That ghastly failure created the Trumpian internet. 57/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/09/2026

If the post-Trump internet isn't a post-American internet, it'll only be a matter of time until the next crisis, and the coming years will give Big Tech even more chances to worm its tendrils into the world's governments, firms and households, making that crisis be even *harder* to survive. 58/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 03/09/2026

The best time to act was 13 years ago, after Snowden. The second best time is now. eof/

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Ed Granter @edgranter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The UK cannot have a UK owned/run industry/company. When it has one, however viable, essential, successful, it has to be destroyed and sold off. No taxes to UK. No real long-term stake in the UK. The money has to leave the country. We have to be poorer.

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Josh Eyler @josheyler.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Major kudos to MIT, who just put out a report about AI on their campus that lucidly explains the threat posed by AI to cognition and the student experience, while at the same time prioritizes learning, students, and the value of education. 1/x aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

aiandeducation.mit.edu

Report – AI and Education

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Eschire Cat-tle, MSc @escherbug.art · 18/08/2026

Does anyone know any academic papers or similar analyses of Pratchett 's wizards as academics and witches as public servants/etc? I'd love to read someone else's thoughts on it

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

(PS. I am once again begging journalists just to do some basic homework before recycling party press releases. I am not even the expert here - @stevepeers.bsky.social or @cbarnard.bsky.social are. Why not ask them first?)

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

3. If we didn't comply (by returning to the status quo) and/or pay the fines, the EU could (and would) suspended the TCA and/or impose tariffs/sanctions. "No Deal" Brexit or worse. We would cave, as in 2019/2020. None of this is going to happen (4/4)

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

2. More importantly the EU would *not* retaliate by withdrawing benefits from UK citizens in the EU. That is explicitly prohibited by the Withdrawal Agreement. They would take us to court We'd lose. Fines would be "proportional" - ie £billions, not £500m! (3/4)

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

1. There would be no "renegotiation". This is not a trade agreement -it's the Withdrawal Agreement on citizens rights and for obvious principled and pragmatic reasons the EU is simply not going to even talk about this. (2/4)

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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

This BBC article (published this am but updated this pm) is *still* recycling Reform misinformation. This is *not* what would happen. At all. It would be much worse (1/3) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

20/ correction: he wasn't exactly the original source bsky.app/profile/malc...

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

19/ just one more thing! I have a spider sense for dubious things online. And in this case it detected Thanos. I mean, the original source is a full-ass "race realist"? It should give everyone pause for thought about how to deal with an issue, if the original source is Racist Zero.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

18/ because of school or class or university background, whatever. We all know this! So why the fanatical focus on this one hiring in particular!?

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

17/ Finally, we all know that hiring people is a mess, right? Not just in academia. Sometimes yes, people might be hired because of their sex or race, or conversely being an ethnic minority might count against them, as I said. They might also be hired because they're a friend, a family member...

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

16/ as for the notion in particular that a mistaken hiring of one person influenced by race is all about trans issues, give your head a wobble. The ideologue here is you.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

15/ how academics actually spend their time - emails - class preparation - marking - small bits of research - meetings - more email - teaching - more marking

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

14/ how the whiteosphere thinks academics spend our time: - wake up - drink soy milk - eat vegan breakfast - take sex hormones - lecture students about Marxism - deface a synagogue - masturbate to footage of Stalin - trans some passing schoolchildren

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

13/ what about this "tears down the woke ideology of universities" spiel? My God, whiteosphere, listen to yourselves.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

12/ to the extent that the argument is about PhD supervision, my experience is both black and white students were treated the same way - and supervised more rigorously than allegedly happened here. But again, anecdotes on both sides! You cannot claim that the Arday case is typical without data!

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

11/ the specific "DEI has infected academic hiring" claim could only really be tested by testing white applications with *more* qualifications against minority applications with fewer. And even that isn't exactly what the debate is about in this case.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

10/ tbf, it would be useful for this debate to replicate this study for academic jobs only (although difficult in practice - the names of applicants for professor jobs in particular may well be known already to the hiring team)

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

9/ Anecdotes on both sides, but I also have data! The classic study showing that identical CVs with "ethnic" names get fewer callbacks than "white British" names www.compas.ox.ac.uk/article/what...

compas.ox.ac.uk

What’s in a Name? Wage Inequalities Based on the Ethnic Minority Name of a Job Applicant | COMPAS

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

8/ "It exposes the whole academic hiring system". Does it though? It's one guy. My own experience on the hiring side of academia is that we hired on the merits, not on anyone's race or sex. And I have zero reservations about the ability of any black colleagues I have worked with.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

7/ "Lying is wrong" I agree! It pisses me off greatly. And there should be proportionate consequences for it, which might extend to losing a job in serious cases. But seriously: in a world when Trump etc lie massively and daily with real consequences for millions, you're obsessed with *this* guy?

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

6/ How much energy was expended on other cases of academic plagiarism, or other misconduct by academics, in cases which didn't concern a prominent black scholar?

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Ok, some thoughts, as an olde tyme academic, on the Arday tragedy. First, allegations about causes. We don't know what was in his mind, but many people are keen to blame him, or woke lefties/academia, or the media. Some people are absolutely certain that the media are faultless. 1/

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

2/ As I said, we don't know what was in his mind. But I do know *my* mind. And as a human being who is also an academic, if I was on the receiving end of *this* - alongside similar stuff from other media, and losing my job - I would be a mental and emotional wreck. bsky.app/profile/keta...

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

3/ Is that too thin-skinned? Some people let great waves of criticism wash over them, but that's sometimes because they suffer limited consequences, or have less to lose than others?

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

4/ And you know which group of people are often *really* thin-skinned? Journalists - who often dismiss any criticism of their conduct out of hand, and had a collective meltdown when Owen Jones pointed out that a high percentage of them went to private school.

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

5/ Secondly, and linked to this, the issue of proportionality, mixed in with comparability. (Finding a comparator is a basic feature of discrimination law) Yes, you can argue that a particular individual isn't qualified for their job. But this level of vitriol? For a random academic?

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