Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · Jul 28

Leaving aside all the ethics of AI fashion models... did no-one look at this before printing??? Just try to work out where her knees are and how they're connected to her feet and hips. Bizarre to choose a zigzag dress that's just going to emphasise any weird contours too

Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · Jul 28

I thought the worst thing about it was the ridiculous hyper-airbrushed texture we’ve come to expect from this nonsense technology and then I saw the actual full ad and apparently this fake woman made of environmental ruin and stolen art is about eight feet tall

An AI generated image of a blond woman wearing a black and white horizontal striped dress in front of a blue wall. She appears to have legs the length of which would look more appropriate on a literal Barbie doll.

2 10 39

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Jul 28

word of the year pls

Halloween Enthusiast @kmfao.bsky.social · Jul 24

"SLOPPER" I'm losing my mind

2

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Jun 5

I had some fun speaking at #sxswlondon this week. Video for FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AI should be coming soon!

1 2

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Jun 4

"We will look back at this period in history and realise that letting a billionaire’s ego drive innovation — rather than as part of a collective effort, as seen with Apollo and the Saturn V — was a grave mistake."

www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-d...

Starship: Dead End?

What happened on Test Flight 9?

www.planetearthandbeyond.co

1 3

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · May 9

I think I forgot to post this in the travel chaos, but I spoke to @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social for MIT Tech Review about AI, creativity and more, as part of a big feature on how AI is affecting our creativity. I think we have no idea, basically.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/10/1...

How AI can help supercharge creativity

Forget one-click creativity. These artists and musicians are finding new ways to make art using AI, by injecting friction, challenge, and serendipity into the process.

www.technologyreview.com

1 2 9

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Jun 4

you need to watch these clips

Zeteo @zeteo.com · Jun 3

This Israeli TV Channel has literally been inciting “genocide” onto thousands of screens.

Read @premthakker.bsky.social's story:
zeteo.com/p/inside-the...

2 14 28

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Niall Firth @niallfirth.bsky.social · Apr 23

one of the highlights in the issue is this from @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social on how AI can be co-opted to help supercharge creativity in unusual ways. I want to go to an algorave! www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/10/1...

How AI can help supercharge creativity

Forget one-click creativity. These artists and musicians are finding new ways to make art using AI, by injecting friction, challenge, and serendipity into the process.

www.technologyreview.com

3 6

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Apr 12

Good breakdown on tariffs

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · Apr 11

How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

Before you open this thread, take a guess. Settle on a number and then compare it to what you'll learn in this thread. 🧵

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Rumman Chowdhury @ruchowdh.bsky.social · Apr 5

My *third* time on @scifri.bsky.social but first time recording in the NYC studio! Hear me and @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social bring AGI conversations to reality and talk about the issues that really matter, like who controls the power behind AI.

Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · Apr 4

Tech companies are racing to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that could match or surpass human abilities. @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social and @ruchowdh.bsky.social join us to discuss AGI and its potential impacts on society.

What Artificial General Intelligence Could Mean For Our Future

What happens when AI moves beyond convincing chatbots and custom image generators to something that matches—or outperforms—humans?

www.sciencefriday.com

5 25

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Mar 14

I think Kevin Roose needs to talk to more people outside San Francisco www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/t...

9

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Mar 14

Possibly the first case of chatbot logs being released under freedom of information laws www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice

New Scientist has used freedom of information laws to obtain the ChatGPT records of Peter Kyle, the UK's technology secretary, in what is believed to be a world-first use of such legislation

www.newscientist.com

4

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Mar 7

Yes yes yes! This is hands down one of the best things I've read about AGI, the techno-fetish that's once again grabbing mainstream attention

Max Read @maxread.info · Mar 7

in this week's newsletter we explore why a small backlash is mounting against the larger a.i. backlash of the last year or so maxread.substack.com/p/the-ai-bac...

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, A.I. discourse has gone through at least two distinct cycles, at least in terms of how it’s been talked about and understood on social media, and, to a lesser extent, in the popular press. First came the hype cycle, which lasted through most of 2023, during which the loudest voices were prophesying near-term chaos and global societal transformation in the face of unstoppable artificial intelligence, and Twitter was dominated by LinkedIn-style A.I. hustle-preneur morons claiming that “AI is going to nuke the bottom third of performers in jobs done on computers — even creative ones — in the next 24 months.”

When the much-hyped total economic transformation failed to arrive in the shortest of the promised timeframes--and when too many of the highly visible, actually existing A.I. implementations turned out to be worse-than-useless dogshit--a backlash cycle emerged, and the overwhelming A.I. hype on social media was matched by a strong anti-A.I. sentiment. For many people, A.I. became symbolic of a wayward and over-powerful tech industry, and many people who admitted or encouraged the use of A.I., especially in creative fields, was subject to intense criticism.

But that backlash cycle is now facing the early stages of a backlash of its own. Last December, the prominent tech columnist (and co-host, with Roose, of the Hard Fork podcast) Casey Newton wrote a piece called “The phony comforts of AI skepticism,” suggesting that many A.I. critics and skeptics were willfully ignoring the advancing power and importance of A.I. systems

The substance of the anti-backlash position at its broadest is something like: Actually, A.I. is quite powerful and useful, and even if you hate that, lots of money and resources are being expended on it, so it’s important to take it seriously rather than dismissing it out of hand.

Who, precisely, these columns are responding to is an open question. The objects of accusation are somewhat vague: Newton mentions Gary Marcus, the cognitive scientist and prolific blogger, but then acknowledges that Marcus “doesn’t say that AI is fake and sucks, exactly.” Silver seems to be responding to two tweets from Noah Kulwin and Ken Klippenstein. Klein doesn’t specify anyone at all. The ripostes are not so much about the many rigorous A.I.-critical voices that have emerged--taxonomized in this Benjamin Riley post, which serves as an excellent guide to some of the sharpest and smartest people currently writing on the subject--and more about an ambient, dismissive anti-A.I. sensibility that’s emerged on social media, and that animates, e.g., the spiteful banter that leads Roose to say he suffers a “social penalty for taking AGI progress seriously.”

But at the same time I also don’t think that this backlash-to-the-backlash is limited to Big Accounts complaining about their Twitter mentions, either. Speaking anecdotally, I see more pushback than I used to against some of the more vehement A.I. critics, and defenses of A.I. usage from people who are otherwise quite critical of the tech industry. I wouldn’t say we’re in a new hype cycle--yet--but it’s clear that the discursive ground has shifted slightly in favor of A.I.

1

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Mat Honan ✅ @mathonan.com · Mar 5

AGI is whatever we made it to be

2 2 11

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Mar 6

It's good to have Mike Watt back in my life

1

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Mar 6

Israel is training a spy chatbot on vast numbers of surveilled Arabic calls www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Revealed: Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like tool using vast collection of Palestinian surveillance data

The powerful new AI model is designed to analyze intercepted communications – but experts say such systems can exacerbate biases and are prone to making mistakes

www.theguardian.com

1

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · Feb 24

The Revolution will be AI-icized

3.3K 15K 85K

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Feb 21

More: we picked generative virtual worlds as a hot trend to watch this year www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/08/1...

What’s next for AI in 2025

You already know that agents and small language models are the next big things. Here are five other hot trends you should watch out for this year.

www.technologyreview.com

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Feb 21

If you're curious about Muse, Microsoft's new generative gameplay model that produces fuzzy footage of video games that don't (yet) exist, this from @mtrc.bsky.social is easily the best explainer: www.possibilityspace.org/blog-before-...

www.possibilityspace.org

1 1

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Feb 21

More: we picked generative virtual worlds as a hot trend to watch this year www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/08/1...

What’s next for AI in 2025

You already know that agents and small language models are the next big things. Here are five other hot trends you should watch out for this year.

www.technologyreview.com

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · Feb 11

The act of coding, like sketching or rubber ducking, is also an act of thinking through something. Prompting an LLM might also be a thinking process, but we have to reflect on what each approach helps us with. I think differently while taking notes than just turning it over in my head.

martin pichlmair @martinpi.bsky.social · Feb 11

One reason why I'm not using AI tools for coding is that I already have a way to tell a computer what to do: by writing code. All the thinking that is part of coding can be spent by arguing with a language model or by expressing myself in a programming language.

1 2 13

Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven

Keith Stuart @keefstuart.bsky.social · Feb 12

Hi, I spoke to actor Sarah Elmaleh about Harrison Ford’s recent comments on AI and how they’ve brought attention to the current SAG-AFTRA strike

www.theguardian.com/games/2025/f...

How Harrison Ford brought a strike over video game AI to the world’s attention

Voice actors demanding compensation when AI generates performances from their work have taken industrial action since July

www.theguardian.com

2 9 27

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Feb 13

Blech

Will Douglas Heaven @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social · Feb 13

OpenAI talks about users + chatbots seeking the truth together. But one upshot is that you can now tell ChatGPT to stop giving you balanced perspectives if you don't like it disagreeing with you: "I don't want to hear both sides!"