Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)
Thinking about content moderation, equity, machine learning, and natural language processing.
Now: Chancellor's Fellow (~Asst. Prof) @technomoralfutures.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social
Past: MBZUAI, SFU, Uni of. {Sheffield, CPH}
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)I am assembling resources for @aial.ie to mitigate/reduce risks (due to our research) from potential: 1)retaliation, defamation lawsuit etc for work on politically charged topics 2)emotional harm from dealing with sensitive issues (CSAM, hate, etc) know of any helpful resources? pls share/repost
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The CTMF brings together philosophers, technologists, policymakers & researchers to tackle one of the defining questions of our time: How can we build technologies that truly serve human flourishing? This video captures the heart of that mission & the voices of those shaping it ▶️ edin.ac/4ai5OiC
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Can’t decide whether my favourite aspect of gender critical journalists’ commitment to free speech is their litigiousness, their abuse of power to blacklist trans writers and spike pieces by trans (any topic) and pro trans writers (anything inclusive) or their complete capture of literary editors
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)yeah, just out of interest, how many people choose the pen on the right for real work or art? See a lot of them in professional workplaces, do you?
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)“Safety experts and tech critics have long condemned the Ring devices for security risks and privacy violations, not to mention their role in building the largest civilian surveillance network in US history.”
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...
- This is a pretty common mistake I see in prospective students reaching out. The assumption is that polished prose is good prose and that unpolished prose is bad. Both are wrong. When you write an application / cold email to faculty, we care more about you and what you say than polish.
- Above anything else, we’re looking for curiosity, passion, interest, personality. Almost no one is a good writer when they join. I can teach you how to write well but can’t teach you to care enough about what you’re doing to actually do it.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)I have some bad news. One, if you need to use ChatGPT for your graduate application letter, you are not ready for graduate school. Two, no, not "everyone is doing it" and those who don't do it aren't "losing out." ChatGPT is not an advantage.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Leadership teams at the New York Times and Washington Post are captured. If you want to stop fascist military aggression in 2026, you can't go to accommodationist or outright fascist press. Better off taking your information to ProPublica, Marisa Kabas or some other independent outfit.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)You can’t report illegal acts because you don’t want to compromise them being carried out is an interesting take, if true
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The New York Times has just confirmed that 40 civilians died in President Trump's invasion. This is the aftermath in one area
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The mayor of New York City is doing more than the senate and house minority leaders
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Venezuela’s Supreme Court has ordered that Vice President Delcy Rodriguez assume and exercise all powers and duties inherent to the position of President in order to guarantee the continuity of government and defence of the nation.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)this kinda stuff is prohibited in the EU thanks to all the "red tape" that's "slowing down innovation" that big tech constantly complains about
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Call your Senators and your Congressperson. Tell them EXACTLY how you feel about what our military and the executive branch are doing in Venezuela.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Israel is a rogue apartheid state committing genocide. Palestine WILL be free. Happy New Year! 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Begum may be 'distasteful', but it is pretty clear she was a victim of grooming and trafficking. The decision to make her defacto stateless is also clearly incompatibile with the principles of international law. Labour doubling down doesn't change that it is bad. 1/2 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
- Oh this is sad. Impossible to rank but: Nirvana unplugged Aha take on me Paul Simon Call me Al Lauren Hill Doo Wop (That Thing)
- So many incredible performances and videos though. Natalia imbruglias torn is also up there for me.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Microplastics are here to stay; that's why we need to eat them responsibly in the classroom
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)are you disgruntled by the current safety evaluation landscape? curious about what conceptual clarity, methodological soundness and rigour in AI evaluation might look like? if so, consider coming to dublin and doing a phd with me apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)It is EXHAUSTING not only being made responsible for coming up with new kinds of assignments for our students; it's also tedious reading op-eds that suggest the core problem is a crisis in teaching. But, as Chris and I lay out here, this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning.
- "We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The most impressive thing about Bari is her ability to violate ethical principles while indignantly claiming to defend them.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)I understand your point, although I believe the main issue with all these terms is that they are stuck in binary thinking which itself is a product of the ‘enlightened’ thinking that led to colonialism
- I really dislike the term "majority world". Like I hate hate it. I think it tries to do something nice but really does something insidious and much worse than many of the other terms. It reflects accurately that colonisers were always the few, but it betrays a lot for that mission.
- It implies some sort of kinship or solidarity, the minority versus the majority, with each being cohesive blocks. Which obviously we know we are not. Taking from my own contexts, it would mean that India and Pakistan would be in solidarity with each other. Yet we are so clearly not.
- This would not particularly be an issue if the term was aspirational, but I don't see it used in an aspirational sense of solidarity building, just see it as a flattening of diverse, interesting, and exciting cultures/peoples (both as insiders and outsiders to a given culture/people).
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View full threadBy making things pretty and palatable we lose something important of the ugliness that is so central to how some countries are viewed–and engaged with–as lesser. Perhaps we need new language because the language we have adopted right now is just unhelpful in so many ways. /rant
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)thanks for the question william b fuckley. if some rando deployed an AI chatbot into a Discord channel we wouldn't cover it. this is an Anthropic exec, and here's what he said in his justification to push Claude into this Discord for gay gamers: read now: www.404media.co/anthropic-ex...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Encryption isn't hostile. It's a bedrock of our cybersecurity 🔐 The UK's national security laws join a long line of attempts to frame encrypted messaging as something to be broken into pieces. Without it, we're more open to threats from hackers and criminals. www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-priv...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Announcements for #FAccT2026! 📣 #FAccT2026 will be on June 27-30 at the Hotel Bonaventure in Montréal! Keep reading for important information about submitting papers! ⬇️ 1/n
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)New preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence" Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)"We live in hell, and the rapacious need for growth in every industry, unrelenting, forever and ever, is decimating all of our institutions and our way of life." Amanda Dobbins, on fire
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Andy Guess (Politics/SPIA), Brandon Stewart (Sociology), and me (CS). puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app... Please apply before Sunday, the 13th of December!
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)“School officials have created a Microsoft Copilot prompt to review course descriptions with an eye toward avoiding ‘advocacy-oriented or prescriptive terms.’” Terms: “dismantling, decolonizing, interrogating, challenging, centering, combating, liberation, resistance, activism, justice oriented”
- Recently read some dumb papers, but lack time to respond to them myself. So DM me if you want to write with me about: - How AI does not become decolonial by just using LoRA, or - How saying that something is AI generated is not a slur Before you ask, yes, people have really made both claims.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)CNN political commentator Ana Navarro called FIFA President Gianni Infantino giving President Donald Trump a "peace prize" an attempt at "sucking up" to Trump and compared it to a parent giving a child a toy phone. Read more about the Fifa Peace Prize here: cnn.it/4rGBgOd
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪
- I finally got around to reading this. You should read it too. "We are exporting the very labor of teaching and learning—the slow work of wrestling with ideas, the enduring of discomfort, doubt and confusion, the struggle of finding one’s own voice." www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)microsoft promised to "empower every user" and google to "revolutionise knowledge and technological innovation" but in reality what they have given us is an invasive surveillance dystopian nightmare hard to escape www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)words, what do they mean www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Reminder that In the 1990s Farage sought the backing of the disgraced former Conservative MP and notorious racist Enoch Powell and twice asked him to stand as a candidate for UKIP. www.theguardian.com/politics/201...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Anders Breivik's fairy godmother. The fact that she is still in paid employment after inspiring him to mass murder a load of kids is pretty disgusting.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)She has always been utterly grim. Apart from Israel, she was a big Wakefield supporter. She published loads of stuff denying climate change. And thoroughly opposed gay rights. It's always been incredibly disappointing she continues to have a job and audience
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)The Overton Window has shifted and increasingly wanton overt bigotry and evil are mainstream. Don’t accept it. Fight and defy people like this. www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-colu...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)“Mother Fletcher carried 111 years of truth, resilience, and grace and was a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we must still go”
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)This government has not taken a single meaningful step to tackle the causes of the horrendous inefficiencies in the criminal justice system, instead rushing to dismantle trial by jury. Legal professionals have offered numerous alternatives to address the backlog. Ministers are not listening.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Sounds about reich
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Important piece. The many worrying human impacts come through very strongly here. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Local (separate from individual, which are also important) actions have the potential to inspire broader action, esp. among institutions. So: -Demand better options/behavior from our vendors -Judicious vs. regular AI use -Host communities of learning -Host local models -Seek community input!
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)(Public) library usage is actually pretty strong, thanks in part to our ability to adapt to changing tech landscape! I think the real challenge is how do we spin up in-house expertise though, since we've outsourced a lot of our tech. Most lib'ns are not technologists, and reskilling is hard.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)A: To be fair, libraries have a strong track record of coexisting and even using our ostensible replacements (google and search, e-books and print media, wikipedia and reference questions, zoom and public meeting spaces), so *existentially* I'm not nervous. Not about THAT, anyhow. But/And...
- Finally! The European Union is prioritising the ease of access to personal and private data for large tech companies! So good that the EU politicians are starting to take their role as representatives of tech companies' interest more seriously than their side hustle of representing their people.
- 📰 "Privacy activists say proposed changes to Europe's landmark #privacy law, including making it easier for #BigTech to harvest Europeans' personal data for #AI training, would flout #EU case law and gut the legislation." Read the full article 👉 www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
- It's absolutely fucking insane that we have to keep telling scientists that offloading scientific tasks to a probabilistic machine is bad scientific conduct.
- Reposted by Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them)Biden knew that Israel was committing crimes against humanity in Gaza and then decided to keep US commitments to Israel, shortly before handing it over to Trump www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-...
