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Sam Bennett

@sj-bennett.bsky.social
505 followers 185 following 74 posts

🏳️‍⚧️ he/him 👀 AI Metascience Fellow @Durham Uni - AI Ethics & Society www.ai-ethics.org - AI and Medical Humanities - www.sj-bennett.com

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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
💫only a couple of weeks until the showcase!! still a few spots free if you want to come along
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Srravya @srravya.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
This is going to be a fun, engaging showcase, happening in Manchester in June! It's a great excuse to plan a trip to Manchester this summer! Read about the first queer data showcase held last year in Edinburgh: www.gender.ed.ac.uk/blog/2025/qu...
gender.ed.ac.uk
The Queer Data Showcase: queer data as an adjective and as a verb | GENDER.ED
Kaveri Qureshi reflects on how the Queer Data Showcase organised by the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab, AI Ethics & Society and Pride in STEM addressed queer data as an adjective and as a verb.
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Centre for Technomoral Futures @technomoralfutures.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
📣 Postdoc opportunity with Dr Nayha Sethi, CTMF Affiliate 📣 The Medicine without Doctors Project is recruiting a postdoc fellow with a background in law/regulation/socio-legal studies to work on a case-study exploring socio-legal elements of AI. Closing date: 8 May Info & apply 👇 edin.ac/3Qf8VQX
edin.ac
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
We are looking for a Postdoctoral Fellow to undertake socio-legal work in relation to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) component of the project. In collaboration with Dr Nayha Sethi (line manager), th...
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Srravya @srravya.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
"The questions we are litigating now are less ‘is this AI product good or bad’ and more ‘we have seen what it can do, and do we want AI to exist in this space at all?’" writes @bcmerchant.bsky.social on the shift from rejection to refusal of AI that he documents across different domains.
bloodinthemachine.com
It's open season for refusing AI
There's been a wave of successful efforts to ban, reject and shut down AI.
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Liz Renner @lrrenner.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
"all AI will do is require that we work more, harder, and on the parts of our job that shouldn’t even be our job"
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Rachel Playforth @archelina.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
This is why I increasingly believe that librarians should use our limited time and resources to lobby for proper regulation and governance and not on developing 'literacy' or 'ethical use' policies after adoption, when it's far too late. It's like teaching victims of crime to be more 'ethical'.
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Good news: not just one open job, but two! Both are postdocs in philosophy of science/ML working with my @technomoralfutures.bsky.social co-Director Dr Emily Sullivan on issues in ML scientific understanding and explanation. Ads for a 3 year post and 2 year post are linked below, apply by 20 April
elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate
The Philosophy Department in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences is seeking a full time, fixed term Postdoctoral Research Associate. This post is available from May 2026.
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Alice Ross @alice-ross.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.
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Frank Harrell @f2harrell.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social
academic.oup.com
Signal or noise? Evaluating commonly used attribution methods for explaining deep neural networks in electrocardiogram classification
AbstractAims. Attribution-based explainability methods are widely used in electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis to interpret predictions from ‘black-box’ deep n
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
✨really looking forward to Ben’s online talk next Wednesday!
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404 Media @404media.co · 08/03/2026
A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. www.404media.co/this-app-war...
404media.co
This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby
The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to…
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Aaron Winter @aaronwinter.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
If you want to defeat the far right, you need a real alternative, not a more moderate version that panders & parrots but offers nothing to address real issues. Congratulations @greenparty.org.uk, Hannah Spencer, @zackpolanski.bsky.social & the people of Gorton & Denton www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp...
bbc.co.uk
Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform
Hannah Spencer, a 34-year-old plumber, also becomes the first Green Party candidate to win a Westminster by-election.
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records. Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'. Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Stop Palantir taking over our public services!
Our public services aren’t for a secretive profit-hungry US tech firm. Sign the petition to tell the Government to scrap all contracts with secretive US tech firm Palantir.
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AI Ethics & Society @aies-edinburgh.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
📣our next event “Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-led dialogue”, is happening in Edinburgh Feb 18th - a panel discussion featuring @karengregory.bsky.social, Nelson Oppong and Adam Badger, and chaired by @srravya.bsky.social 👀 sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/navigating...
eventbrite.co.uk
Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-Led Dialogue
A wide-ranging discussion about moving between disciplines, publishing cross-disciplinary research, and responding to funding uncertainties
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Everything old being new again all at once is not a coincidence
nytimes.com
Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Reminder that years ago it was found out that the FBI straight up made up a whole bunch of fake forensic sciences, plural. People have gone to jail and been executed due to literally pseudoscience. Hair forensics, for instance, is totally nonsense. They admitted it. slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
The FBI Faked an Entire Field of Forensic Science
For more stories like this, like Slate on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Remmelt 🛑 @artificialbodies.net · 19/12/2025
When I led local 'EA' groups, I used to half-jokingly say that effective altruism is a cult. I still like many of the well-intentioned people there. But I've left. Over time, I've come to understand how it's actually a cult. My forum bio now says this:
Note that I'm no longer part of EA, because of overreaches I saw during my time in the community (core people leading technocratic projects with ruinous downside risks, a philosophy based around influencing consequences over enabling collective choice-making, and a culture that's bent on proselytising both while not listening deeply enough to integrate other perspectives).
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...
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Remmelt 🛑 @artificialbodies.net · 07/12/2025
“This was the system that let Epstein in and kept him in. It is also the system now steering the most consequential technologies of the coming century. The convergence of Silicon Valley’s elite, the techno-authoritarian right and the labs coding AI and crypto, has only intensified since his death.”
bylinetimes.com
How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley’s AI Elite
The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
“As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
RSF massacres left Sudanese city ‘a slaughterhouse’, satellite images show
Up to 150,000 residents of El Fasher are missing since North Darfur capital fell to paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
durham.taleo.net
Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life Fellows - Assistant Professor (Research) G7 - G8
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
❔Does anyone know of groups where disabled people/people w chronic conditions and working in Critical Data Studies/AI can meet up? Like a Queer in AI but for disabled folks? I constantly think about how helpful it might be to talk to other people navigating disability, who are doing similar work
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Christopher Hale @christopherjhale.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
In newly leaked audio, Peter Thiel admits he urged JD Vance to ignore Pope Leo XIV on moral questions — including the ethical development of AI. He goes even further, branding Leo “the woke American pope” and suggesting he’s a tool of the Antichrist.
thelettersfromleo.com
NEW: JD Vance’s Top Donor Suggests Pope Leo XIV is Antichrist
In a leaked lecture, Peter Thiel says he’s urged Vance to ignore the pope on moral questions — and simply pray for him.
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Dr Eddie Ungless @mxeddie.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I'm officially a Doctor. I'm very proud of the work I did on the harms of language technologies, my thesis here: lnkd.in/eh6FqZkZ It is a privilege to graduate, when not a single university still stands in Gaza. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, in particular @bjoernross.bsky.social.
Two people standing side by side face the camera smiling. On the right is Eddie, he/they, a white trans person with pink hair and a dark moustache. He is wearing a floral suit, a graduation gown, and is draped in the trans and Palestine flags. They are holding flowers. On the left is Bjoern, he/him, a white man, wearing a smart suit.
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
📣 Last few tickets left now!!
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
My student Arlene Lo has a paper on the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's attempts to integrate Indigenous groups into its environmental impact assessments. It's now out in (appropriately enough!) the Canadian journal of philosophy. It's good, check it out! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Anti-Colonial Science? The Politics of Indigenous Knowledge Inclusion in Science-Based Policy


Arlene Lo


An aspect of the Indigenous struggle against colonial oppression is the struggle for the inclusion of their knowledge in policymaking. Perceived as epistemically inferior to science, Indigenous knowledge and subsequently interests are systematically excluded in science-based policy. This article advances an anti-colonial political philosophy of science. As Indigenous knowledge feeds into the necessary political value judgements in policy-relevant science, Indigenous knowledge inclusion, I contend, should be treated as a political, not solely epistemic, matter. I further argue that Indigenous peoples, not just scientists, should have the power to make such political value judgements given the politics of representation under coloniality.
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 23/11/2025
I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world And by design LLMs destroy shared context
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Our final event of the semester is happening on December 3rd! Interested in critical health data studies? Come along to High School Yards :)
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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
🔔new paper alert🔔 I argue that language technologies are usefully understood as a type of language management (i.e., ways of changing how people use and think about language) -- especially in the workplace -- connecting critical work on AI with language policy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Defining language and managing its use: Language technology as language management
Language technologies such as voice user interfaces, large language models and machine translation tools are embedded in an ever-growing range of digi…
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Oliver Haimson @haimson.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Heading to Edinburgh next week for this exciting event on 🤖🏳️‍⚧️Gender and the Machine🧟‍♀️🧑‍💻, where @naz-andalibi.bsky.social and I will be talking about our research! Thanks to @sj-bennett.bsky.social and @kevinguyan.bsky.social for organizing! Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-and...
eventbrite.co.uk
Gender and the Machine: Trans Tech, Emotion and AI
Join us for this afternoon of events discussing gender, marginalisation and emotion in AI and digital technologies
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
🥰🥰🔴⭐️
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Can’t wait for this!! Only a few weeks away now🕺
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Dan McQuillan @danmcquillan.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
'Resisting AI' foreshadowed much of our technofascist moment, but a lot has happened since publication. Why does a broken tech attract such huge commitments? How can it burn so much energy yet claim to save the planet? And can decomputing offer an escape from AI-drive nihilism?
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Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
hear me talk about how AI is *really* ruining your job, not by taking it but by undermining your autonomy, enabling (nay, encouraging) your boss to monitor and assess you all the time, and removing everything that sparks joy in your working day Edinburgh (🥰), 28/11!
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
"UN refugee agency official Jacqueline Wilma Parlevliet said that the new arrivals told stories of widespread ethnic and politically motivated killings, including reports of people with disabilities shot dead because they were unable to flee" this keeps getting worse www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...
ctvnews.ca
Sudan’s paramilitary killed hundreds including hospital patients in Darfur, residents say
Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people including patients in a hospital after they seized el-Fasher city in the western Darfur region over the weekend, according to the UN, displaced re...
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
"If de Waal is anywhere close to right, this conflict will have killed 7.5 percent of the prewar population of Gaza in just two years." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | What Happened in Gaza Might Be Even Worse Than We Think
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Ludovico Rella @ludovico-rella.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Our second event of the semester is next week! 🎉
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
✨excited to start my UKRI AI Metascience fellowship, where I’ll examine how AI-generated synthetic data is (re)shaping medical research cultures and knowledge practices. Super happy to be staying at Durham University with @amoorelouise.bsky.social as my mentor! www.ukri.org/news/interna...
ukri.org
International fellowships to explore AI’s impact on science
New £4 million programme funds early career researchers in the UK, US and Canada to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming science.
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
New article from the Algorithmic Societies group at Durham where theorize prompting as "a mutation in the exercise of political power, beyond the direct command and even the more indirect ‘action at a distance’ characteristic of liberal governmentality...." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI
This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...
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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
“Computation has now been reconfigured by machine learning…” Looks awesome: events.humanitix.com/1000platform...
events.humanitix.com
Adrian Mackenzie and Anna Munster Book Launch
Book launch event for '1000 Platforms' by Prof Adrian Mackenzie (ANU) and 'DeepAesthetics' by Prof Anna Munster (UNSW), hosted at ANU
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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
This is going to be a really engaging and interesting workshop! If you’re around in Edinburgh next Friday, you should come along :)
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
"A Luddite is someone who is against the *abuse* - not the use - of technology." The kids get it.
cbsnews.com
Here's why a group of NYC teens is rejecting cellphones and social media
These Brooklyn students formed a group to try to beat their own addictive behavior around technology.
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Rosamunde Van Brakel @rosamundevb.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Israel’s ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn’t live here | George Monbiot
Consider the annihilation of agricultural land alongside the genocide – and grasp the chilling totality of this attempt to eliminate all life, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
this exists it is called thinking
Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.
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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
The key problem with what Ezra Klein says here is that he fails – or is unwilling – to grapple with the fundamental reality of the political conflict: The movement that dominates today’s Right fully rejects the very idea of “living here with each other” as equals. That’s their defining position.
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jess reia • 何杰茜 @jhereia.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Interested in environmental justice & how gender inequalities are embedded in technology infrastructure? Join us for the 4th Gender & Tech webinar, Sept. 29 11am EDT, with Paz Peña Ochoa & @tamigraph.bsky.social. Free & open. Registration: virginia.zoom.us/webinar/regi... Co-org w/ @yasmincurzi.com
Poster of the 4th talk in the Gender and Tech Online Talk Series: Technocapitalism and Environmental Justice. IT features a dark green and orange abstract pattern, with the information about the event in white:
Speakers:
Paz Peña, Mozilla Foundation
Tamara Kneese, Data & Society
Moderated by Jess Reia
September 29th, 11am EDT.

This series is co-organized by Yasmin Curzi and Jess Reia.

In the bottom of the poster we have two sponsor logos: UVA Digital Technology for Democracy Lab and UVA School of Data Science
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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
📣 NEW -- In The Economist, discussing the privacy perils of AI agents and what AI companies and operating systems need to do--NOW--to protect Signal and much else! www.economist.com/by-invitatio...
An illustration of me, and the headline: "AI agents are coming for your privacy, warns Meredith Whittaker
The Signal Foundation’s president worries they will also blunt competition and undermine cyber-security"To put it bluntly, the path currently being taken towards agentic AI leads to an elimination of privacy and security at the application layer. It will not be possible for apps like Signal—the messaging app whose foundation I run—to continue to provide strong privacy guarantees, built on robust and openly validated encryption, if device-makers and OS developers insist on puncturing the metaphoric blood-brain barrier between apps and the OS. Feeding your sensitive Signal messages into an undifferentiated data slurry connected to cloud servers in service of their AI-agent aspirations is a dangerous abdication of responsibility.Happily, it’s not too late. There is much that can still be done, particularly when it comes to protecting the sanctity of private data. What’s needed is a fundamental shift in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents. First, privacy must be the default, and control must remain in the hands of application developers exercising agency on behalf of their users. Developers need the ability to designate applications as “sensitive” and mark them as off-limits to agents, at the OS level and otherwise. This cannot be a convoluted workaround buried in settings; it must be a straightforward, well-documented mechanism (similar to Global Privacy Control) that blocks an agent from accessing our data or taking actions within an app.

Second, radical transparency must be the norm. Vague assurances and marketing-speak are no longer acceptable. OS vendors have an obligation to be clear and precise about their architecture and what data their AI agents are accessing, how it is being used and the measures in place to protect it.
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