Will Douglas Heaven
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willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
Will Douglas Heaven
@willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
2.4K followers 97 following 50 posts
Senior AI Editor at MIT Technology Review / Signal: strawbilly.69
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Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
stejormur.bsky.social
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
dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social 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
July 28, 2025 at 6:56 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
word of the year pls
kmfao.bsky.social Dracula Enthusiast @kmfao.bsky.social · Jul 24
"SLOPPER" I'm losing my mind
July 28, 2025 at 7:31 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
I had some fun speaking at #sxswlondon this week. Video for FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AI should be coming soon!
June 5, 2025 at 9:37 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
"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
June 4, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
mtrc.bsky.social
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
May 9, 2025 at 3:41 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
you need to watch these clips
zeteo.com 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...
June 4, 2025 at 6:07 AM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
niallfirth.bsky.social
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
April 23, 2025 at 11:45 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
Good breakdown on tariffs
dieworkwear.bsky.social 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. 🧵
A photo of a bunch of Nike shoes.
April 12, 2025 at 5:45 AM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
ruchowdh.bsky.social
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.
April 5, 2025 at 12:12 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
I think Kevin Roose needs to talk to more people outside San Francisco www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/t...
March 14, 2025 at 11:33 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
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
March 14, 2025 at 8:37 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
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
maxread.info 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.
March 7, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
mathonan.com
AGI is whatever we made it to be
March 5, 2025 at 9:02 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
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
March 6, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
mcuban.bsky.social
The Revolution will be AI-icized
February 24, 2025 at 5:19 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
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
February 21, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
mtrc.bsky.social
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.
martinpi.bsky.social 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.
February 11, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
keefstuart.bsky.social
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
February 12, 2025 at 1:10 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
Blech
February 13, 2025 at 10:37 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
OpenAI has put out new guidelines for its models. The updated spec now "explicitly embraces intellectual freedom no matter how challenging or controversial a topic may be." model-spec.openai.com/2025-02-12.h...
OpenAI Model Spec
The Model Spec specifies desired behavior for the models underlying OpenAI's products (including our APIs).
model-spec.openai.com
February 13, 2025 at 10:36 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
“Waste is anything that the person who’s speaking thinks is not a good use of government money.”

Really good explainer: @jamesodonnell.bsky.social talks to the people who wrote the spending guide that Musk is now misinterpreting.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/07/1...
These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere’s agenda
Past government reports on improper spending are having a moment with Musk’s followers. What do they show?
www.technologyreview.com
February 8, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Will Douglas Heaven
scifri.bsky.social
The Chinese AI company DeepSeek surprised observers with its efficient and low-cost model, DeepSeek-R1.

@willdouglasheaven.bsky.social, editor for AI @technologyreview.com‬, joins us to discuss the new DeepSeek systems and what might lie ahead for AI.
How DeepSeek’s AI Compares To Established Models
The Chinese AI company startled industry observers with an efficient new system. But how does it compare with the leading tech?
buff.ly
February 7, 2025 at 8:07 PM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
Yes! slate.com/technology/2...
For the Love of God, Stop Profiling This Couple!
The couple wants the world to have more babies. This prompts the question: Who the hell cares?
slate.com
February 8, 2025 at 11:06 AM
willdouglasheaven.bsky.social
Anyone out there with knowledge about how software gets installed across US govt agencies (process, authorization etc) free to answer a couple of questions? DM or signal: strawbilly.69
February 6, 2025 at 1:34 PM