Joanna Bryson
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j2bryson.bsky.social
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 .. more

Joanna Joy Bryson is professor at Hertie School in Berlin. She works on Artificial Intelligence, ethics and collaborative cognition. She has been a British citizen since 2007.

Source: Wikipedia
Computer science 31%
Neuroscience 25%
Pinned
thread. correct numbers and data backing them come later, but this is the thrust.
One thing I learned last week was that if you don’t count the BS market capitalisation bubble of 7 “AI” firms, the US economy as measured by the s&p 500 didn’t go up 13% last year; it went down 7%.

The EU may be a larger economy already. We need to get our own O2 mask on, then start helping others.
Guess why there was no reporting of AI revenue?

“Spirituality” particularly as manifest in publicly professed belief in absurdities (that mandate sacrificed time or other resources) then may always have been a type of populism — an emotional investment in a community. As often noted, everyone is atheist about most available gods.

At least in Europe, iirc church attendance declined with the rise of welfare; apparently community support is a major motivator for community participation. Polarisation seems to be a redirection of community attention/identity to smaller but often more costly to join identities @alondra.bsky.social

Fight or flight?

If you look at how much people in various parts of the world achieve with various resources and numbers of people, you know that demographic panics in either direction are not the greatest concerns. Rather sustainability, human and particularly minority rights, productivity, equity, and rule of law.

cf www.dw.com/en/australia... As many have observed, we're watching a "natural experiment" – we'll now find out whether social media helps more young people than it hurts. Isolated examples of tragedy are never data of overall impacts. #SocialMediaBan (interesting #tag!) #AIEthics #digitalGovernance
Australia social media ban: Children feel isolated, ignored – DW – 12/09/2025
The world is watching as Australia becomes the first country to ban under-16s from social media. Adults support it but children consider the ban an attack on their rights, which will isolate some of t...
www.dw.com

Australia’s law was heavily criticised by the Council of Europe at the AI and Human Rights meeting. While banning devices from bedrooms at night—or during classes—I can understand, cutting off communication between people while allowing it with #genAI I cannot.

#AIEthics
www.dw.com/en/german-mi...
German minister sees 'merit' to social media ban for teens – DW – 12/26/2025
Looking into age restrictions on social media is "more than justified," Germany's Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger told the dpa news agency, commenting on Australia banning the platforms for childr...
www.dw.com

Not sure all the scifi references help the #aiethics cause (except by keeping it below the radar?) but interesting for a lot of reasons. cc @hertiesecurity.bsky.social #digitalGovernance
Taiwan🇹🇼 & Japan🇯🇵 are eyeing an East Asian AI governance sensation.✨

Local Kamis, as promoted in the 6-Pack of Care, can put Skynet & Terminator AI fears to bed — forever!🕊️

▶️ 6pack.care

My gratitude to the Diet delegation for the delicious dialogue.🙏

#LLAP🖖

[Communism] is, I would say at once, the only
possible Government in #russia at the
present time. It is the only idea, it
supplies the only solidarity, left in Russia.

But it is a secondary fact. The dominant
fact for the Western reader, the threatening
and […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

Someone told me they'd seen a Chinese warehouse deploying humanoid robots. I can't think of an economically viable reason to do that except to practice for military applications.

on too many panels. I wanted to be clear that this wasn't random antiwoman vandalism so did it logged in and with a clear comment, then got tagged for editing my own page (I deleted 4 words!) so I then complained on relevant notice boards / discussion meta organisation pages and the tag got removed.

@togelius.bsky.social I may have been one of the people who got the caveat about being able to delete false things about you in place. I deleted people saying I had written the LEGO Mindstorms software (I had only done R&D for the product) after being embarrassed to be introduced that way...

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

I built a new Python CLI tool called claude-code-transcripts that can create nice readable HTML versions of your Claude Code sessions, both local and pulled from Claude Code for web, and makes it easy to publish them online too https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/25/claude-code-transcripts/
A new way to extract detailed transcripts from Claude Code
I’ve released claude-code-transcripts, a new Python CLI tool for converting Claude Code transcripts to detailed HTML pages that provide a better interface for understanding what Claude Code has done than …
simonwillison.net

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

Taiwan🇹🇼 & Japan🇯🇵 are eyeing an East Asian AI governance sensation.✨

Local Kamis, as promoted in the 6-Pack of Care, can put Skynet & Terminator AI fears to bed — forever!🕊️

▶️ 6pack.care

My gratitude to the Diet delegation for the delicious dialogue.🙏

#LLAP🖖

Maybe the original sin was creating sin in the first place and god was really atoning for that and our books are just wrong.

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

"Fragile are the ⁠minds and lives ​of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness ‌of what is asked of ‌them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths," the pope added.

Pope Leo decries suffering in Gaza in […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name.

"These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."

Monday.

A transatlantic showdown over tech policy (as opposed to, say, net zero) could actually have a unifying & galvanising political effect within the EU. The union’s digital regulations are broadly popular and many voters actually want more, not fewer, controls on Big Tech.

yougov.co.uk/technology/a...

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

Statement EU Commission on U.S. decision to impose travel restrictions on certain EU individuals:

"The EU is an open, rules-based single market, with the sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values and international commitments."

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

peace on earth good will to – cars???

So Chinese generals in at least the 1980s new their post-Nürnberg obligations to question orders.

This reminds me of a South Korean general in an online conference on liberal democracy who quoted at length from Wendt's "Social Theory of International Affairs" after I'd mentioned it in a talk.
Counterpoint: Thierry Breton's 2024 letter to Elon Musk suggesting that EU rules should interfere with an American citizen interviewing a former American president vying for election in America was *completely insane*.

The visa ban is obviously MAGA stupidity, but... yeah. The letter was bonkers.

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

Reposted by Joanna Bryson

For years, TNR experts like @nateschenkkan.bsky.social have long warned that immigration policy is key to confronting transnational repression. This piece shows how host states are now contributing to the repression of Uyghur exiles and diaspora communities. #TNR
www.economist.com/china/2025/1...
Does anyone still want to help the Uyghurs?
Chinese pressure and migration backlashes may result in many being sent back to China
www.economist.com
There is an unfortunate error in this newly published @globalchangebio.bsky.social paper.

The caption for this image reads "upper panel with dragon icon symbolising all tetrapod" but this is incorrect. That is either a wyvern (with two wings and two legs) or it is not a tetrapod (6 limbs).
One of the Europeans "sanctioned" received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany's highest recognition of work for the common good, by the country's president in October.
US bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online
The State Department is barring five Europeans it accuses of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
apnews.com
In a major escalation against the EU, alongside civil society representatives the Trump Administration sanctions former Commissioner Breton for work he did in official capacity ↘️ www.state.gov/releases/off...
Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship-Industrial Complex - United States Department of State
The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose....
www.state.gov