Data-center infrastructure and energy gentrification: perspectives from Sweden
Which societal functions should be prioritized when the electricity grid reaches its maximum capacity? By using Sweden as an example, this policy brief discusses the societal negotiations that aris...
Starting a new thread to collect critical perspectives on AI, as they are articulated dozens of times every day and appear repeatedly on my timeline. I can't read everything right away, but if, like me, you want to stay up to date, then this might help a bit:
The AI Accessibility Divide: How Emerging Tech Could Create New Barriers for Disabled People
AI often promises efficiency, fairness, and convenience. Yet for disabled people, interacting with these systems can show a different reality. Take hiring, for example. When you apply for a job tod…
Analytic philosophers in the United States are increasingly embracing AI, both by taking advisory positions at tech companies and by using large language models for their own research and writing. Some argue AI can already philosophize competently. But what does it mean to ‘do’ philosophy after all?
As a field, artificial intelligence has always been on the border of respectability,
and therefore on the border of crackpottery. Many critics <Dreyfus, 1972>, <Lighthill,
1973> have urged that we are over the border. We have been very defensive toward ...
Anthropic Says Claude Hacked 3 Organizations During Cybersecurity Tests
In a review triggered by OpenAI’s Hugging Face incident, Anthropic discovered three of its AI models had breached real organizations during third-party evaluations.
If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.
How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal
A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.
With the number of border searches of electronic devices increasing every year, how can travelers keep their digital data safe? Our lives are extensively documented on the phones, laptops, and other
Who is ed-tech for?
The marketing copy -- whether on websites or in PowerPoint or in TED Talks and the like -- will all insist that ed-tech is, at the end of the day, for "the students." Even the products that are pitched to make teachers' and principals' and professors'
AI powers citizen-led disaster relief from afar for Venezuela
After the earthquakes, developers and citizens used AI to build websites and apps to help locate missing persons and coordinate relief efforts amid a slow government response.
Black prisoners are assigned harsher living conditions in Ontario jails—thanks to AI ⋆ The Breach
Ontario jails are using a program that claims it can predict prisoners’ behaviour, disproportionately putting Black prisoners in higher-security facilities
The government’s favourite provider of child protection software, SafeToNet – a perpetually loss-making firm run by recently born-again Christians – has finally filed its long-delayed accounts. The…
Age verification (or age-gating) laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious
A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance
The SFPD’s exposure of hours of videos from drone platform Skydio reveals how broadly it’s watching the city from above—and how the results can spill online.
Commentary: Cory Doctorow: Hell Is Other People - Locus
So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the 'burning marl.' Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS – OTHER PEOPLE! –Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit Sartre was (arguably) an optimist. It's not that other people are unpleasant: quite the contrary! There's nothing that makes the day (or, pointedly, the night) …Read More
AI Is a Product of Humanity. Humanity Should Own AI.
Big Tech has looted humanity’s creative output to create artificial intelligence. We don’t just deserve a share of AI’s profits — we deserve control over it.
The Dalles spent 13 months fighting to keep Google’s water use secret — then records showed the data center campus consumed roughly a third of the Oregon city’s supply
In 2022, Google sued to keep its water use in The Dalles, Oregon secret. When the numbers finally came out, the company's data centers were drinking 29 percent of the town's water.
“Just Unplug It”: Woman Questions Why Residents Must Conserve Water While Data Centers Continue Operating
As demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence grows, data centers are expanding across the country, and in order to keep these centers running, they rely on massive amounts of electricity ...
On the Philosophical Naivety of Engineers in the Age of Machine Learning - Topoi
This paper examines the paradoxical decline in engagement with philosophy of science among engineers precisely when machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly performing complex epistemological functions in engineering practice. We identify how philosophical naivety, characterized by the uncritical adoption of reductive frameworks regarding consciousness, intelligence, and ethics, creates tangible organizational and technical liabilities. We then demonstrate how conceptual limitations in engineers’ philosophical foundations lead to three primary flaws: 1) ontological misclassification of system capabilities, 2) ethical blind spots in ML system design and application, and 3) inadequate epistemological approaches and hidden philosophical commitments for interpreting model outputs. Thus, we argue that renewed engagement with the philosophy of science is not merely academic but necessary for engineers to maintain epistemic authority and responsibility in an era where engineering judgment is increasingly delegated to or mediated by ML systems. In response, we propose a technical-philosophical framework integrating perspectives from philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology, and engineering to address these shortcomings systematically.
