🌶 David Gray Widder

Oh, the paper is here btw: davidwidder.me/cloud.pdf and I was presenting this at the Association of Law and Political Economy's first conference, quite literally the coolest conference I've been to in a while

May everyone writing their FAccT abstract be blessed with fairness, accountability, and transparency (or something idk but good luck).

Things we didn't do: - Start the fire - Shoot the deputy Things we did do: - Tried to fight it - Shot the Sheriff - Built this city on Rock and Roll Things we will do: - Survive - Rock You Things we won't do: - Get fooled again - Back Down - That - Give You Up - Let you down - Desert you

First time Texas voter!

Pleased to announce that my silly TikToks about AI are now officially *major award winning* silly TikToks about AI. :) Thanks to @scicommexcellence.nationalacademies.org for this award but also for helping legitimize/incentivize science communication! www.nationalacademies.org/news/nationa...

Make sure you read what Big Supply Chain doesn’t want the people to know!!!

Believe it or not…the book is having supply-chain issues!

Did you know that @miriamposner.com wrote a book about Supply Chains? It is a very good book and you should read it. Its cover is also very pretty. That is all.

Truly, what an honor to be part of this cohort of books—every one a banger. We’re all celebrating together on Oct. 23 with the American Studies Association’s DH Caucus. Come join!

I’m sorry to have to be the bad guy here but we need to recognize that we live in a compressed air thrusters world now. If you’re not finding ways to teach the critical use of compressed air thrusters in your classroom, you’re setting your students up to fail when you could be setting them up to fly

New #AIES paper w/ @benzevgreen.bsky.social & @tisjune.bsky.social - "Deconstructing AI Hype: A Playbook for Resistance"! Read here: shreyachowdhary.net/files/decons... We argue that AI hype is a problem not because it misdescribes AI, but because it facilitates AI entrenchment.

This was probably my favorite paper at AIES

Why would you want to put a human in the loop when you can put a loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of the loop in the loop of

Grateful to have won Best Paper: Social Science at AAAI/ACM AIES, but more so, for what I learned in collaboration with Alicia.

Are algorithm audits meaningfully fixing issues in algorithmic systems? In our paper at #AIES2026 this week, @davidthewid.bsky.social and I argue that it’s time to deprioritize algorithm audits & instead shift scrutiny to the larger systems of power in which audits sit. 1/n

Excellent example of translating STS scholarship from @davidthewid.bsky.social. NPR version: www.marketplace.org/story/2026/1... Peer reviewed version: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Was teaching about this in my LLM class yesterday. Glad to know about this paper!

My 3rd year co-advised PhD student, Shuxian Liu @shuxianliu.bsky.social, is presenting our work on the US-China "AI Arms Race" tomorrow at 8AM in the Simcoe room. Visa issues sadly prevent her attendance IRL, but she would love to engage with you: ischool.utexas.edu/profiles/shu...

My 3rd year co-advised PhD student, Shuxian Liu @shuxianliu.bsky.social, is presenting our work on the US-China "AI Arms Race" tomorrow at 8AM in the Simcoe room. Visa issues sadly prevent her attendance IRL, but she would love to engage with you: ischool.utexas.edu/profiles/shu...

I can't believe I got to explain the AI supply chain on NPR!

Please help us RT our study and sent to CV friends!

I am running a study on how computer vision researchers perceive dual-use risks of the field. If you work in CV, and would like to help us, the survey takes less than 3min. Reply or DM me for the link. You will be helping us a lot! Reposts are much appreciated 🙏

The iSchool at UT is hiring up to 4 tenured or tenure-track faculty! open area! Please RT/ forward this to folks on the market, happy to answer questions!

"We analyze 550 recipients of four globally prestigious STEM awards… We find that nearly half of U.S. awardees are foreign-born—and that most first arrived as students, postdoctoral researchers…" "These pathways [are] critical to U.S. scientific leadership." Damn right!

I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.

Every day, a new crop of technologists discover that their precious artifacts DO have politics, yet every day, a new crop of technologists discover that their wallet depends on pretending otherwise.

This is legalese for “we checked and we absolutely fucking did scrape the chats in question and include them in the training run of the checkpoint that was used to produce the solution” bsky.app/profile/pond...

lmfao dudes rock

Nvidia buys Hugging Face: Yeah ok @davidthewid.bsky.social @meredithmeredith.bsky.social & @smw.bsky.social had the full story in “Open (For Business)” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Under the at least US-led political economy “open” projects WILL be tools of big SV tech & (the DOD) by default

This was unironically me in my undergrad sociology course. I wrote my professor an apology note a few years ago for once shilling for Big Number despite now being mostly a qual methods researcher.

qualitative research is biased and subjective. instead, we have Number, which we will make sense of in a way that surely is unbiased and objective.

Super excited to be chairing the panel the on Political Economy of AI for Wesleyan's annual Sasha Seminar!!!

This November, I’ll have the honor of hosting the 2026 Shasha Seminar on The New Global Economic Order At Wesleyan. I can’t quite believe we’ve managed to bring all these brilliant minds together. I’ll share the website and registration details soon. For now, a little teaser!

canada: "fuck you, americans!" americans: "yeah, that's fair, fuck us up"

CMU friends and colleagues: we now have an @aaup.org advocacy chapter on campus. Reach out to me if you want to join or just learn more. We are stronger together! triblive.com/news/educati...

Woot woot! Welcome CMU AAUP!

📣🚨 AI guys calling for moratoria to stop "rogue superintelligence" 🦗🦗 AI guys when governments pass moratoria on data centers

DeepSeek was a “wake-up call” in the US, but a “national-destiny light” in China. One model, radically different realities. In work w/ @davidthewid.bsky.social, we compare official vs public DeepSeek discourse in the US and China, focusing on AI infrastructure. Paper link: ssrn.com/abstract=726...

I am teaching an undergrad course called "🤖AI, Hype, and Capitalism 🤑" — yes, the emojis are mandatory 😤. I was told undergrads are Not Well. But after reading responses to the intake survey, I am SO EXCITED FOR CLASS TOMORROW:

Very excited to be working with Ali, and looking forward to sharing what we've got cooking 🥘

👋 Also, please welcome brilliant 3rd year PhD student @shuxianliu.bsky.social to Bluesky! 👋 We began working together in my Political Economy of AI PhD seminar, & she has an impressive oeuvre covering STS, geopolitics of tech, and critical and decolonial theory.

Hey, I'm in Austin Texas now. I'm pursuing a PhD at UT Austin, working with @davidthewid.bsky.social, where I'm going to be thinking about AI and tech refusal (which, in my mind, is very broad and generally inclusive). lmk if you're in the area.

📣 I am super excited this preprint with @shuxianliu.bsky.social is out - our attempt to problematize the "US-China AI arms race" discourse, and generally, better ground critical AI discourse in actual infrastructure and other material realities.

US & Chinese official discourses strategically converge—shaped by where each sits in the global AI stack (chip dependency vs. compute ambition). But technically literate publics on Reddit & Zhihu? They fracture both official stories by injecting grounded skepticism. One interesting example:

📣 I am super excited this preprint with @shuxianliu.bsky.social is out - our attempt to problematize the "US-China AI arms race" discourse, and generally, better ground critical AI discourse in actual infrastructure and other material realities.