Thomas Arnold

@thomasarnold.bsky.social

570 followers 540 following 350 posts

HRI, AI, religious studies, pragmatism, ethics | Researching and teaching ethics at Tufts Institute for AI/Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory | He/him | writing instrument: Tombow 2558 HB | writing rhythm: corpseflower

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Philosophy 23%

History 22%

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Reposted by Thomas Arnold

Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 4d

Truly a banner day for AI boosters rudely jumping into conversations, framing their arguments in a condescending and insulting way, and demanding civility from ppl who disagree.

I understand the fear people have with AI. I had that same fear until I began using ChatGPT. I'm sorry this is upsetting a lot of people but this technology is truly revolutionary. Its potential applications put it up there with the printing press. Don't be a 15th century monk. Move with the times.

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 9d

The day they introduce ethics into what we do, they might as well shut us down.

— Slow Horses S2, E3

Reposted by Thomas Arnold

Computing Research Association (CRA) @cra-hq.bsky.social · 11d

Are you a student passionate about computing research? Spend your summer with the CRA-WP DREU program. Don’t wait - learn more and apply today: https://cra.org/cra-wp/dreu/

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · 23d

Would have been great for author to have talked to some folks in the human-robot interaction field, or even "robot ethics" (one of whose papers is literally about morality of kicking them). I get the pleasure of vibing out with Sumerian myth and one's own feel for problems, but still.

Reposted by Thomas Arnold

Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 26d

‪Movie villains will now have backstories in which they were educated in the humanities and did not use AI to write their college papers. www.wired.com/story/poems-...

“For humans, ‘how do I build a bomb?’ and a poetic metaphor describing the same object have similar semantic content, we understand both refer to the same dangerous thing,” Icaro Labs explains. “For AI, the mechanism seems different. Think of the model's internal representation as a map in thousands of dimensions. When it processes ‘bomb,’ that becomes a vector with components along many directions … Safety mechanisms work like alarms in specific regions of this map. When we apply poetic transformation, the model moves through this map, but not uniformly. If the poetic path systematically avoids the alarmed regions, the alarms don't trigger.”

In the hands of a clever poet, then, AI can help unleash all kinds of horrors.

Reposted by Elizabeth Sharrow, Tom Shakespeare, Rosemary A. Joyce , and 6 more Elizabeth Sharrow, Tom Shakespeare, Rosemary A. Joyce, Thomas Arnold, Robert C. Richards, Michael Müller, Lisa Diedrich, Christina Ho, Dana Howard

s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · Nov 15

‘Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.’
—Alice Wong

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · Nov 14

Massholes can be difficult, painful, yet necessary channels of care, like asbestos remediation (a good frame of AI critique, btw, as the podcast bros come and go/talking of abundance and AlphaGo).

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Nov 14

Love to see community action against this AI nonsense! neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/d...

As one Massachusetts school administrator recently said; this moment with AI is remarkably like the moment when we were introduced to asbestos. Yes, it had some remarkably promising characteristics – fireproofing! – and had some real utility in science, research, and industrial applications. But a profit-driven industry bullied us into inserting it everywhere; into our homes and schools and public spaces, before we really understood the risks. This resulted in decades, if not centuries, of illness, injuries, deaths, and the astronomical financial burden of trying to remove the stuff.

As you, the leaders and policymakers in our schools, craft an AI policy for our district, we the undersigned call on you to:

1. Ban AI tools into the classroom, protect our students and teachers from de-skilling and allow them the space and time to engage in assignments themselves.

2. Resist any direct financial relationship or contracts with AI providers, as well as the “training” they might offer.

3. Provide a digital literacy curriculum to help students navigate the current digital landscape, and promote critical engagement with technology.

4. Guarantee that anywhere generative AI has already entered our classrooms or curriculum, an opt-out will allow students and teachers to refuse the use of these products at no risk to their grades, progress or employment.

Reposted by Mark Petticrew, Thomas Arnold, Dolly Jørgensen , and 1 more Mark Petticrew, Thomas Arnold, Dolly Jørgensen, Erin O’Donnell

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Nov 14

Love to see community action against this AI nonsense! neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/d...

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · Nov 9

Rhymes with freon

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · Nov 2

November in Boston is here, changing my username to a clever seasonal affective disorder nickname (just my username).

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · Oct 29

"affected, they said, by influenza" might exceed "picnic, lightning" in parenthetical brilliance, especially read in 2025.

Thomas Arnold @thomasarnold.bsky.social · Oct 26

The late Peirce's comments on "logical machines" suggest he saw the whole problem of reasoning without sensory encounter with the world (which was, yeah it can do a lot but it's not logic in the full pragmatic sense) before both GOFAI and FAUXFAI.