Michael Black
I teach writing and study the history of computing.
https://mblack.us
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- Reposted by Michael BlackDon't make me point to the "Every SaaS company is getting smoked, regardless of how much AI they deployed" sign again
- Reposted by Michael Black‘Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition… We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.’ arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
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- Reposted by Michael Black"All Smoke And Mirrors" - Square Localisation Veteran Thinks History Is Repeating Itself With AI.
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- Reposted by Michael Black"Students must learn to critically evaluate AI output" Have you seen common arguments for AI usage in schools? We collected some of the ones we see most often, and counter-points to them. Did we miss any? www.aicaution.ca/common-argum...
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- Reposted by Michael BlackI know all of the new information released in the Epstein documents is overwhelming. However, please consider that you don’t need to respond to everything people say right now with a picture or story or reference to it. Rape and child molestation and beatings and drugs are sensitive concepts
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- Reposted by Michael BlackThey come up with these weird ideas, all to capture more data and prove that workers are an enemy of profit when workers ARE profit. Just weirdos. Shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near basic needs or civic services.
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- Reposted by Michael BlackGood. A stupid car that legitimized a South African racist and makes me carsick
- Reposted by Michael BlackThere is money for "education" if and only if that money is being directly funneled to corporations. Anything involving actual learning, however, well there's no magic money tree
- BREAKING: Free AI training will be offered to every adult in the UK, with short courses to teach people how to use simple AI tools effectively in the workplace. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall tells #BBCBreakfast about the scheme
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- Reposted by Michael BlackCan’t literacy ourselves out of this one, I’m afraid.
- Reposted by Michael BlackHow Businesses Are Manipulating ChatGPT Results You’ve long heard about search engine optimization. Companies are now spending big on generative engine optimization. my latest for @wsj.com 🎁🔗 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-w...
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- Reposted by Michael BlackMicrosoft and Blackrock have "have largely given up on organic adoption [of AI] by consumers. They have moved on to a new dream of forced adoption mandated by government and managerial coercion." Fascinating piece here on what Davos can teach us about the AI industry by @mattseybold.bsky.social
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- A look into how AI in the workplace is going, courtesy of Ask a Manager.
- Reposted by Michael BlackSo which politician is calling for the dismantling of the probably illegal database that ice & this government is collecting biometric data of protesters?
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- Reposted by Michael BlackYou could actually structure your moral code around the idea that law enforcement doesn't exist to execute people. You don't have to create perfect victim narratives, you can just refuse to accept that the state gets to kill people.
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- Reposted by Michael BlackGotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.
- Everything US politicians accused the app's Chinese owners of doing are things that Meta and X are doing (and, in the case of the former, have been doing for a long time). “My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda”
- Reposted by Michael BlackYES THAT'S WHAT MANY OF US HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR YEARS AND THATS WHY WE DON'T USE IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
- Amazing sob story: "ChatGPT deleted all the work I hadn't done" www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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- Reposted by Michael BlackFor @msnownews.bsky.social, I wrote an article about how ICE Watch is grounded in sociological theories of violence prevention. The reality is that most men will only commit public violence in extremely specific scenarios and ICE Watch disrupts the conditions necessary for escalation.
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- When doing permissions for Transparent Designs, I had a really great exchange with someone from IBM who not only gave me permission but went to THEIR archives and sent me a higher quality, cleaner scan than I would have been able to make myself.
- Meanwhile, another tech company that had an a semi-automated system gave me a flat no with no explanation. Another with a semi-automated system did eventually reach a person who seemed to have no idea what I was asking about.
- A third-party publisher with an automated system sent me an form generated email saying they wanted thousands of dollars for a hand-drawn diagram from a 40 year old textbook.
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View full threadAll of these exchanges had various impacts on the final manuscript. In some cases, I added in depth descriptions (and had to cut other things to stay under my word count). In other cases, I cut the discussions of the visuals entirely.
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- Reposted by Michael Black*posting on twitter* oh ho, I’ve made a wry observation. Better make sure a bunch of pedophiles see it
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- Reposted by Michael BlackRemembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.
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- I got some pushback a couple of years ago for suggesting there's a lot of people with terrible politics who are big proponents of open source. I'm not saying there's a correlation (I like open source, and it does a lot good things!), but we should go back and take a closer look at their motivations.
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