Grappling with AI

Navier-Stokes lost in translation: Why Lean verification of AI...

Autoformalisation is increasingly used to verify mathematical texts, including those generated by AI, as in OpenAI's announced proof of blow-up of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations. In this...

When the Commons Appropriates a Large Language Model: How WikiVault Reshaped Korean Wikipedia

Large Language Models (LLMs) have disrupted the balance between content production and quality assurance that sustains knowledge commons, leading many to prohibit or restrict their use. But what happens when a community instead appropriates an LLM-powered tool for its own needs? We investigate this question through WikiVault, an LLM-powered editing tool developed within the Korean Wikipedia community and used primarily for translation. Combining ten interviews, platform-scale analyses, and matched quasi-experimental comparisons, we examine how WikiVault reshaped knowledge production on Korean Wikipedia. We find the tool 1) drastically amplified the production capacity of a small group of experienced editors, producing longer and more widely viewed articles; 2) shifted work toward reviewing articles and importing content; 3) imported not only content but also editorial judgments from English Wikipedia. Our findings show how LLM adoption can rebalance the interdependent work that sustains knowledge commons, while illustrating how communities can learn from emerging technologies through use and adapt their governance accordingly.

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

[This is a guest post by Grant Sanderson. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] A sentiment echoing throughout the mathematics communit…

Can AI slop help us save the internet?

Disrupting the status quo and opening space for new visions

No Man Is an Island

AI makes intellectual contribution superfluous.

Data Feminism for AI

Attacks on women and trans people are not happening in a vacuum. Communications scholars W. Lance Bennett and Marianne Kneuer recently argued that we are witnessing the intensification of "illiberal public spheres" around the world (Bennett and Kneuer, 2023). These are characterized by a set of anti-democratic communications tactics that include the denigration and exclusion of minoritized people, targeted attacks on the press and political institutions, and transgression of norms of civil discourse. Such tactics are enabled and amplified by the social media platforms owned by Big Tech, whose business model elevates attention above all other metrics, such that they profit richly off extremism, threats, spectacle, and lies. The success of this corporate partnership with right-wing extremism is evident in the proliferation of book bans (Magnusson, 2024), the demonization of DEI and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2022), and mob tactics to doxx, intimidate, misrepresent, and otherwise silence people that study misinformation, speak out against racial and gender violence, or rule against insurrectionists (Edmonds, 2024). At the same time, we have seen the continued work of feminists, including Latin American, Indigenous, and abolitionist feminists in the US and globally, doing the work of imagining alternate worlds (Cullors, 2021; Davis, 2022; Ricaurte, 2019; Simpson, 2017). This paper represents our own first attempt to imagine a more equitable, sustainable, feminist world for AI research.

An addiction

“Talk about technology is an addiction.”

Operation Voder: AT&T, Bell Labs, and the Labor of Techno-Utopia at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

This article explores the labor demands of the Voder, the electrical speech synthesis machine developed by Bell Labs for AT&T’s 1939 New York World’s Fair exhibit. The article situates the Voder within the historical context of the fair, with the United States emerging from the Great Depression and political tensions escalating across the globe. By examining the decision to incorporate the machine’s young female operators into the exhibit, the article argues that AT&T executives used Voder operators to normalize a new vision of technological utopia that relied heavily and conspicuously on the infrastructural labor of women. Moreover, the article highlights the previously unacknowledged engineering contributions of Voder operators in the years before the fair, writing women into the origin story of a machine that laid critical groundwork for speech recognition and voice encryption technology.

Meta Tests Muse AI Agent Calls That Are Actually Made By Humans in a Call Center

"This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch."

AI labs need to start funding historical research

Using GPT-6 and Opus 5.5 to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters

AI Has Killed an Entire Industry — People Who Got Paid to Do Homework for College Kids

Thousands of college-educated Kenyans built real careers ghostwriting essays for students overseas. ChatGPT ended it almost instantly

Machine god metaphors eat your brain

There are other ways of thinking about AI

ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector

OpenAI's ad collector at bzr.openai.com sets a cookie called __obi, scoped to .openai.com. The value is while you are on ChatGPT and tied to your ChatGPT account. __obi is then sent to OpenAI from ordinary websites you visit. Any company that buys ads on ChatGPT installs

Eryk Salvaggio: Critical AI & Culture | Glossary — Cybernetic Forests.

Stochastic Flocks, Systems From Nowhere and other citable terms for describing AI systems without borrowing from cognition, by Eryk Salvaggio.

Rewildpunk: The Counterculture AI Actually Needs

Punk took music back from the labels. Here’s how we take intelligence back from Silicon Valley.

South Korea Will Give Every Citizen Free AI Access With Unlimited Tokens

Three consortia will run the service, sharing up to 512 Nvidia B200 chips supplied by the state, with beta testing due in September.

The Future Is Not Tech-Forward

On artificial intelligence, data centers, technological politics, and who gets to build the future.