What a wild, frustrating experience.

Glad I went back to read this after originally missing the article. Here’s a heck of a paragraph:

While the sheer amount of data McDonald’s stored over the years caught me off guard at first, the way it was used by the company’s predictive algorithms was what I found most concerning. The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15). One reporter at WIRED joked that McDonald’s had created a Minority Report-style dossier to predict my next snack wrap purchase.

Nudifier technology is educational technology, and we can’t talk about generative AI in schools without talking about this.

Oof, this is terrifying.

I could nitpick some of this, but it’s an important read.

Quelle surprise.

Terrifying stuff.

Important update on Grok nonsense.

I concede that appeals to the environmental costs of AI sometimes feel knee-jerk and lacking nuance. However, you can always count on Musk to provide a clear example of the harms of AI, and this is a particularly compelling one.

Don’t love the idea of AI as coparent, but gendered divisions of labor also suck.

Very gross stuff here. I remember downplaying the connection between “alien” as an immigration term and “extraterrestrial” in a conversation in college, chalking it up to etymology and dismissing the idea of ill intent. This is definitely ill intent, and it’s all kind of dumb and gross,

Digital labor is, imo, the fundamental problem with AI, and I think this story shows why: It’s not just the AI use here that’s exploitative, it’s kind of everything.

Another good take on Leo and Tolkien.

Good for them.

I will (almost) always post articles that make me angry about NCII.

Embarrassed to say that this gender dynamic of AI had never really occurred to me before. Interesting read.

It’s digital labor all the way down. What a depressing read.

Definitely worth bookmarking this for semesters to come. I like Canvas as far as LMSs go, but the sheer scale of dependence here has me thinking about taking other approaches. This first paragraph is a doozy:

Higher education has long been a target of ransomware gangs and data extortion attacks. But never before, perhaps, has a cyberattack against a single software platform so thoroughly disrupted the daily operations of thousands of schools across the United States.

Audrey Watters once compellingly argued that metal detectors are edtech. I think we now have a responsibility to treat AI nudifier apps as edtech, too.

Interesting article here. I don’t read WIRED (or The Verge, or…) for the product reviews, but it’s not hard to see how generative AI can create issues for them in that way.

Oh, okay, maybe not shame so much as butt-covering.

It takes a lot to get me on Anthropic’s side in any disagreement, but Pete Hegseth is a lot, so I guess this tracks.

Important, helpful read.

CEOs’ silence is indication of a moral vacuum.

Look, I’m open to the argument that there are legitimate, good uses of generative AI, but I think anyone making that argument needs to address stuff like this.