Dr Abeba Birhane

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41... We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance 1/

Listening to a report about Google chopping down a quarter of a million trees in Finland to build a data centre while washing out yoghurt pots for the recycling

well, the Irish government has been pushing ai so hard everywhere so 🤷🏾‍♀️

Evidence "shows that Trump lied about kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club," according to a new report from the House Judiciary Dem staff. The report also reveals for the first time Beatrice Keul's account of allegedly having been raped by Trump. democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

The only reason I can think of for this news not being absolutely everywhere is that large media orgs don’t want to be seen as putting their thumbs on the scales a week before election day. And that’s cowardly as shit.

may Lula make Zuck face the consequences

The achievement of Serbian students overthrowing Aleksandar Vučić can't be overstated. In 2024, they began protesting. In 2025, they transformed a protest movement into civil dissidence. In 2026, they became a political party — and two months later, crushed a corrupt state-entrenched authoritarian.

In one day, two politicians - Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vucic in Serbia - with ties to Trump have lost surprise elections thanks to high turnout. The rise of the international far-right is not inevitable.

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

In his acceptance speech, Lula says he will work to regulate digital platforms in Brazil. “Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” This comes after Meta directly interfered with the Brazilian elections, favouring Flávio Bolsonaro.

“prediction market”

Irish troops to be deployed to participate in an Israeli instigated Lebanese civil war. We’ll have officially gone from peacekeepers to peace enforcers. But people worried about the removal of the triple lock are overreacting…

Wow. Vučić has conceded Serbian election. Massive moment for the entire Balkans

While Ireland is at risk from the impending bursting of the AI bubble, it has not benefitted much from AI's growth. The investment happening here is producing little that can be taxed, and few jobs. It's virtually all cost and no benefit to us as a country. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Turns out Soylent Green really is people.

THE POPE, MELANIA TRUMP, AND THE UKRAINE CEASEFIRE 🕊️ Oct. 16: Pope Leo calls Putin. Pushes for a ceasefire 🕊️ Oct. 19: Pope Leo calls Zelenskyy. Same mission 😈 Oct. 23: Melania announces the ceasefire. The White House calls her the “exclusive intermediary” The Pope wasn’t even mentioned.

🔴 REVEALED: Palantir led closed-door review of how MoD buys software The review was presented to defence minister Luke Pollard by Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley in Feb and has mostly been implemented None of this was made public New investigation🧵 democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-p...

Brexit has been catastrophic. It's time to rejoin the EU.

Why do some colleagues from psych, cog neuro, etc., accept AI nonsense that all or almost all our science will be automated? I'm a bit flabbergasted. Yes, of course we'll need observations, always. But to say theory and modelling practice can be automated by AI is preposterous. Some basic points...

Jean-Baptiste Cadart of #AHM is launching a new seminar on Ethics in Mathematics and Science. The 1st talk is Vladimir Lazić, “Where I stand on AI” (spoiler: at a safe distance! 😊 www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/up...) on Thu 29, 9–10:30 a.m. UTC+2 (Paris Time), videoconference link on the website👇.

If the Minister for Justice wants- in a strictly non-sexual way- to touch me, he doesn’t get to do it without my consent. We’ve all agreed as a society that’s the definition of assault. Children have this same set of rights.

The Justice Minister interfering with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre consent campaign "because it does not represent the views of the Government" is unsettling. Interference like this risks creating a chilling effect and self-censorship within wider civil society. www.iccl.ie/news/justice...

appreciate well-intentioned invites to "important" AI discussions but most of the time folks have decided the outcome through their "it is inevitable" framing. no thanks i am much more interested in building my own table than coming to a table that's already set feel welcome to join my table

I’ve made the first of these calls now, to my local FF TD. How it works is that the phone may go to voicemail and then they call you back if you leave a message saying who you are, where in the constituency you live and that you’re just looking to have a short conversation about consent and children

I’ve slept on it now and when I woke up, I was still still mad about it. This morning, I’m going to ring the constituent office of my local FF TD and tell him just how mad it made me. Then I’m going to call the constituency office of my local SF TD, and ask if Matt Carthy’s support is their view.

And there’s just such a staggering lack of imagination here. We stop thinking of AI like people, but then the only other thought is: ‘subordinate species’ that works for us like a slave genie and ‘solves healthcare and energy’ so we don’t have to. Really? This is as far as your mind will reach?

The best part of Suleyman's essay calls out Anthropic's circular logic, as others have done (Ted Chiang's most recent piece comes to mind). Train a model with 'what if AI will develop interests, claim rights, or even do crimes?' and you will get a model that capably plays the part. Basically this:

seemingly nuanced but inherently inconsistent and vacuous arguments for rights for lines of code. the entire thread is great

Are these stories linked? Consider... Meta has major ties & contracts with the US military, including via Anduril. The Irish state, thanks to FFG, holds about €1 million shares in Palantir. OpenAI also has offices in Dublin. Meta, Palantir & OpenAI executives were sworn in as US reserves last yr 🤔

"What the UK Is Doing to Pro-Palestine Novelist Sally Rooney Is an Act of Orwellian Villainy"

this is so good karlbode.com/musks-fake-f...

mood

Here's a reminder for my stream with Alex Gibney, happening this Tuesday at 9 am Pacific/Noon Eastern. Add it to your calendar, and let's make this the biggest stream the AT Protocol has ever seen!

he could immediately fund more than half of this by scrapping the €150m allocation for "AI upskilling"

We already have flying cars. They're called helicopters. They're really expensive and there are good reasons you have to have a pilot license and work with air traffic control to fly them. Putting jets on a sedan is not going to result in a better vehicle or transportation experience in any way.

Who’s stealing from us? The billionaires!

Wait'll the folks who are mad at Zuck for muzzling No Kings get wind of the Rohingya genocide.

Another member of the panel, Alice Sullivan, has also publicly stated her belief that Arday’s work was plagiarised and low quality (on what evidence isn’t made clear). How is appointing panel members who already hold (bizarrely confident) negative opinions of Arday not “pre-determining” the outcome?

Absolutely worth reading.

i can imagine how those who drank the ai kool-aid would struggle to get it

Times Higher has just covered this story, and report the CAF’s claim that the inquiry will not be pre-judged. They do not report the clear conflict of interest posed by appointing Pinker to the panel, who repeatedly tweeted his opinion of Arday, including “sociopathic liar” bsky.app/profile/time...