Joanna Bryson

@j2bryson.bsky.social

Professor of Ethics & Technology @ Hertie School, Berlin. Interests: Artificial & Natural Intelligence; Behavioural Ecology; Cooperation; Digital Governance. Social media policy: https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2024/10/guidance-to-my-social-media.html

@giuliomattioli.bsky.socialReposted by @j2bryson.bsky.social

The story of EU regulations to reduce emissions from passenger cars is full of ridiculous loopholes (I've just finished writing a report about it) But this takes the cake 🙈

Jaap Burger@jaapburger.eu

Car manufacturers are no longer obliged to use green steel as redemption for combustion-engine cars, is the German-France proposal. Instead, rail (!!) will have to compensate!

It was important to me that we also use this opportunity to make progress on climate and industrial policy for the steel industry. The steel industry is a key sector for the successful transition of our industry towards climate neutrality. There should be incentives to ensure that cars are built using climate-friendly green steel in future. Furthermore, we want to promote the use of green and recycled steel at national level through public procurement. Over the next few years, the railways in Germany will be laying new tracks on a large scale. We will ensure that a growing proportion of these tracks are made from green and recycled steel. This brings significant added value for the climate and helps the industry with its transition!"
@j2bryson.bsky.social

I guess it could also just be about typical #antitrust lock in; why pay yet more for other firms' tokens when you get copilot "free" with your office software... But still, some of the sectors addressed by #cyborgWorkers make enough money individuals have their own licenses to better products…

@j2bryson.bsky.social

I wouldn't say that my post ignores that; I carefully talk about how you CAN use it ethically. Did you read the post before replying? Also, I minimise my use of genAI use, I don't ask it to summarise, so try to yourself keep your reply as brief as possible in respect of all of our time?

@j2bryson.bsky.social

1) The US & former West Europe (⊂ EU) are almost perfectly matched in GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP), including in rate of loss of global share (fig 1). 2) The EEA is presently deriving more market capitalisation valuation from our AI patents than China is (fig 3).

@j2bryson.bsky.social

A colleague stepped out of #cyborgWorkers for a Google talk to the EP. Google said Europe was falling behind because it wasn't using AI and this was because women are afraid of AI. This is truly evil – even the "falling behind" part is false! A reminder of our new data (short thread) #AIEthics

@j2bryson.bsky.social

I'm glad they moved me, it was a bigger audience yesterday. A Croatian union organiser said he noticed I was the only one without AI in my slides, I said "except for that one" – I'd had to go by it quickly so I guess he missed the conspicuous label & the genAI fail.

gemini: A 1984 style sign that says Capital is Labour projected over Brussels. Drawing as per a 1940s pulp fiction book cover. (I actually also had to prompt it for more ethnic & gender diversity :-/ but I didn't fix that the sign says "capital is // is labour") If I write software that doubles teachers’ effectiveness, nothing in that says whether we have twice as good of schools, or half as many teachers.
@j2bryson.bsky.social

Never put #genAI into your direct operations stream. Use it for preparation, "thinking" "planning", but not for critical operations or else you are making yourself hostage not only to its providers but all the below pressures.

#BruceSterling@bruces.bsky.social

*I'm wondering if we're in for yet another "AI Winter" *A harsh, lasting, fossil-fuel crisis, an increasingly fierce electronic trade-war. Even data-center hot-war, with bombings and sabotage. The world in which AI operates has taken a turn for the bad

@patrickesavage.bsky.socialReposted by @j2bryson.bsky.social

I'm considering adapting this response for a coauthored publication. If you are (or know of) an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, literary scholar, or philosopher interested in joining me (a musicologist) on such a collaboration, please get in touch!

Pat Savage@patrickesavage.bsky.social

The Vanderbilt Report data do not remotely support their conclusions of "deterioration in scholarly standards" in the humanities, and should be corrected or retracted. (My updated preprint now reflects analysis of data from belatedly published Vanderbilt sub-reports: doi.org/10.31234/osf...)

The Vanderbilt Report’s critique of humanistic scholarship is itself bad scholarship and should be corrected or retracted Patrick E. Savage [This version dated October 15, 2026] Abstract: Vanderbilt University’s “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” (Boghossian et al., June 25, 2026) argued that humanistic scholarship has experienced “a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria”. The initial (August 2026) version of my critique emphasised that these conclusions were primarily based on unpublished, unverifiable data. Now that most of the data underlying the report (largely from unvalidated Large Language Model [LLM] categorisations) have been belatedly published, I show that these data do not support the report’s main claims. I briefly review the main data from each published disciplinary sub-report (music studies, anthropology, sociology, history, literary studies). Overall, there is an utterly indefensible mismatch between the actual empirical data (e.g., decreases in the ratio of Western classical music vs. all other music studied) and Boghossian et al.’s conclusions of an overall “deterioration in scholarly standards”. While I agree with the authors that critical evaluation of the quality of academic scholarship is urgently needed in today’s global political climate, the report’s main conclusions are not remotely justified by their data and are likely to hinder rather than facilitate informed debate. I recommend Boghossian et al.’s report be corrected or retracted to resolve these issues. Figure 2. Key data provided from each of the published disciplinary reports published do not demonstrate “a deterioration in scholarly standards”. A) History (Fleming & Wilentz, 2026), B) Literary Studies (Appiah, 2026), C) Sociology (Rubin, 2026), D) Anthropology (Henrich, 2026), E) Music Studies (Fine & Morrison, 2026). Y-axes have been adapted for clarity.
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