Sarah Florini
@florini.bsky.social
Associate Prof of Film and Media Studies at ASU. Studying technology, race, power, and ethics. Lover of general shenanigans. I refuse to call them “skeets.”
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Again, there is no plan for running our universities without federal funding, or foreign students, at scale. But the public has no idea about this because no. one. is. telling. them. this. They expect their kids are still going to be able to do all the things at college in the next 4 years, & well:
The entire business model of R1 public universities rests on 4 revenue sources:
1. Federal grants
2. Private gifts/endowments
3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students)
4. State $
For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.
1. Federal grants
2. Private gifts/endowments
3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students)
4. State $
For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.
November 27, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Again, there is no plan for running our universities without federal funding, or foreign students, at scale. But the public has no idea about this because no. one. is. telling. them. this. They expect their kids are still going to be able to do all the things at college in the next 4 years, & well:
Reposted by Sarah Florini
NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.
The Nonprofit Feeding the Entire Internet to AI Companies
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.
www.theatlantic.com
November 4, 2025 at 12:15 PM
NEW: Common Crawl, the massive archiver of the web, has gotten cozy with AI companies and is providing paywalled articles for training data. They’re also lying to publishers who have asked for material to be removed. “The robots are people too,” CC’s exec director told us when we asked about this.
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Not that EVs are at all a solution for climate change, but now SoftBank is putting $3b to remodel an EV factory to begin manufacturing parts for data centers.
www.theinformation.com/articles/sof...
www.theinformation.com/articles/sof...
SoftBank to Invest Up to $3 Billion in Factory for OpenAI Data Centers
SoftBank plans to invest up to $3 billion to remodel an electric vehicle plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that will produce equipment for OpenAI’s forthcoming data centers, according to two people with knowl...
www.theinformation.com
November 20, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Not that EVs are at all a solution for climate change, but now SoftBank is putting $3b to remodel an EV factory to begin manufacturing parts for data centers.
www.theinformation.com/articles/sof...
www.theinformation.com/articles/sof...
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Like it or not this technology is here to stay and if you don’t use it you’ll fall behind in your industry
November 16, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Like it or not this technology is here to stay and if you don’t use it you’ll fall behind in your industry
This is wild. But it certainly make the conversations I’ve had about race with British people make a lot more sense.
holy shit: “Among the 2,000 UK adults surveyed, 85% were unaware that Britain forcibly transported more than 3 million Africans to the Caribbean, 89% did not know that Britain enslaved people in the Caribbean for more than 300 years” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Caribbean reparations leaders in ‘historic’ first UK visit to press for justice
CRC mission will seek to deepen public understanding of Britain’s colonial legacy and its lasting impact
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:31 AM
This is wild. But it certainly make the conversations I’ve had about race with British people make a lot more sense.
They asked a Google AI for Ed engineer “how he planned to enact his vision of the future, one where AI filled classrooms rather than emptied them. ‘The professors themselves,’ he said, would be responsible for figuring that out.”
They promise utopian and make others responsible for delivering it.
They promise utopian and make others responsible for delivering it.
This may be the best thing ive read yet on AI in higher ed, and its written by a Yale undergrad. Highly recommend.
Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI | The New Journal
Amid ChatGPT's rising popularity and a computer science cheating scandal, Yale students, professors, and administrators wrestle privately with the proper role of AI in education. What happens when eve...
thenewjournalatyale.com
November 16, 2025 at 8:12 PM
They asked a Google AI for Ed engineer “how he planned to enact his vision of the future, one where AI filled classrooms rather than emptied them. ‘The professors themselves,’ he said, would be responsible for figuring that out.”
They promise utopian and make others responsible for delivering it.
They promise utopian and make others responsible for delivering it.
This is so disrespectful to one’s colleagues and to the field. Peer review is supposed to provide meaningful feedback and help hone ideas, not pick up the slack for a lazy author who can’t even be bothered to double check the intellectual work they outsourced to the lying machine.
November 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM
This is so disrespectful to one’s colleagues and to the field. Peer review is supposed to provide meaningful feedback and help hone ideas, not pick up the slack for a lazy author who can’t even be bothered to double check the intellectual work they outsourced to the lying machine.
I will believe AGI might someday be possible if I ever live in a world where I can reliably wirelessly print on campus.
the improbability of superhuman AGI becomes even clearer if think ab the intermediate steps. for example, if a startup company claimed that in the next five years they were going to develop a robot smart enough to do all your shopping for you they’d be dismissed out of hand
November 15, 2025 at 6:54 PM
I will believe AGI might someday be possible if I ever live in a world where I can reliably wirelessly print on campus.
It’s cute and sweet when my cat ‘makes biscuits’ on me. But he always does it on the softest part of my abdomen. And it just feels like I’m being slowly and gently disemboweled.
November 15, 2025 at 6:43 PM
It’s cute and sweet when my cat ‘makes biscuits’ on me. But he always does it on the softest part of my abdomen. And it just feels like I’m being slowly and gently disemboweled.
This piece has started a really great conversation about how we understand and deploy histories around emerging technologies. And I think it’s a great time to revisit Carey’s “Historical Pragmatism and the Internet.”
What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer
The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself. It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...
sonjadrimmer.com
November 15, 2025 at 6:06 PM
This piece has started a really great conversation about how we understand and deploy histories around emerging technologies. And I think it’s a great time to revisit Carey’s “Historical Pragmatism and the Internet.”
Reposted by Sarah Florini
In the words of a very cranky welfare state scholar who once spoke at a grad seminar of mine: you all need to study history, boys and girls.
Neat periodization of technological revolutions hides the messiness of historical contingency.
Neat periodization of technological revolutions hides the messiness of historical contingency.
November 15, 2025 at 5:24 PM
In the words of a very cranky welfare state scholar who once spoke at a grad seminar of mine: you all need to study history, boys and girls.
Neat periodization of technological revolutions hides the messiness of historical contingency.
Neat periodization of technological revolutions hides the messiness of historical contingency.
Reposted by Sarah Florini
What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer
The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself. It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...
sonjadrimmer.com
September 10, 2025 at 7:51 PM
What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history?
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...
Reposted by Sarah Florini
BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!!
We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
November 14, 2025 at 11:55 PM
BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!!
We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Really difficult to overstate the fury one should feel that the GOP and institutions like the New York Times went all in on transphobia as some mortal threat to women and girls while covering up something like this.
When you read these Epstein emails, you start to understand why so many prominent conservatives are obsessed with checking the genitals of children. It's a big thing for them!
November 13, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Really difficult to overstate the fury one should feel that the GOP and institutions like the New York Times went all in on transphobia as some mortal threat to women and girls while covering up something like this.
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Proposal: instead of pouring resources into AI, tech companies first figure out a way for people to be able to copy slides from one PowerPoint presentation to another without the formatting getting all fucked up
November 11, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Proposal: instead of pouring resources into AI, tech companies first figure out a way for people to be able to copy slides from one PowerPoint presentation to another without the formatting getting all fucked up
Reposted by Sarah Florini
training data is literally the most important ‘ingredient’ that can reveal so much about model behaviour
but again, opening up your training data is like putting your dirty laundry out and can bring an entire company down
but again, opening up your training data is like putting your dirty laundry out and can bring an entire company down
November 12, 2025 at 10:49 AM
training data is literally the most important ‘ingredient’ that can reveal so much about model behaviour
but again, opening up your training data is like putting your dirty laundry out and can bring an entire company down
but again, opening up your training data is like putting your dirty laundry out and can bring an entire company down
Good news! Training data - the #1 place people have identified where bias and toxicity gets imported into ML/AI models - is actually not important at all! So relieved the tech guys let us know that literally countless experts and studies can be ignored!
flat out lies. these tech ceos take regulators and the masses for fools
![“If you want to know how a model will behave, the only way of doing it is to run it,” Mensch also suggested. “You do need to have some empirical testing, what’s happening. Knowing the input data that has been used for training is not going to tell you whether your model is going to behave well in [a healthcare use-case], for instance. You don’t really care about what’s in the training data. You do care about the empirical behaviour of the model. So you don’t need knowledge of the training data. And if you had knowledge of the training data, it wouldn’t even teach you whether the model is going to behave well or not. So this is why I’m saying it’s neither necessary nor sufficient.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:26hkfmtr7jrchexamh7hk6rz/bafkreibp7oaeovg7xt43dlk3qtmkft6irldgf44tz75sbaiqvoqdq4kpjy@jpeg)
November 12, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Good news! Training data - the #1 place people have identified where bias and toxicity gets imported into ML/AI models - is actually not important at all! So relieved the tech guys let us know that literally countless experts and studies can be ignored!
Reposted by Sarah Florini
I study tech’s capture of government data, and this is a new low even for me.
November 12, 2025 at 9:25 PM
I study tech’s capture of government data, and this is a new low even for me.
This seems bad. Bankrupting the folks who provide some of the core infrastructure of the internet seems bad.
While AI companies are allowed to slurp everything they want, Quad9 warns that legal fees are drowning DNS resolvers, which are now being targeted by copyright owners to enforce blocks on piracy sites
quad9.net/news/blog/wh...
quad9.net/news/blog/wh...
Quad9 | A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy
A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy
quad9.net
November 10, 2025 at 11:02 PM
This seems bad. Bankrupting the folks who provide some of the core infrastructure of the internet seems bad.
Reposted by Sarah Florini
Some thoughts about the power we have as academics and the impact of our choices around the framing of our work.
Just read a talk announcement about "AI" and K-12 education that looked like it maybe, maybe embedded a critical perspective but was still dressed up in the language of AI hype, presupposing both job market & education "reshaped by AI".
🧵>>
🧵>>
November 10, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Some thoughts about the power we have as academics and the impact of our choices around the framing of our work.
It’s just paying rent, but you’re responsible for maintaining and fixing everything.
A 50 year mortgage is a house subscription because you’ll never own it.
November 10, 2025 at 6:30 PM
It’s just paying rent, but you’re responsible for maintaining and fixing everything.
I don’t think the Dems have any strategy here. Just that cancelled flights affected them and their donors. But I am very curious to see what Johnson is going to do when this officially gets out of the Senate.
November 10, 2025 at 6:28 AM
I don’t think the Dems have any strategy here. Just that cancelled flights affected them and their donors. But I am very curious to see what Johnson is going to do when this officially gets out of the Senate.
I need to just go a head an log off of here for the sake of my blood pressure.
November 10, 2025 at 1:20 AM
I need to just go a head an log off of here for the sake of my blood pressure.
These tech guys really read all dystopian sci-fi as a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale.
Armstrong said he “envisioned ‘the IVF clinic of the future’ powered by a ‘Gattaca stack’ of technologies—a reference to the 1997 movie depicting a dystopian eugenic future—combining embryo editing and genetic screening.”
Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned. Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway.
Silicon Valley startups are pushing the boundaries of reproductive genetics, hoping to prevent diseases as well as improve chances for a high IQ and other traits.
www.wsj.com
November 10, 2025 at 1:04 AM
These tech guys really read all dystopian sci-fi as a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale.
The Dems shouldn't cave. But, if they do, then Mike Johnson will have to bring the House back to vote & be forced to swear in AZ Rep Grijalva (who has said she will be the final vote needed to force a vote about releasing the Epstein files). Or he will have to single-handedly continue the shutdown.
November 10, 2025 at 12:52 AM
The Dems shouldn't cave. But, if they do, then Mike Johnson will have to bring the House back to vote & be forced to swear in AZ Rep Grijalva (who has said she will be the final vote needed to force a vote about releasing the Epstein files). Or he will have to single-handedly continue the shutdown.