Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Thomas [redacted] DO

@tom.medsky.social

Anyone who leaves twitter permanently this week because they don't want to be part of that grok nonsense gets a bunny.

Middle aged Asian male with a grey sweatshirt and side parted dark hair. He is holding up a large dark brown lop eared bunny.

January 2, 2026 at 10:20 PM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Carl T. Bergstrom

@carlbergstrom.com

3. This is not the first time around; journalists should not still be making this mistake. We went through this before last summer when headlines claimed that Grok "apologized" for its whole Hilter thing.

In the words of Joey Swole: Do better.

/fin

So can an LLM apologize?

For a speech act to be meaningful, the speaker must be sincere and must be the type of agent that is capable of performing such an act. If one third grader on the playground taps another on the shoulder with a stick and says "I dub thee Sir Fartalot", no actual title has been bequeathed. The act was neither sincere, nor performed by one authorized to confer knighthood.

In our view, LLMs are incapable of being sincere in issuing an apology. They don't have feelings of remorse, nor volition to do better in the future. Because they are not intentional agents, we would also argue that they are not the kinds of actors that can genuinely apologize. (Nevertheless, they do frequently apologize when called on their mistakes—and then repeat them after promising to do better.)

If an LLM can't apologize itself, can it apologize on our behalf? Might I enlist the help of an LLM to draft text for my own apology? Perhaps—but in passing off the machine's words as my own, I undermine the sincerity and authenticity of my apology.

January 3, 2026 at 12:22 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Carl T. Bergstrom

@carlbergstrom.com

2. We have a whole section on this in Chapter 14 of our online course thebullshitmachines.com.

The bottom line: an apology is a speech act, and a machine does not meet the felicity conditions (preparatory conditions and sincerity conditions, in particular) for the utterance to perform as intended.

Let's close by considering what it means to offer an apology. An apology is a speech act

. With speech acts, the point is not the novelty of the words but rather appropriateness of the circumstances in which they are used and the sincerity with which they are spoken. Here's Ted Chiang:

When someone says “I’m sorry” to you, it doesn’t matter that other people have said sorry in the past; it doesn’t matter that “I’m sorry” is a string of text that is statistically unremarkable. If someone is being sincere, their apology is valuable and meaningful, even though apologies have previously been uttered.
Ted Chiang (2024) Why AI isn't going to make art (2024). The New Yorker

January 3, 2026 at 12:19 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Carl T. Bergstrom

@carlbergstrom.com

1. Headlines everywhere today read "Grok apologizes."

This is bullshit. A chatbot is not something that can apologize.

Pretending otherwise is simple laundering these companies' bullshit about what AI is, while diffusing blame away from the human beings that developed and released this system.

LA Times: Elon Musk company bot apologizes

International Business Times: Grok Issues Apologies

The Hill: Musk's AI chatbot Grok apologizes

January 3, 2026 at 12:12 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Mark Ungrin

@mark-ungrin.bsky.social

The same goes for spreading airborne diseases like the flu, COVID, measles, bird flu etc.

Vaccines are important, but that issue has been badly mishandled for years - can we at least get high quality ventilation and access to N95 respirators for everyone who wants them?

Who's afraid of clean air?

Mark Ungrin @mark-ungrin.bsky.social · 10d

Policy on health is clearly broken - politicized, out of touch, reactive and slow. My recent keynote at the Canadian Biosafety Symposium took a big-picture look at how and why that's happening, and how we can turn things around.

Here's a general-audience version, recorded at the Deep River library.

Inquiring Minds 03: Mark Ungrin - Science, Pseudoscience and Public Policy

YouTube video by Deep River Public Library

www.youtube.com

January 3, 2026 at 12:44 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

George Takei

@georgetakei.bsky.social

Many don't realize that the most vulnerable or immune compromised depend on the rest getting vaccinated properly to keep diseases from spreading out of control. It's not just “my body, my choice” when it comes to saving lives.

Screenshot of a NewsWire post on X displaying a headline stating that U.S. vaccination rates are declining and that no county in Idaho, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, or Wisconsin has reached kindergarten herd immunity. The headline cites The Washington Post and appears on a plain background without an accompanying photo.

January 2, 2026 at 10:12 PM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD

@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social

An interesting read, most especially if you can’t accept that SARS-CoV-2 was a natural spillover event.

I am pretty sure that @jimalwine.bsky.social wrote a piece about the increased tempo of pandemics at one point.

Review of 200 novel human viruses over a century a reminder that pathogen emergence isn’t rare

www.cidrap.umn.edu

January 3, 2026 at 1:12 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Ryan Marino, MD

@ryanmarino.bsky.social

You don’t hate ICE enough

✨brit✨ @britculpsapp.bsky.social · 12h

also — INCREDIBLY concerning that federal agencies are tagging a content creator harassing toddlers in posts such as these because the person they arrested is a somali man

not a dogwhistle — an airhorn

ICE
ICE Boston * @EROBoston •5h

On Jan. 1, ICE Boston arrested Hussein Hussein, a criminal alien from Somalia. Hussein was previously convicted for naturalization and passport fraud, resulting in his denaturalization. Hussein will be held in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
@nickshirleyy

January 3, 2026 at 2:05 AM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Tim Williams Art

@timwilliamsart.bsky.social

My late pop had Alzheimer's.

You don't get MULTIPLE cognitive tests in a relatively short amount of time unless something significant has happened or IS happening to you neurologically.

Trump, because he is actually a moron both pre & post this event(s), thinks these are I.Q. tests.

They aren't.

January 2, 2026 at 9:22 PM

Reposted by Adrian Egli

Jodie Troutman

@longtalljodie.com

CD Quest: You know I've found the kind of discs I'm looking for when there's a little disclaimer on the booklet explaining the virtues of the Compact Disc format to new consumers. The older the better, baby.

January 2, 2026 at 9:34 PM