Very interesting piece.

Some Ellulian vibes in here.

What a wild, depressing story. I feel like I ought to use this to teach the concept of platforms to my students—it neatly sums up the intervention in normal human activity by someone who thinks they have a buck to make.

Closing digital divides is good, and increasing diversity in tech fields as good, but I’ve been complaining for years about computer science ed that we stop at the nobility of those goals and don’t ask ourselves about the deeper motivations behind those initiatives. So it is with AI: A more diverse field more available to all is better than what we have, but we also have to ask whether AI education is actually a social good.

There’s always been a dark side to internet culture, but I don’t think it was naïve in my earlier work to argue for recognizing its value. Yet, it’s important as a scholar to call out the ugliness that’s happening here.

Been thinking for years that I should own a Fairphone one day.

Je ne connais pas hyper bien Mix & Remix, mais j’ai quelques livres qu’il a illustré, et je crois me souvenir d’un mécanicien à Renens dont il a illustré le logo.

Oof, hadn’t thought of this, but as much as I’d like to further reduce Google dependence, this would really hurt.

I genuinely think it’s useful to remember that non-AI datacenters are also contributing to the climate crisis, but that doesn’t let AI off the hook. It’s like saying “sure, we’re spending far beyond our means, but have you considered that we’re already in debt?

Bookmarking this so I can point to it if anyone asks why I’ve shifted my research from ed tech to right-wing Mormonism.

This sucks. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Reddit here, which has shown over the past few years a dedicated interest in monetizing its userbase.

Ma carrière se divise entre une valorisation des pratiques numériques perçues comme n’ayant pas d’importance et une critique des technologies qui permettent ces pratiques. J’avoue que je me sens vraiment divisé pour cet exemple !

Interesting read. Bookmarking for reference.

Look, nothing really new in here (Clearview should have made parents rethink the same ages ago, etc.), but yes, AI should get parents to be a hell of a lot more careful with posting pictures of kids.

I hadn’t thought about these two trends (cracking down on adult content, and Grok being Grok) being in tension with each other, and I appreciate what this article does to make that clear.

Unsurprising but disappointing.

Don’t even know what to comment here. How is this the world we’re living in?

Again, I’m not sure copyright is the way to go in fighting immoral generative AI companies (that the ALA and EFF are on Anthropic’s side seems important to me), but “we have to be able to do this to be successful” still strikes me as such a hollow, self-serving argument.

Here’s Jacques Ellul on state funding of research: The state demands that anything scientific enter into the line of “normal” development, not only for the stake of the public interest but also because of its will to power. We have previously noted that this will to power has found in technique an extraordinary means of expression. The state quickly comes to demand that technique keep its promises and be an effective servant of state power.

À mon avis, l’expertise « au niveau doctorat » est surtout lié au processus de connaître et non à la connaissance elle-même, et l’IA générative ne respecte pas du tout ce processus.

This seems performative to me, and this paragraph gets at why I think so: AI companies are increasingly pushing into education — perhaps in part to try and fight the reputation that AI tools have acquired that they help students cheat. Features like Gemini’s guided learning mode and ChatGPT’s similar study mode, which was announced last week, could theoretically help with actual learning, but the question is whether students will want to use these modes instead of just using the AI chatbots for easy answers.

There are, of course, social benefits to open sourcing powerful tools like these ones. However, I’m reminded of “open source” Android, which is a deliberate business decision that benefits Google—and of how many NCII-generating tools are based on open weight/open source models. gift link

I’m glad that someone is doing this white hat work, but I hate that we live in a world where someone has to.

This article is one more push in the direction of my finally subscribing to Kagi.

Glad to belong to a church that takes positions on moral issues like this one.

Je connaissais pas cette partie de l’histoire.

Not impressed with Substack, and Masnick does a good job of explaining why.

You don’t have to use Substack to have a newsletter.

Quel monde pourri qui attend nos enfants.

Kind of hate that we have to ask the question in this headline! I’ve been (link)blogging recently about needing to talk about epistemology when we talk about generative AI. I know that in at least one case, I’ve evoked the generation of scientific knowledge as a counterexample to the “just the facts, ma’am” naïve epistemology promoted by AI and its supporters. To use generative AI to review papers—and to try to get around peer review—feels particularly dangerous to me.

Quick question about this passage: Trump … signed an executive order titled “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” directing government agencies “not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.” So, how does one determine what is true or accurate? Once again, we need to talk about epistemology when we talk about generative AI.

Dammit, am I going to have to stop using Canvas?

“Traffic apocalypse” is a scary idea—not only for the threat it poses to smaller websites but also for the way it could further cement the influence of a few big companies in shaping the world.

This emphasis on “objective truth” further underscores the need to talk epistemology when we talk AI.

Je n’aime pas du tout la présence des IA dans les écoles, mais je trouve aussi gênante la pénalisation à tort des étudiants.

You know, I skipped over this story when it come out in a couple of other outlets, but seeing the headline again here got me thinking about how good/scary of an example this is of LLMs shaping (rather than reflecting) reality.