Jed Brown
@jedbrown.org
Prof developing fast algorithms, reliable software, and healthy communities for computational science. Opinions my own. https://hachyderm.io/@jedbrown
https://PhyPID.org | aspiring killjoy | refuse epistemicide | he/they
https://PhyPID.org | aspiring killjoy | refuse epistemicide | he/they
Reposted by Jed Brown
Budgets are strong indicators of what is valued, and they also reflect hundreds of choices rather than one inevitable series of events. (Or you could say, "budgets are moral documents")
More than any higher ed development in recent memory, institutional subsidies for AI at R1 universities prove that austerity is a choice. It is not “too expensive” to invest in a humanities research infrastructure; rather, it is a choice that R1 universities make not to & subsidize AI instead.
The amount of money I saw one department paying for several AI services in a school year could cover the University’s pay one price textbook costs for nearly their entire enrolled student body in said department
September 17, 2026 at 12:29 AM
Budgets are strong indicators of what is valued, and they also reflect hundreds of choices rather than one inevitable series of events. (Or you could say, "budgets are moral documents")
Reposted by Jed Brown
WHILE laying off the director of the writing center (who trained the writing tutors they claim to be keeping, but see here: www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...)
I’m a Writing Tutor at Harvard. The College is Failing Us. | The Harvard Crimson
The Writing Center’s dismantling evokes a broader pattern of institutions treating human learning and connection as costs to cut, not values to protect.
www.thecrimson.com
September 17, 2026 at 12:37 AM
WHILE laying off the director of the writing center (who trained the writing tutors they claim to be keeping, but see here: www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...)
Why must we live in the deranged fantasies of cultists who are constantly wrong?
www.jacr.org/article/S154...
www.jacr.org/article/S154...
September 16, 2026 at 10:58 PM
Why must we live in the deranged fantasies of cultists who are constantly wrong?
www.jacr.org/article/S154...
www.jacr.org/article/S154...
Reposted by Jed Brown
Students getting free Claude credits is like a company bribing you not to think, but you can only spend the bribe as credits in the company town.
Oh. That's a heck of a subsidy.
September 16, 2026 at 10:06 PM
Students getting free Claude credits is like a company bribing you not to think, but you can only spend the bribe as credits in the company town.
"misused" suggests the artifact was created with neutral or altruistic intent. The founders of modern statistics (Pearson, Fisher) established the field for the purpose of making eugenics seem respectable and "scientific". That politic is also deeply embedded in these "AI" products.
Contemporary artificial intelligence is to cognition as artificial sweeteners are to good nutrition: full of misleading hype, distracting, and when misunderstood and misused, dangerous to one's well-being.
September 16, 2026 at 8:18 PM
"misused" suggests the artifact was created with neutral or altruistic intent. The founders of modern statistics (Pearson, Fisher) established the field for the purpose of making eugenics seem respectable and "scientific". That politic is also deeply embedded in these "AI" products.
Oh. That's a heck of a subsidy.
September 16, 2026 at 8:06 PM
Oh. That's a heck of a subsidy.
Reposted by Jed Brown
New AAUP Statement:
Higher Ed must “refuse to comply” with the latest Trump admin demands in Compact 2.0.
👇👇👇
www.aaup.org/news/faculty...
#academicsky
Higher Ed must “refuse to comply” with the latest Trump admin demands in Compact 2.0.
👇👇👇
www.aaup.org/news/faculty...
#academicsky
September 16, 2026 at 6:28 PM
New AAUP Statement:
Higher Ed must “refuse to comply” with the latest Trump admin demands in Compact 2.0.
👇👇👇
www.aaup.org/news/faculty...
#academicsky
Higher Ed must “refuse to comply” with the latest Trump admin demands in Compact 2.0.
👇👇👇
www.aaup.org/news/faculty...
#academicsky
Reposted by Jed Brown
"I wrote the piece and Claude found the links relevant to my claims" is, even without the AI, such an admission of poor thinking and argumentation. your claims should emerge from the evidence!
Less shocking to me was reading this bit at the end, where Erickson - whose entire day-to-day job is just wanking out a bit of punditry once or twice a week - has handed much of that over to AI.
September 16, 2026 at 4:45 PM
"I wrote the piece and Claude found the links relevant to my claims" is, even without the AI, such an admission of poor thinking and argumentation. your claims should emerge from the evidence!
Reposted by Jed Brown
Talking about the apocalypse means *not* talking about copyright abuse, about privacy invasion, about the creation of misinformation and the destruction of truth, about political manipulation, about CSAM, about economic devastation and about environmental destruction.
The real problems.
The real problems.
September 16, 2026 at 5:36 AM
Talking about the apocalypse means *not* talking about copyright abuse, about privacy invasion, about the creation of misinformation and the destruction of truth, about political manipulation, about CSAM, about economic devastation and about environmental destruction.
The real problems.
The real problems.
Faculty and students, you need to understand disparate impacts because general counsel for universities across the country pretend that they do not.
In 1971, SCOTUS said a neutral policy can still be discrimination if it disproportionately harms Black workers. Under Trump, the EEOC has abandoned this disparate impact liability standard, the DOJ has attacked it, and “reverse discrimination” claims may get easier.
New Baby Boom! Lawyered. Out now.
New Baby Boom! Lawyered. Out now.
September 16, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Faculty and students, you need to understand disparate impacts because general counsel for universities across the country pretend that they do not.
Future of Life Institute is trying to find the guys who did this.
September 16, 2026 at 6:39 AM
Future of Life Institute is trying to find the guys who did this.
People are tying themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging that whatever thinking they are performing is no different than had they been using a ghost author. Yet that is authorship misconduct, and cannot be washed by acknowledgement "This manuscript was produced using the services of PaperMill X".
September 16, 2026 at 4:55 AM
People are tying themselves in knots to avoid acknowledging that whatever thinking they are performing is no different than had they been using a ghost author. Yet that is authorship misconduct, and cannot be washed by acknowledgement "This manuscript was produced using the services of PaperMill X".
Our union book club has been reading Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns. This interview is especially on point in that context. I'm excited to read this next.
September 16, 2026 at 3:28 AM
Our union book club has been reading Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns. This interview is especially on point in that context. I'm excited to read this next.
Reposted by Jed Brown
rationales for the rule were so weak Judge Saylor wrote that it “raises legitimate questions whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security but to achieve other, goals —such as asserting greater government control over academic institutions+the press.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/u...
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/u...
Judge Blocks Trump Rule Aimed at International Students and Journalists (Gift Article)
Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV wrote that the administration’s reasons for a rule limiting the length of stay for academics and journalists were “exceptionally weak.”
www.nytimes.com
September 15, 2026 at 3:30 AM
rationales for the rule were so weak Judge Saylor wrote that it “raises legitimate questions whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security but to achieve other, goals —such as asserting greater government control over academic institutions+the press.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/u...
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/u...
This film kills fascists.
September 15, 2026 at 12:21 AM
This film kills fascists.
Reposted by Jed Brown
Want an example of successful pushback on "AI" (surveillance) ed tech? This story is uplifting and amazing. @ifeoma.bsky.social is absolutely amazing. Thank you @alixdunn.com and @themaybe.org for this episode.
www.themaybe.org/podcast/meet...
www.themaybe.org/podcast/meet...
Meet the Mom Winning Against AI in Schools w/ Ifeoma Ozoma
In New Mexico, kids are required to read aloud to an AI avatar named Amira—and it records their voices without consent. Ifeoma Ozoma fights back.
www.themaybe.org
September 11, 2026 at 9:52 PM
Want an example of successful pushback on "AI" (surveillance) ed tech? This story is uplifting and amazing. @ifeoma.bsky.social is absolutely amazing. Thank you @alixdunn.com and @themaybe.org for this episode.
www.themaybe.org/podcast/meet...
www.themaybe.org/podcast/meet...
This is an epidemic among university administrators. Shared governance and academic freedom exist to mitigate such harms. Too many people, including journalists, are too caught up in "run the university like a business" to recognize when admin get out of their lane.
(The whole thread is excellent.)
(The whole thread is excellent.)
It is as if Frenk is not even here, at this university, but instead is living in a different place, where reality is constructed by right-wing news sources that grossly mischaracterize UCLA _all the time_ and wrote several wildly misleading stories about this event. And by donors, who contact Frenk.
September 14, 2026 at 5:02 AM
This is an epidemic among university administrators. Shared governance and academic freedom exist to mitigate such harms. Too many people, including journalists, are too caught up in "run the university like a business" to recognize when admin get out of their lane.
(The whole thread is excellent.)
(The whole thread is excellent.)
Not the most important omission of the article (I'd say that is environmental racism; Clean Air Act lawsuits like SELC/NAACP against xAI for unlicensed gas in Memphis), but NYT should be aware that coal production has been roughly level since 2020 and increased last year.
www.eia.gov/coal/product...
www.eia.gov/coal/product...
September 14, 2026 at 4:27 AM
Not the most important omission of the article (I'd say that is environmental racism; Clean Air Act lawsuits like SELC/NAACP against xAI for unlicensed gas in Memphis), but NYT should be aware that coal production has been roughly level since 2020 and increased last year.
www.eia.gov/coal/product...
www.eia.gov/coal/product...
Reposted by Jed Brown
The only person in public service who has consistently made 100% sense on issues of "AI," which is why they hate her so much.
![As the Supreme Court has noted: “A method of competition which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal, was thought to involve the kind of unfairness at which the [unfair methods of competition] statute was aimed."
3. The highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets could be creating major risks and conflicts of interest. We had started investigating these partnerships and cross-investments across the stack (and released a preliminarily overview of some findings: https://ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-issues-staff-report-ai-partnerships-investments-study).
Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and inter-dependencies. We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this — given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:azpq3hfq3llpowyqpjkqwgxs/bafkreibpynfdssvr5aehvgzmcuerbo3romumydje4qsdhog7a3tnazrh2u)
September 13, 2026 at 11:03 PM
The only person in public service who has consistently made 100% sense on issues of "AI," which is why they hate her so much.
Reposted by Jed Brown
September 12, 2026 at 11:10 PM
My interpretation is that OpenAI embraced the xrisk/pause narrative as an opportunistic excuse to avoid acknowledging that they do not have the finances/fundamentals to IPO.
Sam Altman Says It Would Be ‘Ill-Advised’ To Take OpenAI Public In 2026
Wall Street was poised for a massive OpenAI IPO by the end of the year—but the CEO says that’s not happening.
www.forbes.com
September 12, 2026 at 11:34 PM
My interpretation is that OpenAI embraced the xrisk/pause narrative as an opportunistic excuse to avoid acknowledging that they do not have the finances/fundamentals to IPO.
Reposted by Jed Brown
It was so great to chat to Zena, another systems safety engineer (there really aren't that many of us), and felt cathartic to get into the weeds on all the safety issues that have been compounding with the uses of LLMs within the military.
New #ResponsibleBytesPodcast episode is now live, featuring @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social talking about military AI systems and why human control is not enough.
🎧Listen anywhere you get your podcasts.
📹 Full episode is also up on our YouTube channel.
🎧Listen anywhere you get your podcasts.
📹 Full episode is also up on our YouTube channel.
September 2, 2026 at 10:32 PM
It was so great to chat to Zena, another systems safety engineer (there really aren't that many of us), and felt cathartic to get into the weeds on all the safety issues that have been compounding with the uses of LLMs within the military.
Reposted by Jed Brown
The data centre boom is the exact opposite of everything the energy transition should stand for. It is the opposite of clean, of climate justice, of community benefits, of electrification and technological efficiency.
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/09/11/b...
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/09/11/b...
“Bring Your Own Power” Schemes Won’t Fix Data Centers
"Bring Your Own Power" fails to address the rising costs or pollution driven by data centers' exploding energy demands.
www.foodandwaterwatch.org
September 12, 2026 at 7:10 PM
The data centre boom is the exact opposite of everything the energy transition should stand for. It is the opposite of clean, of climate justice, of community benefits, of electrification and technological efficiency.
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/09/11/b...
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2026/09/11/b...
Malware developer goes on tour. Malware cartel seeks government protection and funding.
Anthropic's models run on terabytes of VRAM. It's not going to "just copy itself to other computers."
September 12, 2026 at 8:25 PM
Malware developer goes on tour. Malware cartel seeks government protection and funding.