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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield

@mikecaulfield.bsky.social

33K followers 2.3K following 1.4K posts

Author: Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (University of Chicago Press). Researcher, infolit/misinfo/rhetoric/civic reasoning. Currently researching AI as tool for critical thinking.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · May 9

In this article I argue treating LLMs like experts or authors or friends instead of as a conduit to access the insights of nameable others is a mistake, both in terms of dangers and lost opportunities www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

AI Is Not Your Friend

How the “opinionated” chatbots destroyed AI’s potential, and how we can fix it

www.theatlantic.com

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 4h

Exactly

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 4h

"If we just decide as faculty that the world will have newspapers instead of Facebook that will be the real solution." Etc.

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 4h

It's just a weird example on a number of levels. But honestly I saw this back in 2010 when I was first arguing that we should teach infolit for social media -- why do that when we could just decide not to have social media at all?

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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 5h

Wanna know why Sam Altman and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel all LOVED Eliezer Yudkowsky, right up until they ignored him?

It’s because he was USEFUL to their efforts to attract funding and talent to their new companies.

If you think futurism is about accuracy, then you’re the sucker at the table.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 4h

Ok, let's go...

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The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 7h

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet"

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 1d

It's an amazing script, too, lots of little twists and turns, all of them obvious in hindsight.

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 2d

People always aske me "What does SIFT for AI look like?" Meaning, what is the minimal set of habits you need to teach students to use it effectively for exploration of claims online? It's taken a couple years to get here but this is a start at a response mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/get-it-in-...

Get it in, track it down, follow up

Three essential moves to using AI for verification and contextualization, with a bit of LLM-specific guidance

mikecaulfield.substack.com

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 2d

Watching Sneakers and man could Robert Redford deliver a line.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 2d

They can do other things. This is not an argument that others should retire at 75. But there is no level of value you can point to that offsets the risk.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 2d

Again, after RGB and Biden look at where we are and tell me how you rate that torture report on the arc of history. The problem with politics is incumbency and other rules (RGB) make it almost impossible to get someone out of these positions. And here we are in the republic's twilight.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 2d

Yes, that is correct. You are not outlining anything that even slightly offsets the risk of having people older than 75 in that position. Two to three Senate terms would have been more than enough. It's not the end of her career, she could do something else.

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Halloween Name @damnyouwillis.bsky.social · 5d

pictured: the amount of Jared Leto we're willing to purchase

preternia @preternia.com · 5d

Something (things?) Tron by Hasbro to be revealed.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

Those two decisions alone outweigh any benefit you can ever point to of keeping a 75 year old in office, and if you can't see that, I really don't know what to say.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

Just like what they'll remember about Ruth Bader Ginsburg is that last year of decisions. Who else could have possibly done that? Irreplaceable.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

Aside from where we've ended up, with democracy ending, yeah, it was great and I am sure what people will remember 50 years from now about Biden is the inflation reduction act.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

Men in John Deere hats and white kids in aeropostale and ambercrombie bowling and dancing to Outkast. I turned to my friend and said, wait, people know this song and they said mike you gotta turn on the radio once in a while.

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

Listened to this when it first came out because, you know, outkast, and did not realize it was climbing the charts. Went to Galaxy Bowling Night in my small new england town one night and it came on, the whole place went wild with dancing, it felt surreal, worlds clashing.

2000s @popculture2000s.bsky.social · 3d

hey ya! by outkast, 2003

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

You've got to click through to the quote tweet within it too

Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

There's a lot good in this comment thread

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 3d

“Emotional labor” itself morphing from a specific term related to the service industry into a term referring to emotional attachment and investment within personal relationships was a bad development.

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 3d

I feel lots of things that felt like, were billed as, self-actualization read in retrospect as canaries in the coal mine for the fraying commitments we owe to each other as members of a society.

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 3d

Relatedly, I recall a lot of "the joy of canceling plans" jokes and memes from the 2010s and now folks are talking about a loneliness epidemic, and, well...

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 3d

People will scoff at virtue signaling and then wonder why today’s billionaires don’t build museums, libraries, hospitals, and universities like Gilded Age ones did.

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Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 3d

Relatedly, I recall a lot of "the joy of canceling plans" jokes and memes from the 2010s and now folks are talking about a loneliness epidemic, and, well...

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 3d

People will scoff at virtue signaling and then wonder why today’s billionaires don’t build museums, libraries, hospitals, and universities like Gilded Age ones did.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

I find it an interesting thought experiment to think about how LLMs would be different if these systems had arrived pre social media, in say 1995, working off a world of print and not plugging into the current attention economy.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

And under remarked element of all this is how the fact the systems are introduced into a world already shaped by social media is I think have bad effects on the designs of these systems.

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 3d

The first thing the x.com crowd is going to do is not turn the dial to their preference, it will be to turn liberal up to 11 and hammer on it until they find the dumbest crap possible to mock. Liberal influencers will do the same turning it down to 0 and finding the most horrifying responses.

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