Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 15h

m.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ48... ❤️🕯️

D'Angelo - Send It On

YouTube video by DAngeloVEVO

m.youtube.com

1 10 93

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Laurens Dassen @laurensdassen.voltnederland.org · 1d

Terwijl klimaatverandering doordendert, is het voor veel partijen geen verkiezingsthema. Geen wanhoop, we kunnen het stoppen, daar is ‘alleen’ politieke wil voor nodig.

Sluit Tata, stop fossiele subsidies en beprijs vervuiling. Investeer in treinen, groene innovatie en stem op 29e voor klimaat.

12 87 320

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 1d

AI is now browser based. You can view a video of Perplexity's Comet completing an online assignment from Josh Brake. Don't panic. The speed is the giveaway. It is good practice to start checking LMS timestamps for how long students access and complete assignments youtu.be/opOx3Msw5tI?...

Comet Goes to School

YouTube video by Josh Brake

youtu.be

2 4

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 1d

Studies are beginning to reveal fissures in the argument that AI boosts productivity, writes Tech Policy Press fellow @eryk.bsky.social. Nonetheless, companies and governments are pouring investments into speculative growth without ample evidence.

Generative AI’s Productivity Myth | TechPolicy.Press

People may be using artificial intelligence, but that doesn’t mean it’s useful, writes Eryk Salvaggio.

www.techpolicy.press

40 61

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Meredith Martin @mmvty.bsky.social · 1d

📣 New preprint! We know humans are biased against AI-creativity. But what about LLMs, now often judging creativity in various contexts? Do they replicate, transform, or amplify this bias? We tested it. Turns out: AI is 2.5X more biased against its own work than humans. arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08831 🧵

arxiv.org

3 24 60

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Princeton University @princeton.edu · 1d

🌧️ Research from Princeton and the South China University of Technology shows that climate change and urbanization both play a role in storm-driven rain with the potential to lead to flooding and landslides.

But — the importance of each depends on how close rain is to the city center.

Climate change and urbanization both increase storms’ flooding threat for coastal cities - High Meadows Environmental Institute

City planners defending against future coastal storms will have to contend with increasing rainfall driven by both climate change and urban buildup. But which is the more important factor? New finding...

environment.princeton.edu

3 2

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 3d

Sobering analysis (for the 🇪🇺) by @markscott.bsky.social in @techpolicypress.bsky.social

‘Confronted with this transatlantic reality, it’s hard not to see Washington as the victor in growing efforts by governments to gain greater control over social media’

www.techpolicy.press/in-the-socia...

In the Social Media Wars, Washington, Not Brussels, is the Victor | TechPolicy.Press

US aims are primarily focused on national security, while those of the EU are centered on transparency and accountability, writes Mark Scott.

www.techpolicy.press

2 11 11

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 3d

Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>

Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading:

"You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy.

Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field.

In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea."

Original:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)

17 82 420

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Volt Nederland @voltnederland.org · 4d

Wat blijkt? Onze plannen zijn kneitergoed: voor een groene toekomst, voor jouw portemonnee, voor de kunst- & cultuursector en voor het kopen van je volgende huis. Ohja, en die investering in sociale zekerheid. Die is zo hoog dat die er niet meer op paste.

5 19 79

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Frans Timmermans @franstimmermans.groenlinkspvda.nl · 4d

VVD bezuinigt €1400 op de bijstand, een maandinkomen. Waar moeten deze mensen in december van leven?

Ondertussen is 1 op de 7 daklozen kind, terwijl NL duizenden miljonairs extra telt. Harde rechtse stilstand.

Wij halveren het eigen risico en kiezen voor solidariteit.

25 160 500

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 5d

AI companies are spending billions on deals with each other, which boost their value.

This has helped twenty billionaires tied to AI add $450B to their fortunes in 2025.

Meanwhile, an MIT study found that 95% of companies using AI haven't seen returns on investment.

Be warned.

170 960 2.2K

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 4d

Some teachers are using AI to grade and few are talking about it. Scantrons are one thing, but automating grading, feedback, and assessing written work with AI poses massive ethical challenges and should not become the default or go to choice in education.

👇 in comments

1 8 22

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 4d

As with so much in the AI discussion, the debate about using AI to grade isn't really a debate about AI but about education. Make sure to read @marcwatkins.bsky.social wise words on faculty using AI to grade. marcwatkins.substack.com/p/the-danger...

This isn’t really about AI at all. It’s about what we believe education is for. If higher education is just a credential farm, then efficiently sorting students into rankings makes sense and by all means, automate away! But I think most of us believe that education is more than that. For me, the purpose of higher education is about human development, critical thinking, and the transformative experience of having your ideas taken seriously by another human being. That’s not something we should be in a rush to outsource to a machine.

1 6

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 5d

They're going to put an enormous lawsuit magnet in the sky.
mastodon.social/@sundogplane...

Prof. Sam Lawler (@[email protected])

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disas...

mastodon.social

19 66 210

Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen @jeroenjeremy.bsky.social · 6d

Great! Also on texts written by kids?

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 6d

Everyone interested in democracy should get familiar with the details of the DSA

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 6d

Last week, a Dutch court ordered Meta to let Facebook and Instagram users set a chronological feed by default, a first test of the EU’s Digital Services Act in civil court.
Tech Policy Press spoke with Bits of Freedom’s Rejo Zenger on the ruling’s significance.

What a Dutch Court Ruling Against Meta Signals for Private DSA Enforcement | TechPolicy.Press

Tech Policy Press spoke with Rejo Zenger, Policy and Advocacy Lead at Bits of Freedom, to better understand the significance of the ruling.

www.techpolicy.press

1 9 22

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 6d

This is what's so remarkable (for me, infuriating) about boosting AI usage in schools. We are *already* seeing modern society straining under the corrosive effects of social media -- now we want to push related technology down into our schools? A long-term recipe for disaster.

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 6d

Humans evolved a cognitive 'social proof' system for establishing what's true (if enough of the people around me believe something, I'll go along) and media fragmentation + social media has completely and totally hijacked it

Feels like AI will only make this worse

Lord Businessman II @lordbusinessman.bsky.social · 6d

"no in the future people will cryptographically verify what's true and-" no they will not. People are fucking stupid.

2 15

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Dr Charlie Gardner @charliejgardner.bsky.social · 6d

There's good reason why the oil and gas industry lobbies so hard for carbon capture - because it's the one 'climate solution' that wouldn't necessarily require shutting down the oil and gas industry

But it doesn't work. They need to be shut down

InfluenceMap @influencemap.bsky.social · 7d

📢 🚨New Report - How the UK oil and gas industry spent 15 years pushing for subsidies & incentives for Carbon Capture and Storage rather than regulatory accountability or science-based emissions reductions; maintaining a funding pipeline for a technology yet to deliver on its promises 👇

The UK Oil and Gas Industry's Advocacy on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

New analysis from InfluenceMap suggests that for more than 15 years, the oil and gas industry has systematically pushed the UK government to adopt a costly, emissions-intensive energy policy agenda de...

influencemap.org

15 110 300

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Sham Jaff @shamjaff.bsky.social · 7d

It’s a "crisis" when immigrants "take jobs away", but "innovation" when machines do. Funny.

66 1.7K 5.5K

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 6d

I'm finding it surreal that there's broad agreement in the finance community that we are in an AI bubble. Even unapologetic boosters such as Ben Thompson of Stratechery are like, yep, obviously in a bubble. Given that much of the global economy is being propped up by AI, this should be worrying!

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 6d

Bank of England flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI - on.ft.com/4o3RheA

Bank of England flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI

Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble

on.ft.com

1 9

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 6d

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI on.ft.com/3WqHK5t

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI

Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble

on.ft.com

12 48 130

Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen @jeroenjeremy.bsky.social · 6d

Great stuff! Is there anything similar for handwritten texts?

1 1

Reposted by Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen

Reinier Van Lanschot @reiniervanlanschot.volteuropa.org · 7d

👋🏼 Hi Amsterdam founders, VCs & CEOs, I need you!

EU Inc is an important effort to simplify corporate, insolvency, labour and tax laws across 🇪🇺.

To improve it, we need examples of the difficulties you face when scaling to other European markets.

Join us next week: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

6 8

Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen @jeroenjeremy.bsky.social · 6d

Actually Bloomberg makes a similar point today

OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals

A wave of deals and partnerships are escalating concerns that the trillion-dollar AI boom is being propped up by interconnected business transactions.

www.bloomberg.com

Jeroen ‘Jeremy’ Fransen @jeroenjeremy.bsky.social · 6d

Agreed there!
I referred to a mutual dependency between tech companies (nVidia, Oracle, OpenAI, Microsoft, Coreweave etc.) with circular contracts between them.
To keep stock prices high they all need each other. So not a classic bailout but companies propping each other up when bubble pops?

1 1