Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 6d

One curious thing on this site about speaking out against the encroachment of LLMs is that inevitably you get accused of being anti-tech. I don’t hate technology. I’ve used machine learning in my own code before. But I also recognize that oligarchs are so hellbent on pushing this tech for a reason.

71 470 2.3K

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 5d

“Uncritical adoption of AI, will inevitably create people without critical thinking, and this may be a feature - not a bug, as it represents an attack on human agency itself.”

collectivefutures.blog/the-infrastr...

The infrastructure of meaninglessness

Listen, there are two realities that we should be aware of. AI exists to make your job obsolete because the alternative is that AI makes managers obsolete. Let me try to break down this theory, which...

collectivefutures.blog

3 110 240

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · May 14

NEW paper! 💭🖥️

“Combining Psychology with Artificial Intelligence: What could possibly go wrong?”

— Brief review paper by @olivia.science & myself, highlighting traps to avoid when combining Psych with AI, and why this is so important. Check out our proposed way forward! 🌟💡

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Table 1
Typology of traps, how they can be avoided, and what goes wrong if not avoided. Note that all traps in a sense constitute category errors (Ryle & Tanney, 2009) and the success-to-truth inference (Guest & Martin, 2023) is an important driver in most, if not all, of the traps.

12 79 250

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

POLITICO Europe @politico.eu · 5d

Estonia is opposed to a push by the European Union to take further action to restrict kids’ access to social media, its digital minister told POLITICO in an interview.

Estonia speaks out against EU social media ban for kids

Most EU countries have backed the idea of a digital age of majority.

www.politico.eu

1 6 31

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Netopia.eu @netopia.bsky.social · 5d

They Don't Have the Money: OpenAI Edition, They Don’t Have the Money, They Don’t Have the Money: Oracle and Tik Tok, Remaining CAPEX Obligation

platformonomics.com/2025/10/they...

OpenAI's Financial Future: They Don't Have the Money

Explore OpenAI's staggering financial commitments and the challenges that may trigger a Wile E Coyote moment for AI.

platformonomics.com

4 1

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

risklady.bsky.social @risklady.bsky.social · 5d

This guy, along with Larry Ellison and his nepo son, are the most dangerous people in the US right now. They come for all your news sources, personal information, and developers of propaganda for the Trumplican world. Their new war is invading every young American mind with TikTok.

1 8

Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 5d

The core of Peter Thiel’s campaign: don’t regulare tech, accept our rein. Bizarre packaged in an antichrist story, igniting fear and confusion that leads to hate and violence. He definitely is the Antichrist himself.

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 5d

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

www.theguardian.com

4 8

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Barbara Kathmann @barbarakathmann.bsky.social · 6d

Zeekabels! De aderen die van Nederland het kloppende hart van de digitale wereld maken. Wel zo belangrijk, zou je denken, helemaal als we met z’n allen zo trots zijn op onze digitale economie. En toch hoor je weinig over zeekabels. Hoe komt dat en wat doe ik 👉🏻 www.barbarakathmann.nl/zeekabels-on...

Je ziet een foto van mij met mijn zon kes op Prinsjesdag voor de troon van de koning met mijn zeekabelhoed

1 11 28

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Institute of Art and Ideas @iai.tv · 7d

We are well aware by now of the observer problem in quantum mechanics. Human subjectivity appears to play a key role in the results of quantum experiments. | https://bit.ly/4gqMUrx

However, the observer problem reaches far beyond just quantum mechanics, argues Edward Frenkel.

#philsci ⚛️ 🧪

Maths, like quantum physics, has observer problems | Edward Frenkel

We are well aware by now of the observer problem in quantum mechanics. Human subjectivity appears to play a key role in the results of quantum experiments. However, the observer problem reaches far be...

bit.ly

7 3

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Daniel J Nicholson @djnicholson.bsky.social · 5d

My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell

<i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited

Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - <i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited

www.cambridge.org

7 36 94

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Alessandro Rigolon @alerigolon.bsky.social · 5d

Trump's higher education compact is incompatible with the goals and ethnics of any well-respected academic institution. Glad that MIT had the courage to be the first to say no.

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 5d

Breaking: MIT just became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump admin's higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

"Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

www.nytimes.com

2 5 23

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Privacy International @privacyinternational.org · 5d

🚨 BREAKING: Microsoft illegally tracked students, data watchdog finds.

The Austrian DPA has ruled that Microsoft 365 Education used tracking cookies without consent — illegally collecting student data - following a complaint supported by @noyb.eu

noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-...

1 36 33

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Tony Dutzik @frontiertony.bsky.social · 6d

All the lip gloss being put on the AI boom as somehow good for climate or the energy transition is masking that, at the present moment, it's a disaster.

Not only more gas generation, but the worst, dirtiest, least efficient kind. Turning the clock back 25 years.
heatmap.news/energy/natur...

Data Centers Have Solved Their Speed-to-Power Problem — With Natural Gas

“Old economy” companies like Caterpillar and Williams are cashing in by selling smaller, less-efficient turbines to impatient developers.

heatmap.news

4 20 48

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Prof Prachi Srivastava @prachisrivas.bsky.social · 5d

Thinking about this for most of the night, I don't think normal people realise Banerjee & Duflo leaving MIT is Bad-Bunny-level academic news.

www.barrons.com/news/nobel-w...

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 6d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

2 11 31

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 7d

please think about this deeply & consult with experts who do NOT have Conflicts of Interest! See:

Guest, O., Suarez, M., Müller, B., et al. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

1 17 60

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Evie @mommabear7.bsky.social · 14d

He’s right- I’m scared

9 71 140

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

De Groene Amsterdammer @groene.nl · 13d

Teruglezen | Steeds meer organisaties willen rechten toekennen aan dieren en planten. We kunnen daar lacherig over doen. Maar waarom zou een bedrijf wel en een boom niet kunnen worden erkend als rechtspersoon?

‘Edelachtbare, mijn cliënt voelt zich niet fijn in de legbatterij’

Steeds meer organisaties willen rechten toekennen aan dieren en planten. We kunnen daar lacherig over doen. Maar waarom zou een bedrijf wel en een boom niet kunnen worden erkend als rechtspersoon?

buff.ly

9 33

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 14d

Barbra Streisand is joining Jane Fonda and 600+ entertainment figures in re-launching the Committee for the First Amendment. Fonda announced the revival of the organization, initially founded by her father, Henry Fonda. The organization was founded in the 1940s to defend free speech against fascism.

180 3.6K 11K

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 15d

Excited to introduce Vibes from Meta. Eat your slop, piggies!

110 2.7K 7.4K

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 15d

This piece by @laurabullard.bsky.social goes DEEP into Peter Thiel’s Antichrist fixation—a bizarre melding of biblical scripture and Nazi philosophy.

Remember: This isn't about AI. It's a much deeper story about the strange mind behind JD Vance.

Read it:

www.wired.com/story/the-re...

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

www.wired.com

16 210 390

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 21d

The richest man on earth owns X.

The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.

The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.

See the problem here?

1.9K 20K 58K

Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 21d

Larry Ellison, the creepy mogul, moving up the control and surveillance ladder of social media www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Murdoch’s TikTok? Trump offers allies another lever of media control

Under the known terms of the deal with China, TikTok would get a new board, including Murdochs and Ellisons

www.theguardian.com

2 6

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee @imco.europarl.europa.eu · 28d

The European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) is now on Bluesky 🦋!

Follow us for regular Committee updates and activities - meetings, votes, missions, and more - and for more information visit our website at www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/e....

Highlights | Home | IMCO | Committees | European Parliament

Main page of the European Parliament's Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO). Latest news, links to documents and videos of meetings.

www.europarl.europa.eu

1 6 12

Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 21d

Toni Blair Thinktank funded with 257 million pounds by Larry Ellison …
www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Inside the Tony Blair Institute

Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?

www.newstatesman.com

4 4