Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 3h

When I was in elementary school, as a grammar lesson, the teacher told us to go all day without using pronouns & we would get a prize. Later that day she had us all spell “Mississippi.” Then she told us if we said the letter “i,” we lost the challenge. I’m still indignant about her homonym trickery.

John Moe @johnmoe.bsky.social · 5h

What meaningless thing/experience are you still mad about? Like it should not matter at all, DOES not matter at all. But you’re still MAD.

And how long has it been?

I bought some bagels at Hy-Vee four years ago. So bad. Too big. Hard. Bland. WORTHLESS.

I’m still FURIOUS.

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 8h

Super glad we’re integrating this technology in to education and making a generation of people completely reliant on it to do anything.

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 8h

"Within the next few months, U.S.-based ChatGPT users will be able to buy Walmart products instantly and directly in ChatGPT. The products will include nearly everything available on Walmart’s website, except for fresh food." www.wsj.com/business/ret...

Soon You’ll Be Able to Shop Walmart in ChatGPT. Here’s Why It Matters.

The retail giant is signaling that online shopping is about to change.

www.wsj.com

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 9h

The Pornhub productivity suite took me out.

Jake Williams @malwarejake.bsky.social · 10h

Tell me you're desperate for revenue without telling me.

Seriously, imagine your elevator pitch is "we offer an AI that revolutionizes the enterprise, answers questions at a PhD level, and also talks dirty to horny young men." It would be like if PornHub was selling a productivity suite.

404 Media @404media.co · 10h

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a post on X Tuesday that ChatGPT is officially getting into the fuckable chatbots game, with “erotica for verified adults” rolling out in December.

🔗 www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 9h

Yeah. And at least we will have ChatGPT erotica to comfort us as we run out of potable water.

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 9h

Remember when they told us they were going to find a solution to climate change and cure cancer?

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 14h

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 1d

Well, this is horrifying.

Business Insider @businessinsider.com · 1d

Some military leaders are turning to AI chatbots for help with decision-making, seeing this tech as a way to get the advantage.

Even top generals are looking to AI chatbots for answers

Some military leaders are turning to AI chatbots for help with decision-making, seeing this tech as a way to get the advantage.

www.businessinsider.com

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Dr Sea Rotmann @drsearotmann.bsky.social · 1d

As a coral reef ecologist by training, this is the single-greatest heartbreak of my otherwise blessed life: the extinction of the greatest ecosystems on earth, in our lifetime, with full knowledge it would happen, because humans love fascism & tat more than life 💔 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’

Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

www.theguardian.com

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 2d

This man needed the resource guzzling, planet cooking, plagiarism machine to come up with, “it was nice to meet you.”
Do people feel so incapable of independently accomplishing the smallest tasks or do they just long for a fully smooth brained existence? Neither bodes well for our future.

C. Buckthorn @cbuckthorn.bsky.social · 3d

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As 32-year-old Rich points out, though, "it's not like using ChatGPT guarantees success".
When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and swapped social media handles, he asked AI what his next move should be.
ChatGPT discerned that sending an initial message on Monday midmorning would set the right pace. "Then it gave me some options for what the message could be," says Rich.
"Keep it light, warm, and low-stakes so it reads as genuine interest without urgency," the bot advised. "Something like: Hey Sarah, still laughing about [tiny shared moment/reference if you've got one] - good to meet you!" Rich went back and forth with ChatGPT until he felt they'd hit upon exactly the right message ("Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you") but sadly she never replied, he says. "It's been two weeks now."

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 3d

Excellent thread about the current state of universities.

Lauren MacIvor Thompson @lmacthompson1.bsky.social · 4d

I am writing this because it has swiftly become crystal clear to me that many people have no idea what is happening or how this works. Here is a thread for non-academics to put into context what just happened to Dr. Mark Bray, a fellow historian.

Reposted by Sarah Florini

Faisal فيصل @faisalhamadah.bsky.social · 3d

Non-ironically my favorite genre of writing these days is a syntactically awkward student paper that is nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 3d

The palpable relief of reading a syntactically awkward student paper nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on after having to consume the stale cardboard generalities of a Chat GPT essay.

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 3d

I saw one of those “use AI or be left behind” videos, and a woman was describing how she uses AI to curate a newsfeed to stay up to date on things. And then she literally described an RSS feed.

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 4d

Oh no. Not the AI industry.

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Caleb Dume @thacalebdume.bsky.social · 4d

So…….just jump over recording your lectures, huh?

What’s so infuriating about all these AI implementations is there is almost always a non-AI solution that’s WAY more practical.

Schools Week @schoolsweek.bsky.social · 5d

Exclusive: Teachers will use 'deepfake' technology to create an AI avatar of themselves to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have missed school

Watch one of the school’s ‘deepfake’ teachers in our story below

schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-trus...

'Deepfake' teacher avatars to help pupils catch up

Academy trust staff to use AI generator to introduce resources for pupils returning to school

schoolsweek.co.uk

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 4d

Thank you @nytopinion.nytimes.com for publishing this rot. Marc Rowan has run hundreds of companies into the dust to extract profits from their failure and bankruptcies. Now he wants to do the same to American higher education. Do not believe a word this man says. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Badly Needed

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 5d

AI is a lack of consent machine ,

Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 5d

“I still can’t believe how unhinged the last update was. Not only the nudity but the motions, boobs bounces more realistically, it’s incredible.”

Elon Musk's xAI seems to have relaxed filters on Grok's video generation, allowing users to create and share explicit AI pornography.

Musk's AI Is Being Used to Make Hardcore Porn: 'Grok Is Learning Genitalia Really Fast!'

bit.ly

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 11d

🫡

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports

AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

www.consumerreports.org

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 9d

Robot personhood/rights is conceptually bogus and legally puts more power/rights in the hands of those that develop and deploy robots/AI systems

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 9d

Dudes have been fantasizing about a computer friend in their glasses for a long time. This is 1959! www.wired.com/story/secret...

The beauty of the n-tuple method was that it could recognize many variants of the same character: Most Qs tended to score pretty close to other Qs. Better yet, the process worked with any pattern, not just text. According to an essay coauthored by Robert S. Boyer, a mathematician and longtime friend of Woody's, the n-tuple method helped define the field of pattern recognition; it was among the early set of efforts to ask,
"How can we make a machine do something like what
people do?"
Around the time when he was devising the n-tuple method, Woody had his first daydream about building the machine that he called a "computer person." Years later, he would recall the "wild excitement" he felt as he
conjured up a list of skills for the artificial consciousness:
"I wanted it to read printed characters on a page and handwritten script as well. I could see it, or a part of it, in a small camera that would fit on my glasses, with an attached earplug that would whisper into my ear the names of my friends and acquaintances as I met them on the street... For you see, my computer friend had the ability to recognize faces."

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 12d

so the US government just forced a tech company to delete an app it doesn’t like, which is totally normal stuff

www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’

Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never t...

www.404media.co

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 15d

This is what they appear to be claiming. That laws only protect you if you don’t explicitly opt out of having crimes committed against you.

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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 15d

Say it often, say it loud:

"Overall, research has not supported the common-sense presumption that digital approaches to schooling are better than non-digital alternatives. At the broadest level, widespread computer use in education has been found to be associated with lower student achievement."

Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education

Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...

nepc.colorado.edu

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 15d

In other news, I will be rifling through people’s pockets and taking whatever I like unless they opt out.

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 15d

Exclusive: OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator, which creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear.

OpenAI’s New Sora Video Generator to Require Copyright Holders to Opt Out

Executives at the startup notified talent agencies and studios over the last week.

on.wsj.com

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Reposted by Sarah Florini

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 15d

Current wearables innovation is mainly invested in figuring out the right form factor to convince people to adopt an always on camera and mic.

Cutest AI Ever? This Wearable Kitten-Shaped Camera Won Me Over

The Looki L1 is a fascinating addition to the burgeoning landscape of AI wearables. Plus, you can buy one now for $199.

www.cnet.com

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Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 16d

Exactly! It’s such a bizarre position to argue.

Sarah Florini @florini.bsky.social · 16d

And all “prompt engineering” seems to be is good communication and reasoning skills. The ability to ask good questions is not an LLM specific skill. So what “skills“ do I need to so that I am “not left behind?“

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