Jamie Pietruska
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jpietruska.bsky.social
Jamie Pietruska
@jpietruska.bsky.social
Historian | Forecasting, futures, risk, catastrophe, data | Author, Looking Forward: Prediction & Uncertainty in Modern America http://goo.gl/fwo6Hj | Assoc prof, Rutgers | C19/20 US culture, sci & tech, capitalism | Opinions my own | jamiepietruska.org
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/
Submit a Claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com
November 18, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Buried the lede: "(Premium users can also converse with Satan.)"
November 15, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
OVER A MILLION USERS

DISCUSS SUICIDE WITH CHATGPT

EVERY *WEEK*

what the fuck are we DOING here
Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.
I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved.

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
November 7, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
The Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset is back and now at @climatecentral.org!

Through the first half of 2025, there were 14 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, costing $101.4 billion. 1/2
www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...
October 22, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Publication day for Taylor's Version! I'm so happy for my baby and for all the work @hachetteus.bsky.social & @johnmurrays.bsky.social did to bring her out into the world. Consider an order here: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/steph...
Taylor’s Version
“With unfailing lucidity, empathy, and wit” (Greil Marcus), a preeminent Harvard professor and poetry expert explains the artistry—and the celebrity—...
www.hachettebookgroup.com
October 7, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Choose your next read/watch from the favorites of these brilliant thinkers on env. futures and futurity: @sgallini.bsky.social @jessicahurley.bsky.social @ceirr.bsky.social @scobrien.bsky.social @jpietruska.bsky.social Leida Fernández Prieto & Michael Rawson 🫶
September 11, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.
September 4, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
So much think-piecing and op-ed'ing about data centers. I wish folks knew that some scholars have been studying these things — as real estate, as geopolitical battlegrounds, as ecological disasters — for a decade+. Mél Hogan, Alix Johnson, Ingrid Burrington, Jen Holt, Patrick Brodie, et al
The making of critical data center studies - Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, Mél Hogan, 2025
In this article, the authors demonstrate how the data center has become a key site, object, and metaphor for interdisciplinary scholarship of the internet. Whil...
journals.sagepub.com
August 24, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
It looks at people’s Rate My Professor. 💀
AI Grader | Free Grade Predictor For Students
Get a grade estimate and targeted feedback before you submit. Grammarly’s AI Grader helps you revise with confidence.
www.grammarly.com
August 18, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
📢 The OAH has issued a Statement on the White House Review of the Smithsonian. Read the statement: ow.ly/hgLR50WGhfQ
August 14, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details:

LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

(This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
www.theatlantic.com
August 14, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
***Attention Historians***

Tenure-track job postings in History and History-adjacent fields for August 2025.

A thread.

I will update the thread over the course of the month.

1/
August 1, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Um...was ChatGPT used to write these "Guiding Principles"?! This is an embarrassment and yet another reason I am glad I am no longer a member of the AHA.
The AHA has published Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence in History Education, offering a disciplinary approach to AI that focuses on the specific needs and challenges of history educators. 🗃️
Guiding Principles for Artificial Intelligence in History Education
These 14 foundational principles are meant to assist educators and administrators in crafting AI policies suited to local circumstances and the specific needs of students.
www.historians.org
August 5, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
AI will write the papers to upload to the corporate upload dump machine which will use AI to grade the papers and upload them to AI language mining centers filled w/nonsense. Meanwhile the brains of students and teachers rot separately as they stare at AI memes and videos on their terrible phones.
“…faculty members will be able to click an icon that connects them with various AI features…, like a grading tool, a discussion-post summarizer… Canvas’s parent company, Instructure, is also in partnership w/ OpenAI… so instructors can use generative-AI technology as part of their assignments.”
Instructors Will Now See AI Throughout a Widely Used Course Software
New features integrated into Canvas include a grading assistant, a discussion-post summarizer, and even a way to pair assignments with generative AI tools.
www.chronicle.com
July 23, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
"Ensuring public access to records in the #archives is part of #NARA's core mission and the new security standards do not--and would never--change this."

(X update from the National Archives re: College Park, HT @anthonyclark.bsky.social, link in alt-text)

#ArchivesAreForEveryone #speccolls 🗃️📜
June 25, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
The "wind phone" is a disconnected telephone that serves as a place for people to connect with deceased loved ones by speaking to them as if they were on the phone. The first was set up by Itaru Sasaki in Otsuchi, Japan. Since then, others have appeared. www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/10/wind...
June 22, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
"this hurricane season, you are on your own"
June 17, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
In exasperation
the academic declared
that no one is willing
to admit the danger is real
until it comes for them,
so I asked her
if she was referring
to the climate crisis
or the ongoing pandemic,
to the rise of fascism
or some other danger,
and the academic replied:
yes.
June 12, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
For years, I've long said that climate.gov's team of remarkable communicators (& their amazing blogs, which were accessible but did not "dumb down" the science!) was NOAA's best (& most cost effective!) public-facing extreme #weather / #climate education effort to date. This will be a huge loss.
Climate.gov, a major US government website supporting public education on climate science, will likely shut down after almost all of its staff were fired. What would be worse is if the website were co-opted to publish climate denial content.
Major US climate website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired
Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content
www.theguardian.com
June 11, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
this is excellent
NEW REPORT: Artificial Power, our 2025 Landscape Report, is out.

Today’s AI isn’t just being used by us, it’s being used on us. We urgently need to reclaim public power over the future trajectory of AI. Another path is possible.

Read the report: ainowinstitute.org/2025-landscape
June 4, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Jamie Pietruska
Wow, yes. An amazing glimpse of the LLM Lie Machine at work. Anyone whose students are bring tempted by LLMs, sharing this could be very helpful showing how it lies, and how it fails.
June 3, 2025 at 4:00 PM