Dr Zena Assaad
@zenaassaad.bsky.social
Host of the Responsible Bytes Podcast 🎙
Senior lecturer @ Australian National University researching safe & trusted autonomy, AI & human-machine teaming.
Top 10 Women in AI APAC | 100 brilliant women in AI ethics | 🇦🇺🇱🇧
https://www.zenaassaad.com
Senior lecturer @ Australian National University researching safe & trusted autonomy, AI & human-machine teaming.
Top 10 Women in AI APAC | 100 brilliant women in AI ethics | 🇦🇺🇱🇧
https://www.zenaassaad.com
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Recently, I had the great joy of chatting with my dear friend of 36 years Karen O'Sullivan from the destination bookstore Great Ocean Reads in Apollo Bay.
It's wonderful to be able to combine work with pleasure.
You can listen here: greatoceanreads.podbean.com/e/episode-5-...
It's wonderful to be able to combine work with pleasure.
You can listen here: greatoceanreads.podbean.com/e/episode-5-...
Episode 5 Tracey Spicer, author Man-Made | Great Ocean Reads Podcast
In Episode 5 of the Great Ocean Reads Podcast, Karen speaks with her great friend, journalist, author and self confessed bogan from the outskirts of Brisbane, Tracey Spicer.
Tracey has written two boo...
greatoceanreads.podbean.com
November 11, 2025 at 3:56 AM
Recently, I had the great joy of chatting with my dear friend of 36 years Karen O'Sullivan from the destination bookstore Great Ocean Reads in Apollo Bay.
It's wonderful to be able to combine work with pleasure.
You can listen here: greatoceanreads.podbean.com/e/episode-5-...
It's wonderful to be able to combine work with pleasure.
You can listen here: greatoceanreads.podbean.com/e/episode-5-...
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
When scholarship is politically steered, the public loses access to evidence and the means to hold power to account.
Why threats to academic freedom are growing – and how universities can respond to intimidation
When scholarship is politically steered, the public loses access to evidence and the means to hold power to account.
tcnv.link
November 10, 2025 at 8:28 PM
When scholarship is politically steered, the public loses access to evidence and the means to hold power to account.
The latest issue of the Australian Army Journal arrived in the mail yesterday. I contributed a paper to this edition on considerations for safely scaling swarms in military operations.
You can freely access and read the paper here: researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/aust...
You can freely access and read the paper here: researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/aust...
November 9, 2025 at 11:05 PM
The latest issue of the Australian Army Journal arrived in the mail yesterday. I contributed a paper to this edition on considerations for safely scaling swarms in military operations.
You can freely access and read the paper here: researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/aust...
You can freely access and read the paper here: researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/aust...
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Tired of being unemployed when my work is what companies say they need: making complex systems clear, usable. I’ve spent years designing human-centered research & translating user insights into decisions that make products and experiences better. DM #UX research leads! jgcarpenter.com #AI #HCI #HRI
Julie Carpenter, PhD
jgcarpenter.com
November 9, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Tired of being unemployed when my work is what companies say they need: making complex systems clear, usable. I’ve spent years designing human-centered research & translating user insights into decisions that make products and experiences better. DM #UX research leads! jgcarpenter.com #AI #HCI #HRI
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
The US national strategy to prevent suicide failed to address the risks posed by social media and AI, Erich Mische writes. That's why he's come to regret signing it — and calling for a new plan.
The US Needs a New Suicide Prevention Plan That Tackles Social Media and AI | TechPolicy.Press
Our national suicide prevention largely treats technology as a tool to be managed, not a threat to be confronted, Erich Mische writes.
buff.ly
November 9, 2025 at 8:00 PM
The US national strategy to prevent suicide failed to address the risks posed by social media and AI, Erich Mische writes. That's why he's come to regret signing it — and calling for a new plan.
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Based on analysis of years of revenues, losses and funding, since 2023, OpenAI has taken in $28.6bn in cash and had $13.7bn in losses.
However, reports say OpenAI ended 1H 2025 with $9.6bn in cash - suggesting OpenAI's losses are billions higher than reported.
www.wheresyoured.at/where-is-ope...
However, reports say OpenAI ended 1H 2025 with $9.6bn in cash - suggesting OpenAI's losses are billions higher than reported.
www.wheresyoured.at/where-is-ope...
Where Is OpenAI's Money Going?
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - Song For The Dead
Editor's Note: The original piece had a mathematical error around burnrate, it's been fixed.
A few days ago, Sam Altman said that OpenAI’s rev...
www.wheresyoured.at
November 7, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Based on analysis of years of revenues, losses and funding, since 2023, OpenAI has taken in $28.6bn in cash and had $13.7bn in losses.
However, reports say OpenAI ended 1H 2025 with $9.6bn in cash - suggesting OpenAI's losses are billions higher than reported.
www.wheresyoured.at/where-is-ope...
However, reports say OpenAI ended 1H 2025 with $9.6bn in cash - suggesting OpenAI's losses are billions higher than reported.
www.wheresyoured.at/where-is-ope...
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
If you're interested in knowing more about the recently published #GCREAIM report, this week's #ResponsibleBytesPodcast episode dives into those details with the project coordinator Sofia Romansky.
🎧 You can listen to this episode anywhere you get your podcasts
🎧 You can listen to this episode anywhere you get your podcasts
October 29, 2025 at 10:29 PM
If you're interested in knowing more about the recently published #GCREAIM report, this week's #ResponsibleBytesPodcast episode dives into those details with the project coordinator Sofia Romansky.
🎧 You can listen to this episode anywhere you get your podcasts
🎧 You can listen to this episode anywhere you get your podcasts
A fascinating read for this spooky season 👇🏼
“Horror can do more than just frighten us for fun. It can train us to deal with the scary parts of life,” Coltan Scrivner writes:
The Perks of Morbid Curiosity
Horror does more than just scare us for fun. It trains us for life.
bit.ly
October 29, 2025 at 7:00 AM
A fascinating read for this spooky season 👇🏼
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
#AI has quickly become a big part of everyday life with people using it for simple things like recipes and email drafts to budgeting help.
More than 70% of ChatGPT use is for personal use, not work.
More than 70% of ChatGPT use is for personal use, not work.
AI chatbots are becoming everyday tools for mundane tasks, use data shows
Workplace productivity and educational challenges get the headlines, but it turns out that ChatGPT and its ilk are more likely to be used for household tasks.
buff.ly
October 29, 2025 at 6:48 AM
#AI has quickly become a big part of everyday life with people using it for simple things like recipes and email drafts to budgeting help.
More than 70% of ChatGPT use is for personal use, not work.
More than 70% of ChatGPT use is for personal use, not work.
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
I have to apologize every time I touch AI in a bid to educate people (for free) about its failures and social harms but y’all will buy bumper stickers from a guy who is literally working as a hype man to get AI startups funded as he bullies other critical tech folks, it’s honestly wild
October 27, 2025 at 5:45 PM
I have to apologize every time I touch AI in a bid to educate people (for free) about its failures and social harms but y’all will buy bumper stickers from a guy who is literally working as a hype man to get AI startups funded as he bullies other critical tech folks, it’s honestly wild
An interesting perspective on the AI bubble...
There's been endless talk about an AI bubble, but less about exactly how, why, and how much it's a bubble. So I turned to the framework put forward by scholars Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch, authors of "Bubbles and Crashes," for assessing tech bubbles.
Spoiler: On a scale of 1 to 8, AI is an 8
Spoiler: On a scale of 1 to 8, AI is an 8
AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All
I talked to the scholars who literally wrote the book on tech bubbles—and applied their test.
www.wired.com
October 27, 2025 at 9:17 PM
An interesting perspective on the AI bubble...
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
NEW: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis.
Here's How Many People May Use ChatGPT During a Mental Health Crisis Each Week
OpenAI released initial estimates about the share of users who may be experiencing symptoms like delusional thinking, mania, or suicidal ideation, and says it has tweaked GPT-5 to respond more effecti...
www.wired.com
October 27, 2025 at 5:05 PM
NEW: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users. The company’s estimates therefore suggest that every seven days, around 560,000 people may be exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis.
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Really excited to share this new paper on "Data Visualizations as Propaganda", co-led by PhD students Priya Dhawka and Nina Lutz, which just won a Best Paper award at the CSCW conference: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
[Short thread]
[Short thread]
Data Visualizations as Propaganda: Tracing Lineages, Provenance, and Political Framings in Online Anti-Immigrant Discourse | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Along with other visual content, data visualizations are increasingly used within
online discourse, including political communication. Though often considered to be
''objective'', data visualizations ...
dl.acm.org
October 27, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Really excited to share this new paper on "Data Visualizations as Propaganda", co-led by PhD students Priya Dhawka and Nina Lutz, which just won a Best Paper award at the CSCW conference: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
[Short thread]
[Short thread]
The EU has charged Meta for
failing to provide users with a simple way to flag illegal content & for not offering adequate tools to appeal content-mod decisions when posts are removed / accounts suspended marking the 1st allegation under bloc’s online-content rules
au.investing.com/news/company...
failing to provide users with a simple way to flag illegal content & for not offering adequate tools to appeal content-mod decisions when posts are removed / accounts suspended marking the 1st allegation under bloc’s online-content rules
au.investing.com/news/company...
Meta charged by EU over illegal content handling on Facebook and Instagram By Investing.com
Meta charged by EU over illegal content handling on Facebook and Instagram
au.investing.com
October 24, 2025 at 9:04 PM
The EU has charged Meta for
failing to provide users with a simple way to flag illegal content & for not offering adequate tools to appeal content-mod decisions when posts are removed / accounts suspended marking the 1st allegation under bloc’s online-content rules
au.investing.com/news/company...
failing to provide users with a simple way to flag illegal content & for not offering adequate tools to appeal content-mod decisions when posts are removed / accounts suspended marking the 1st allegation under bloc’s online-content rules
au.investing.com/news/company...
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
This project is an example of @alexhanna.bsky.social's vision for DAIR, she said she wanted to make researchers organizers and organizers researchers (something to that effect and I believe there's a related quote from someone else).🧵
🚨NEW🚨 from DAIR:
Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor,
intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility.
Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...
Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor,
intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility.
Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...
October 22, 2025 at 10:08 PM
This project is an example of @alexhanna.bsky.social's vision for DAIR, she said she wanted to make researchers organizers and organizers researchers (something to that effect and I believe there's a related quote from someone else).🧵
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
And finally (for now) the one we're all familiar with...Profiling for Advertising: Selling or sharing “wellness insights” with third-party marketers: ads for sleep aids, fertility products, dating apps, or even insurance premiums. 11/11
(There's more, but these are a convo starter.)
(There's more, but these are a convo starter.)
October 22, 2025 at 11:02 PM
And finally (for now) the one we're all familiar with...Profiling for Advertising: Selling or sharing “wellness insights” with third-party marketers: ads for sleep aids, fertility products, dating apps, or even insurance premiums. 11/11
(There's more, but these are a convo starter.)
(There's more, but these are a convo starter.)
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Psychological Manipulation: “Smart coaching” features can be framed as self-improvement but rely on behavioral nudging—training users to conform to app metrics rather than actual wellbeing. Data dashboards create feedback loops that gamify compliance with corporate-defined “healthy” norms.
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October 22, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Psychological Manipulation: “Smart coaching” features can be framed as self-improvement but rely on behavioral nudging—training users to conform to app metrics rather than actual wellbeing. Data dashboards create feedback loops that gamify compliance with corporate-defined “healthy” norms.
10/*
10/*
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
I work in the tech industry, specifically human-AI interaction. The personal data they collect from you is worth more than your out-of-pocket expense for that "smart" mattress, home assistant, security camera, dishwasher, etc.
Quick question. Why does literally everything require you to have an account.
Everything.
Everything.
October 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
I work in the tech industry, specifically human-AI interaction. The personal data they collect from you is worth more than your out-of-pocket expense for that "smart" mattress, home assistant, security camera, dishwasher, etc.
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Musk wants to get rid of Tesla’s robotaxi babysitters ‘by the end of the year’
Musk wants to get rid of Tesla’s robotaxi babysitters ‘by the end of the year’
Bye bye babysitters?
buff.ly
October 22, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Musk wants to get rid of Tesla’s robotaxi babysitters ‘by the end of the year’
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
OpenAI to offer UK data residency driven by government partnership reut.rs/4nibUmm
OpenAI to offer UK data residency driven by government partnership
OpenAI will offer Britain's government and businesses an opportunity to store data in the UK from Friday, helping unlock the potential of AI for more companies and public services, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy will announce on Thursday.
reut.rs
October 22, 2025 at 11:10 PM
OpenAI to offer UK data residency driven by government partnership reut.rs/4nibUmm
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
Meta Platforms is cutting about 600 jobs in its AI division, according to an internal memo that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal and a person familiar with the matter.
Meta Cuts 600 in AI Division
The job cuts will affect legacy teams but not the company’s new TBD Lab unit.
on.wsj.com
October 22, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Meta Platforms is cutting about 600 jobs in its AI division, according to an internal memo that was viewed by The Wall Street Journal and a person familiar with the matter.
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
“Even in human relationships, it’s rare for any one person to know us across a lifetime.” So why are we building AI systems that can? Gathoni Ireri takes an in-depth look at what long-term memory in ChatGPT, Gemini & others means for autonomy, consent, and ethical AI design.
What We Risk When AI Systems Remember | TechPolicy.Press
Gathoni Ireri explores how memory-enabled AI, reshapes personalization, privacy, and the ethics of knowing users deeply.
www.techpolicy.press
October 22, 2025 at 8:18 PM
“Even in human relationships, it’s rare for any one person to know us across a lifetime.” So why are we building AI systems that can? Gathoni Ireri takes an in-depth look at what long-term memory in ChatGPT, Gemini & others means for autonomy, consent, and ethical AI design.
OpenAI has launched it's own web browser - 'ChatGPT Atlas' - it's supposed to be a more personalised experience & includes a ChatGPT sidebar that allows users to ask questions about various aspects of each website they visit
October 21, 2025 at 9:52 PM
OpenAI has launched it's own web browser - 'ChatGPT Atlas' - it's supposed to be a more personalised experience & includes a ChatGPT sidebar that allows users to ask questions about various aspects of each website they visit
Reposted by Dr Zena Assaad
What to know about the widespread Amazon Web Services outage www.thebanner.com/economy/amaz...
What to know about the widespread Amazon Web Services outage
Internet disruptions tied to Amazon’s cloud computing service affected people around the world Monday trying to connect to online services used for work, social media and video games.
www.thebanner.com
October 20, 2025 at 8:08 PM
What to know about the widespread Amazon Web Services outage www.thebanner.com/economy/amaz...