Margaret Mitchell

@mmitchell.bsky.social

22K followers 790 following 1.8K posts

Researcher trying to shape AI towards positive outcomes. ML & Ethics +birds. Generally trying to do the right thing. TIME 100 | TED speaker | Senate testimony provider | Navigating public life as a recluse.
Former: Google, Microsoft; Current: Hugging Face .. more

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Margaret Mitchell is a computer scientist who works on algorithmic bias and fairness in machine learning. She is most well known for her work on automatically removing undesired biases concerning demographic groups from machine learning models, as well as more transparent reporting of their intended use. .. more

Computer science 94%

Psychology 5%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 1d

I get so frustrated with people who demean expertise while centering the narrative of a corporation.

Reposted by Timnit Gebru

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 1d

Pro tip: If the person providing a different interpretation is not speaking for Moneyed Interests and is an expert in their field, they’re an “independent scholar”—not just a “skeptic” (ffs!)

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Okay, I hestitate to even share this link, because while I like NYMag I do not want to send this journalist in particular clicks, b ut:

If your framing is that an academic is the "dominant voice" and the underdogs are OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, maybe a fact check in is order??

>>

Is ChatGPT Conscious?

Many users feel they’re talking to a real person. Scientists say it’s time to consider whether they’re onto something.

nymag.com

Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Margaret Mitchell, Janet Murray

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Is ChatGPT Conscious?

Many users feel they’re talking to a real person. Scientists say it’s time to consider whether they’re onto something.

nymag.com

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 10d

#SixOnSaturday 🌱

Smoke bush, orange dahlia, red mums, magenta dahlia, close up of yellow nasturtium with vermillion maple-leaf-shaped inner markings, red mums against the blue sky.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 14d

Congratulations!!

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Ada Lovelace Institute @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · 15d

Highly personalised and personable, Advanced AI Assistants may soon become the primary way that most people access the internet.

Our research explores the challenges that could arise if their adoption is not carefully managed in the public interest.

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/dilem...

The dilemmas of delegation

An analysis of policy challenges posed by Advanced AI Assistants and natural-language AI agents.

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Kate Starbird

M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 15d

Nice piece, and consistent with our findings that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Fabián Muniesa

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 15d

New from 404 Media: people are 3D-printing whistles to warn each other about the presence of ICE. Some people make designs and upload them; others are given a design and are printing hundreds and hundreds of whistles at home. It's been effective in Chicago

www.404media.co/the-latest-d...

The Latest Defense Against ICE: 3D-Printed Whistles

Chicagoans are making, sharing, and printing designs for whistles that can warn people when ICE is in the area. The goal is to “prevent as many people from being kidnapped as possible.”

www.404media.co

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

Also love "behavior hijacking".

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

That's a good one! Maybe the external-facing version of this is Gen-Juicing.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

Oh that's great. I actually find that hard to scroll past, especially on my phone, since it tends to take up a lot of space, and THEN it's similar questions that upon dropdown click ALSO have AI-generated responses, and THEN it's finally links.
Have you proactively disabled some AI things?

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

Yes 100%!

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16d

If you have been framing your work as involving/in relation to "AI", what do you mean by "AI"? How would you describe your work without using that phrase?

>>

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Ryan Calo

Kyra Wilson @kyrawilson.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks to @uwnews.uw.edu for covering my + @aylincaliskan.bsky.social's recent work published at AIES 2025! www.washington.edu/news/2025/11...

People mirror AI systems’ hiring biases, study finds

In a new UW study, 528 participants worked with simulated AI systems to select job candidates. The researchers simulated different levels of racial biases for resumes from white, Black, Hispanic and.....

www.washington.edu

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

Haha. As a vegetarian, I particularly like that one.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

There's this form of behavioral engineering/coercion going on to use AI when you're not even trying to. Ex: Enterprise Google Slides replaced "Upload an Image", with "Generate an Image" (right?), requiring extra work +adaptation to sidestep the AI-as-default push. It drives me bonkers.

Before and After shots of Google slides menu bars, Insert --> Image. Before, the first option was "Upload from computer". After, the first option is "Generate an image", with "Upload from computer" a distant second.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 16d

Love the phrases "Cognitive Cost" and "Executive Function Theft" to pinpoint how exhausting it is to be constantly bombarded with apps telling you to use AI. I've been calling it "Corporate pressure" and "Force feeding". It's quite a lot right now. Seems a bit desperate tbh.

Abigail Goben @hedgielib.bsky.social · 16d

The #ExecutiveFunctionTheft of having to opt out.

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16d

Feeling annoyed at the cognitive cost of having to dismiss all the offers of "AI" assitance every time I use Acrobat to provide feedback on documents my students wrote. (NO I do NOT want an "AI" summary of this. In what world???)

Decided to check settings:

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Abigail Goben @hedgielib.bsky.social · 16d

The #ExecutiveFunctionTheft of having to opt out.

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16d

Image of "Preferences" pain for Adobe Acrobat, with the "Generative AI" menu item selected. This provides check boxes that can be unchecked, including "Enable generative AI features in Acrobat" and also "Show AI query bar on document", "Show AI video cards (this will replace the starred documetns, requires restart)", and "Show AI Summary Bar on top of the document".

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

J. Hrebinka (Shanahan) 🇺🇦🇯🇴 @enceladosaurus.bsky.social · 17d

In this 2025 study, more than half of LLM responses cited fake sources or links.

www.cjr.org/tow_center/w...

AI Search Has A Citation Problem

We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

www.cjr.org

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 17d

🪶 Golden-crowned Kinglets at the water spout.

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 17d

Was it “Q”? I never trust that one.

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell

Brian Penny 🍿 @brianpenny.bsky.social · 18d

Vince Gilligan on AI:

“AI is the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires.”

Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn on What ‘Pluribus’ Is Really About, Why Hollywood ‘Needs More Heroes’ and How Silicon Valley Has ‘F—ed Up the World’

Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn unpack the first two episodes of 'Pluribus' and slam AI: 'Silicon Valley' has 'f---ed up the world.'

variety.com

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Brian Keegan

Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 19d

Holy shit. Noam Shazeer, one of the original authors on the "Attention is All You Need" paper and Character.AI founder, came out as major transphobe. Like Trumpian levels of "this is child mutilation" of transphobia.

(via The Information)

This spring, Google AI leader Noam Shazeer posted a comment in one of the company’s internal discussion forums, in response to a post about how Google employees could support their transgender and nonbinary colleagues on International Transgender Day of Visibility.

“I do not believe that humans have an attribute called gender,” Shazeer wrote, according to a copy of the post viewed by The Information. “I do not believe that G-d puts people in the wrong bodies. I do not believe that it is okay to sterilize children. You have the right to your beliefs. I do not share them.”

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 19d

This.

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 19d

When fines are treated by companies as a cost of doing business, the regulatory model itself has failed. #regulatorycapture

Reposted by Margaret Mitchell, Greg Linden

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 19d

When fines are treated by companies as a cost of doing business, the regulatory model itself has failed. #regulatorycapture

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Margaret Mitchell, Janet Murray , and 2 more Anne Applebaum, Margaret Mitchell, Janet Murray, Stephen D. Murphy, Greg Linden

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 19d

When deception’s more profitable than honesty, users lose.

Internal documents suggest that Meta earns $3.5B(!) every 6 mo. from scam ads, revealing a deeper systemic problem: the economic incentive to tolerate “higher legal risk” content still outweighs any penalty. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, and it internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day, company documents show.

www.reuters.com

Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 20d

I thought this headline was from some small newspaper and went to tag @nytpitchbot.bsky.social to share smthn even more ridiculous than the usual satirical NY Times pitches, but…Nope, this is actually from @nytimes.com