Look, I really will stop posting about Grok and epistemology, but the news stories keep coming.

Yesterday, I wrote my thoughts on how Grok’s “Nazi meltdown” helps illustrate some of my concerns about AI and epistemology. This coverage of Grok’s latest demo only reinforces that—Musk’s tinkering with the LLM to get the results he wants is at odds with his states naïve epistemology that an LLM can be “maximally truth-seeking,” as though there is a self-evident truth that an LLM can deliver in a straightforward way (that is, without all that mucking about behind the scenes).

I can’t find the right words for how this story makes me feel.

Reddit is a really interesting example of digital labor issues as they relate to both social media and AI. I wonder how things will go over the next few years.

What. The. Hell. Is. This. Nonsense.

Fanfiction is one of the most compelling examples of the labor issues related to generative AI.

The sheer hubris of this attitude! The AI industry must exist, even if it means that it will put others out of business, and therefore any moral standard that would put the AI industry out of business must be abandoned. Very Ellulian.

The “You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media” system prompt is raising questions already answered by the system prompt. Also, lol that they have to explicitly tell Grok not to call it “Twitter.”

None of this is good, and I think there are dangers in using copyright as the bulwark against AI. Conversely, I will take a bit of pleasure in administration infighting, especially if it gets in the way of the AI companies.

Again, more of religious commentary on AI that emphasizes labor issues.

Some really good reflections in here.

Look, I have some sympathy for Mozilla because it’s Mozilla… but Mozilla’s dependence on Google is a real problem.

I have already been skeptical about Duolingo (as a company—the app is mostly not bad) for a while, but this is the sort of thing that makes me want to find an alternative for kiddo to use fast.

I haven’t paid much attention to gestures at all this before now, but this critique convinces me.

This video has been on my mind all morning, and it makes me so sad.

This sort of thing reminds me why I’m so entrenched in my skepticism of generative AI. There’s an uncritical insistence that the world needs AI, that America should be first in AI, and that we’re just going to have to increase energy production instead of ask ourselves if that’s worth the cost. Credit to Trump, I guess, for illustrating just how dangerous all these attitudes are.

Feeling optimistic!

Is this story ever going to get less dumb?

I was already planning to voice skepticism about Apple partnerships with universities in a manuscript I’m writing, but now I’ve got this to cite as well.

Well, if he’s going to ruin the economy, at least he can come by his strategy in the dumbest possible way.

I didn’t need to read a printer recommendation article today, but I’m so glad I did. The rage about the world we live in is great.

What a dumb, petty administration this is.

I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.

Posting this in the interest of fairness, but I’m still not happy with Mozilla right now.

Yes please.

The headline is a little provocative, but it’s scary that we live in a world where it makes some sense. More broadly, though, I found that the first Trump administration converted me to nuclear disarmament—yes, this president is scary, but that any president has access to that much destructive power is scarier still. I expect I’ll go further in that direction this time around.

I’m teaching a social media research methods class this semester, and I’m pretty sure I need to bring this article up in this week’s class.

Lots of bad things are happening right now, but this one stands out. There’s no good reason for this except to make Musk happy.

Personally, I’ve come around to the idea that fewer restrictions, “Community Notes”-style responses, and lots of personal control over what one sees could work better as content moderation. It’s interesting to see Bluesky take some of these approaches, for example! Here, though, this seems like it’s bending the knee to the Trump administration, and I can’t imagine any of this being done in good faith. What a disappointment Meta continues to be.

I don’t see myself pivoting away from Reeder, but this looks interesting, and I want to see more of this kind of app out there.

Look, I’m a bit hesitant here, but Aardman’s take on Star Wars was great, so fingers crossed!!

I’ll admit that I haven’t read much on all of this, but I can’t imagine any coverage better than this article.

Well, this sucks.

Some powerful stuff in here.

What a wild story.

In a weird kind of Streisand effect, I’ve only started using the Internet Archive library since this lawsuit began and it’s a fantastic service. I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of copyright law, but this sucks.