Historian of technology & labor. Professor now, sysadmin before. Tells dad jokes (sorry). Find me on the other sites too.
In between
Joined October 2011
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Mar Hicks retweeted
“Too often, artificial intelligence is presented as an all-powerful solution to our problems, a scalable replacement for people.”
In a world of AI Overviews, Wikipedia usage declines. But the real loss may be far more existential than website traffic. buff.ly/gb8Qz87
Mar Hicks retweeted
And honestly, this whole project of extracting & strip mining expertise so more power can be centralized in the hands of corporations who already have too much—and then giving every working stiff with a phone a little taste of the grift—is meant to lead to exactly this.
Mar Hicks retweeted
The robot boss in everyone’s pocket may not be right, but will always be trusted by the person trying to use its veneer of automated authority to get the upper hand.
Mar Hicks retweeted
“As part of our new union contract, Current Affairs recently adopted one of the strictest anti-AI policies in the publishing industry. No text that is AI-generated may be published in our magazine. No AI-generated art may be used as a Current Affairs illustration.”
Excellent statement!
Why We’re Banning AI currentaffairs.org/news/why-…
Mar Hicks retweeted
Quest Diagnostics has been hacked. Patient data was exposed. They serve roughly half of U.S. hospitals and physicians. Investigation ongoing.
Mar Hicks retweeted
No one believes weather models and protein predictors are conscious. It’s because they generate first-person narrative prose and were designed to replace customer service workers.
Too many people are getting swept along with the sci-fi narrative I think. AI agents can be wildly capable but also remarkably dumb. And of course these companies have been training them to execute cyber tasks no matter what. The reality of how they misbehave is actually more interesting that the sci-fi tropes.
Mar Hicks retweeted
70% of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up. He rules. theatlantic.com/technology/2…
Mar Hicks retweeted
wrote about "Black October," the PHP vulnerability, and the AI-fueled dread and panic I'm seeing among almost all of the cybersecurity experts I've ever known:
404media.co/php2shell-black-…
When the allergen source is directly in front of the fan because he likes how it feels🫠
ALT Small black rabbit in front of the fans of an air filter
Mar Hicks retweeted
Voters who Googled how to donate to Talarico got an AI answer that led them to give to someone else.
A network of fake news sites seeded messaging about state and local candidates that AI answers picked up on.
My story on how the AI midterms are going: theatlantic.com/technology/2…
Mar Hicks retweeted
Just had a meeting with the Dean of my Faculty alongside the Head of Employee Relations... Apparently I am under official investigation for writing a blog about how bad universities are at marketing. You literally couldn't make this stuff up.
Mar Hicks retweeted
Exactly. We have companies that have unleashed malware and viruses world wide, whose CEOs should be arrested and prosecuted, who have somehow been able to change this crime into a marketing gimmick instead.
If you’re at the Society for the History of Technology virtual conference tomorrow come see our panel on updating “Kranzberg’s Laws” for the present day. It’s at 8:30am though, unfortch.
Mar Hicks retweeted
"Generating a paper-shaped artifact is not equivalent to producing a well-rounded and useful scientific contribution. The ability to produce more doesn’t tell us if we’re learning more, or if the conclusions we draw are justified." @mariyaivasileva mariya.fyi/posts/stranger-in…
We do the reverse because the purpose of these systems is to crush people into doing what they’re told, not to be productive or happy.
Mar Hicks retweeted
The solution to this that our middle school came up with was punish the 12-year-olds who were given access to laptops and wifi all day. That should fix it.
This is an incredible project: NBC News asked parents to check their kids' YouTube history during school hours — and the results show kids are spending huge chunks of the day watching videos that have nothing to do with learning
nbcnews.com/specials/hooked-…
Mar Hicks retweeted
“Name: “That’s AI!”
Age: Brand new.
Appearance: Primary schools everywhere.
What’s AI? It’s just a thing the kids are saying now: “That’s AI!” or “That’s so AI!”
But what is? Something inauthentic, unbelievable or rubbish.”
#TheKidsAreAlright
theguardian.com/society/2026…
Mar Hicks retweeted
Almost nobody worries that AlphaFold "might be conscious. That’s because AlphaFold predicts protein structures, whereas LLMs ‘talk’ to us. The compelling illusion of consciousness created by linguistic fluency just isn’t there for AlphaFold" @anilseth & al
nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
