"science fictional visions of the earth being devoured by machine intelligences and transformed into paperclips are not nearly weird enough to capture what is happening all around us, right now." [www.programmablemutter.com/p/understand...](
Understanding AI as a social technology
Speed, shoggoths, social science
 ) https://inkcap.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:a3h6mkohqeiu6xl4fnrwuk4t&cid=bafkreihist6jbauowf7lrxrtvhmvqlashdgvz7dny47jmp2egxz7ognyra
[www.bostonreview.net/articles/hen...](
Boston Review
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans - Boston Review
We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.
 ) "Yet the door to Joe’s apartment—which argues with him and refuses to open because he has not paid it the obligatory tip—sounds ominously plausible. Someone, somewhere, is pitching this as a viable business plan to Y Combinator" RE:
Bluesky Social
Paul Haine (@paulhaine.bsky.social)
The only difference between our reality and a Philip K Dick novel is the characters in a Philip K Dick novel don't choose to live like this
 [Philip K. Dick and the Fake Hu...](
Boston Review
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans - Boston Review
We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.
 )
Eric Schmidt (February) vs Eric Schmidt (August) is the fight of the century. [joking aside, this is a very significant shift] [www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/o...](
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Drifting Out of Touch With the Rest of America
Science has yet to find a clear path to building intelligence that surpasses that of humans.
 ) https://inkcap.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:a3h6mkohqeiu6xl4fnrwuk4t&cid=bafkreiawhusihi7lpbobo62axh4n742opima5ktcnsswhugsnaqohxk37q https://inkcap.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:a3h6mkohqeiu6xl4fnrwuk4t&cid=bafkreih3ccnowoyskukadatkhtt3ww6ywetbuexl2inf2if74gady4q7ma
This [@gwbstr.com](
Bluesky Social
Graham Webster (@gwbstr.com)
Chinese tech policy and US-China relations at Stanford Newsletter: herecomes.transpacifica.net Basics: gwbstr.com Also: #filmphotography
 ) piece is a proper banger - [www.wired.com/story/chips-...](
WIRED
Inside the Biden Administration's Gamble to Freeze China’s AI Future
What really motivated the US government to ban Nvidia from selling powerful computer chips to China?
 ) [Inside the Biden Administratio...](
WIRED
Inside the Biden Administration's Gamble to Freeze China’s AI Future
What really motivated the US government to ban Nvidia from selling powerful computer chips to China?
 )
[www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-lang...](
Large language models are cultural technologies. What might that mean?
Four different perspectives
 ) Gopnikism, interactionism, structuralism and role play. [Large language models are cult...](
Large language models are cultural technologies. What might that mean?
Four different perspectives
 )
I will speak if invited at Columbia University - but wearing a self-designed "Liberate Vichy Columbia" t-shirt.
This piece makes me think again that a "Market Liberalism 101 -Here Is Why Institutions and Pluralism Matter Even (and Maybe Especially) If You Consider Yourself Right Wing" Silicon Valley bootcamp, with required readings from Hume, Popper, Gellner etc would be a possibly good thing. RE:
Bluesky Social
Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social)
I've had this headline rattling around in my brain since January and I finally wrote it. Been hearing too many people in the startup world buying i...
 View quoted note →
1. [@abenewman.bsky.social](
Bluesky Social
Abe Newman (@abenewman.bsky.social)
W/Henry Farrell, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt 2023/Penguin); Georgetown; This is a private account.
 ) and I have a new piece in [@wired.com](
Bluesky Social
WIRED (@wired.com)
At wired.com where tomorrow is realized || Sign up for our newsletters: https://wrd.cm/newsletters Find our WIRED journalists here: https://bsky.a...
 ) on the enshittification of American power. It repurposes arguments from our book, Underground Empire [amzn.to/3PbIyqX](https://amzn.to/3PbIyqX ) , and Cory Doctorow's idea of enshittification to explain how the Trump administration is trying to remake the world. [The Enshittification of Americ...](
WIRED
The Enshittification of American Power
First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.
 )
Languages are systems. They can most certainly have biases, but they do not and cannot have goals. Exactly the same is true for the mathematical models of language that are produced by transformers ... the English language ... is never going to become conscious and decide to turn us into paperclips. [Cultural theory was right abou...](
Cultural theory was right about the death of the author. It was just a few decades early
How old theories explain the new technology of LLMs
 )
Given how much of this is supposed to be done through imposing administrative burdens on the overburdened, my hopelessly utopian dream is for a minor civil society revival of organizations and trained volunteers working to help the victims navigate the system, building social connections so doing. RE:
Bluesky Social
Erin Kissane (@kissane.myatproto.social)
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