cbecker

cbecker, 5 days ago to random

So Apple destroys pianos with a hydraulic press, Microsoft invents TotalSurveillance™️ and Google tells us to put glue in our pizza and eat at least one rock a day.

Maybe it’s time for an update to #DefundBigTech

https://techotherwise.pubpub.org/defund-big-tech

cbecker, 6 days ago to ai

"Lavender applies the logic of the pattern recognition-driven signature strikes popularized by the US ... with the mass surveillance infrastructures and techniques of #AI ... Instead of serving ads, Lavender automatically puts people on a kill list based on the likeness of their surveillance data patterns to the data patterns of purported militants – a process that ... is hugely inaccurate. Here we have the AI-driven logic of ad targeting, but for killing." @Mer__edith https://www.helmut-schmidt.de/aktuelles/detail/die-rede-der-zukunftspreistraegerin

cbecker, 14 days ago to academicchatter

Today in “GenAI is spam”:

“While publishers are fighting back with technology, paper mills are using the same kind of tools to stay ahead.

“Generative AI has just handed them a winning lottery ticket,” Eggleton of IOP Publishing said. “They can do it really cheap, at scale, and the detection methods are not where we need them to be. I can only see that challenge increasing.” @academicchatter

https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc

grimalkina, 1 month ago to random

I want to see absolutely no sensible and practical advice here. What programming language should I start vaguely and in a chill way teaching myself if I just want to experience something fun or elegant or interesting in and of itself, assuming I have no goal for using it to do anything really (outside of learning)

cbecker, 1 month ago to academicchatter

TU Delft is hiring an assistant professor in community-level design for climate Action:
https://www.tudelft.nl/over-tu-delft/werken-bij-tu-delft/vacatures/details?jobId=17165
@academicchatter #ClimateAction

cbecker, 1 month ago to ai

Who knew an article on printers could be so entertaining in 2024. Enjoy this brief piece about #genAI search #enshittification (and printers … sort of) for breakfast

#AI #journalism

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

cbecker, 1 month ago to ai

“one of the most frustrating kinds of AI hype is when people who are actually in a position to use their own expertise to push back instead give in to the FOMO and do the hype for tech companies. Today's case in point is a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education”

@emilymbender 🎯 on #AI #hype @academicchatter

https://buttondown.email/maiht3k/archive/doing-their-hype-for-them/

cbecker, 1 month ago to academicchatter

This is how you can organize a covid-safe event.

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ed-yong-public-lecture-on-long-covid-tickets-849000241577 with the great @edyong209 - virtual option too.
Doing this is neither very expensive nor very difficult. You can do it too.

#CovidIsNotOver #LongCovid @academicchatter

cbecker, 2 months ago to ai

It is easy to joke that once #AI generated grant proposals 💩citing AI generated papers 💩are “reviewed” by AI, the system implodes and academics will come to their senses.

But the truth is, that system won’t implode in its own. It doesn’t need quality or substance to keep running. To these 💩 systems, the collapse of intellectual substance is an economic externality, just as pollution has been an externality for industry for too long.

See https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183 on peer review
@academicchatter

cbecker, 2 months ago to random

To Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ♻️ today maybe we should add

Regulate, Resist, Refuse

#enshittification

cbecker, 2 months ago to random

CDC stands for “Covid Distribution Center”, did I get this right?

#cdcsays

inquiline, 3 months ago to random

Workplace schedules a "DEI" committee-sponsored "candid conversation" about effects of Covid on the workplace, with one day's notice, no remote option, and (ofc) provides lunch, so explicitly discourages masking. Uh-huh.

histoftech, 4 months ago to random

“If you live in a rich country, you’re probably not going to get cholera from drinking water. The state accepts the responsibility of waterborne disease elimination as an obvious duty”

Institutional COVID denial has killed public health as we knew it. Prepare to lose several centuries of progress

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/institutional-covid-denial-has-killed

cbecker, 4 months ago to random

While 1 in every 13 people in our province is infected with #covid, my Faculty organizes 'research cluster lunches' to get people together. Free food encourages them to not #WearAMask.

Who is absent?
These are strategic events at which important conversations are meant to happen, bonds are made, initiatives born.
Who is excluded?

This is how institutional #ableism looks like. Excluding those who don't participate in #CovidIsAirborne spreader events is a choice.

#CovidIsNotOver. Face it. 😷💗

cbecker, 5 months ago to random

Q: What are your favourite recent readings for a graduate class discussion on social responsibility and tech worker movements?

Asking for me, teaching it soon :)

cbecker, 5 months ago to ChatGPT

FWIW, here's my draft policy on bullshit generators like #ChatGPT in my classes. Any thoughts?

Stochastic Parrots 🦜
It isn't my style to forbid you from using technology in your learning, but if at any point you consider using generative tools, please pause for a moment.
Remember that these tools do not possess any meaningful form of intelligence. They are statistical generators of likely word sequence, not writers of meaningful content. 1/2

#teaching #generativeAI #LLM
@academicchatter

andresmh, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

What percentage of grad applications do you expect to not mention AI?

cbecker, 6 months ago to climate

Today I #AmReading @steve ‘s book „Computing the Climate“. I love the introduction - engaging, personal, and intriguing. If you too want to know „how we know what we know about climate change“, as the subtitle says, it’s the book to read! #climateChange

cbecker, 6 months ago to ai

Today I #AmReading "Studying Up Machine Learning Data: Why Talk About Bias When We Mean Power?" by @milamiceli @JulianPosada & Tianling Yang @Weizenbaum_Institut - a great commentary advocating to move "from bias research towards an investigation of power differentials that shape data." #AI #ML #MachineLearning #Bias
Full paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.08131

cbecker, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

Tired: conference branded tees, totes, water bottles
Wired: conference branded N95 masks
Inspired: conference branded CO2 monitors

cbecker, 6 months ago to random

Today I #AmReading (finally!) "On the Grounds of #Solutionism: Ontologies of Blackness and HCI" (Cunningham, Benabdallah, @danielarosner & @alextaylor #tochi) which states "The problem-solution... is a dead end" and asks "What it might mean to 'unsee' solutions as end points to problems" in design. 🔥
https://doi.org/10.1145/3557890 #HCI

cbecker, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to books

If you are reading my book Insolvent or teach with it: I have been working on a reading and discussion guide plus glossary. Far from purrfect but here it is. Please comment so it gets better! #InsolventBook #Books https://docs.google.com/document/d/13cO77afDaQMm0vsTq9HOUpBxgNY1TiOJkEUjW9IoPag/edit

ntnsndr, 7 months ago to random

Ooh, I'm super excited about two new articles that I just encountered:

"Divesting from Big Tech: Alternative Possibilities for Research and Futuring in Social Computing" by @cyberlyra @natematias https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3584931.3608436

"Mastodon Rules: Characterizing Formal Rules on Popular
Mastodon Instances" by Matthew N. Nicholson @bkeegan @cfiesler https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3584931.3606970