iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 02/10/2025

It certainly seems that he'll be able to shape AI policy more than his predecessor, Feryal Clark, did. But he's got an uphill battle ahead, navigating copyright, turf wars with Ed Miliband, and the general complexity of the topic.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 02/10/2025

Kanishka Narayan, the UK's new minister for AI, is a rare example of a politician who actually *gets* his brief. In a new profile for @transformernews.ai, @alys.bsky.social notes that he takes AI risks pretty seriously, too.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 09/09/2025

Our aim is to be the definitive source for coverage of transformative AI — one dedicated to explaining what’s happening in AI and why it matters. We think this is a really important mission. The world needs more journalism that takes AI seriously. We hope to provide it.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 25/07/2025

Hugging Face still has a ton of porn hosted on its website which can be accessed without logging in or verifying your age. Not entirely sure how that's compliant with the UK Online Safety Act ... which even 4Chan's taken action to comply with today!

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 24/07/2025

Hugging Face likes to portray itself as AI's "good guy". Last yr execs incl. @mmitchell.bsky.social & @sashamtl.bsky.social wrote a Teen Vogue piece about stopping deepfake porn. They wrote that “responsibility [for it] lies with society as a whole.” If only the company took responsibility itself

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 24/07/2025

Transformer found that many of these models are uploaded by a few prolific users. While Hugging Face removed *some* of those users' uploads, it didn't ban the users' accounts — and today we've found that they're hosting lots of *other* models intended to generate deepfake porn.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 24/07/2025

We sent the list of models we found to Hugging Face. The company removed some, but not all, of the models we shared with them. They left up a video model that references a film released when the actress was 15, for instance.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 24/07/2025

And in a Transformer investigation yesterday, we found that many of those models were still online, including at least one instance where a model was explicitly aimed at creating sexual content featuring a teenage-looking likeness of an actress.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 24/07/2025

Here's a story about Hugging Face, deepfake pornography, and irresponsible content moderation. Last week, 404 Media found that Hugging Face hosted 1000s of nonconsensual AI models of real people, many clearly intended to be used to create sexual content.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

Unlike CivitAI, Hugging Face is a major and "respectable" AI company, and it portrays itself as having better ethical standards than other companies.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

This was ridiculously easy for us to find. Yet Hugging Face haven't taken it down. When asked for comment, Hugging Face head of comms Brigitte Tousignant just told us to report the content.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

Elsewhere on Hugging Face are dozens of other models explicitly designed to generate pornographic images of female celebrities. These have explicit filenames, and are stored in a folder that also contains models designed to generate photos of them in different sexual positions.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

And we found a video model that references a movie where the actress being 15 years old, stored in a folder alongside explicitly pornographic models.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

We found at least one instance where a model is explicitly aimed at creating sexual content featuring a teenage-looking likeness of an actress.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 23/07/2025

Hugging Face portrays itself as the "ethical" AI company. So why is it hosting tools to make deepfake porn of teenage celebrities? Following on from @404media.co's report last week, Transformer found that the company hosts some *really* shocking stuff.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 01/04/2025

What makes Transformer really unique is that we take seriously the possibility of transformative AI systems emerging in the near future. My Nieman Lab piece from last year expands on how I think about this: www.niemanlab.org/2024/12/the-...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 01/04/2025

And here are the key details for the reporter role:

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 01/04/2025

Here are the key details for the managing editor role:

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 01/04/2025

🚨 Transformer is hiring! We're looking for a managing editor and a reporter to help grow our coverage of transformative AI systems into the world’s leading publication for AI decision-makers. Details and links below 👇

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 19/01/2025

66 other good things: essayant.com/2025/01/19/6...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 19/01/2025

Books: essayant.com/2024/12/31/b...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 19/01/2025

Theatre: essayant.com/2025/01/05/b...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 19/01/2025

Films: essayant.com/2025/01/05/b...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 16/01/2025

Downloaded Xiaohongshu but it’s not letting me pose my questions 😔

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 30/12/2024

I've made some predictions for AI progress in 2025 using Sage's excellent tool. I encourage everyone — especially sceptics of AI progress — to make your own predictions! You've got until tomorrow to do so. theaidigest.org/2025-ai-fore...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 30/12/2024

Because everything has an AI angle: Samuel Butler, the first AI doomer, was also one of the first people to propose that the Odyssey had a female author. www.joh.cam.ac.uk/authoress-od...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 26/12/2024

DeepSeek just released a new open weights model that appears to be *very* good. And the training run cost only $5m! github.com/deepseek-ai/...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 26/12/2024

Twitter is currently ripping itself apart, as the “tech right” realise they’ve got into bed with a bunch of racists who hate brown people. You absolutely love to see it.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 21/12/2024

My piece lays out what I think needs to happen to avoid repeating the mistakes of the climate crisis.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 21/12/2024

Today's o3 announcement from OpenAI demonstrates what people like @yoshuabengio.bsky.social have been arguing for a while: AI models are advancing *fast*, and we may soon have human-level systems. We urgently need to reckon with what that future could — or should — look like.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 06/12/2024

Lots of criticism of this (some fair, some not). I agree that I should have included the prompting context that led to these results; I think the results are concerning (and, to a general audience, surprising) nonetheless though. I've updated the piece.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 05/12/2024

OpenAI's new model tried to avoid being shut down. Safety evaluations on the model conducted by Apollo Research found that o1 "attempted to exfiltrate its weights" when it thought it might be shut down and replaced with a different model. www.transformernews.ai/p/openais-ne...

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 03/12/2024

DuPont Tychem 10000 Level A Suit and 3M Scott X8815021301303 Air-Pak X3 Pro SCBA with CGA and Continuous Hose 5500; $1,409.66 and $13,059.10 Is your gift recipient kept up at night by fears of AI-assisted CBRN attacks? This will help.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 03/12/2024

The Ghost In The Shell Eau de Parfum; $80 Make AI co-working spaces smell better by buying your loved one a bottle of this AI-inspired perfume — described by its designer as “a perfume that speaks of the human phenomenon and its paradox”. h/t @sebkrier

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 03/12/2024

Life-Size T-800 Endoskeleton; $8,585 The Terminator is not a perfect example of what loss-of-control risks look like ... but it is the coolest. This 6ft, 300lbs sculpture is the perfect way to signal your >90% P(doom) to all who visit you.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 03/12/2024

Gina Raimondo Trading Card; $2.03 Gina Raimondo may soon be leaving the Commerce Department, but she’ll never leave our hearts. Honour her extensive service to AI policy with this remarkably cheap trading card.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 03/12/2024

The Cruz letter is obviously absurd, but it *does* highlight something I’ve been thinking about recently — whether it was a strategic mistake for AI safety people to attempt to (mostly unsuccessfully) build a coalition with AI ethics folks.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 02/12/2024

New export controls, including on HBM:

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 01/12/2024

Yet another safety researcher has left OpenAI. Rosie Campbell says she has been “unsettled by some of the shifts over the last ~year, and the loss of so many people who shaped our culture”. She says she “can’t see a place” for her to continue her work internally.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 29/11/2024

torturing myself by reading the Marc Andreessen/Joe Rogan podcast transcript

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 27/11/2024

Context for when I’m inevitably blocked — HF employees have a habit of blocking their critics.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 27/11/2024

I think people don't realise just how rife Hugging Face is with despicable content. Here's a model that promotes itself by bragging of its ability to generate a naked image of a 15-year-old Emilia Clarke.

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 27/11/2024

Does Hugging Face really "care deeply about ethics"? If so, why did it do nothing about child sexual abuse material in its hosted datasets for 7 months? Why does it host models designed to produce cartoon images of children being raped? Why does it host sexual Taylor Swift deepfake tools?

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 25/11/2024

Damn: researchers at Lawrence Livermore are using o1 to do complicated nuclear fusion research. When people say AI will increase the pace of scientific R&D, this is what they're talking about. www.theinformation.com/articles/why...

I recently chatted with a senior researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who shared some of the work their team is doing with OpenAI’s reasoning model. This includes using o1-preview and o1-mini to solve questions related to nuclear fusion that would have taken their researchers hours or days to do on their own. (Read more about the lab’s use of o1 and the fast-changing dynamics of the reasoning AI race in our article this morning.)

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 22/11/2024

Me when someone says AI risk is just marketing hype

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 19/11/2024

Thinking a lot about @georgemonbiot.bsky.social’s book Regenesis today.

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We grant farming an uncontested political space offered to no other profession.
George Monbiot
Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet
#kindlequotes

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Shakeel @shakeelhashim.com · 15/11/2024

And they didn't trust Sam Altman, either.

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