🌶 David Gray Widder
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davidthewid.bsky.social
🌶 David Gray Widder
@davidthewid.bsky.social
2.9K followers 550 following 280 posts
🔜 Assistant Prof at UT Austin's iSchool.

AI ethics, political economy of tech, feminist STS

trying to help computer ppl think more critically about computer, including me

art: instagram.com/davidthewid

exCMU/NASA/MSR/IntelLabs.

davidwidder.me
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davidthewid.bsky.social
Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh PA #AI
magazine article with headline "the machines are taking over" with facing BW photo of reflected female operator peering toward old looking computer
October 18, 2025 at 12:30 AM
davidthewid.bsky.social
at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh PA #AI
Cartoon work man in suit with robot firing worker operating machinery with caption "Science has learned how to eliminate the misery, monotony and drudgery of your job. You're fired!" Wall of robots with worker, with broom being told by scientist, standing next to robot with broom saying "I have a bit of bad news for you!"
October 15, 2025 at 8:48 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
🪲 What is a "bug"? 🐛

Software bugs may seem obvious.

🚨But in a short piece, eminent bug expert @clegoues.bsky.social I seek to answer this seemingly simple question, and find that it is far from clear cut …

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Front page of CACM opinion article linked in post.
September 12, 2025 at 5:13 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Thanks!! I have. I found it... okay.

He identifies big problems & then prescribes roughly: better rules+democracy that imo don't meet our technofascist moment.

Here's a review i roughly agreed with, don't know the author of it tho. macwright.com/2025/02/23/c...

Curious abt your thoughts!
August 23, 2025 at 7:03 AM
davidthewid.bsky.social
📣 2 exciting things:

1. I'm taking 3.5 months off! No email, but reading recs ⬇️ pls!

2. In December, I'll be an Assistant Professor at UT Austin in the School of Information!

❗️Tell folks wanting to think about & dismantle systems of power in AI supply chains to do a PhD with me! Deadline Dec 1!
David smiling wearing a burnt orange Texas Research t-shirt holding a burnt orange Texas coffee mug. He is indoors, standing to the right of a plant and in front of a window with the williamsburg bridge behind.
August 23, 2025 at 6:15 AM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Today I moderated a conversation between Joan Greenbaum and Lucy Suchman about workplace organizing and collective resistance to war technologies.

I have learned so much from them in my own research and activism, so this was a blast and a huge honor.
Lucy, David and Joan seated, tbe last two listening while Lucy talks with her hands. Lucy and David smiling while Joan talks. Joan, David and Lucy standing for a picture outside.
August 19, 2025 at 9:52 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
I had the privilege of hosting @inhacha.bsky.social this summer at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell, where she led amazing work unpacking "AI Sovereignty" with me & @richmondywong.bsky.social. Her work connects the local to the global in such an inspiring way.

Look out for a preprint soon!
Inha in black dress and white shirt posing for photo with david in white shirt and pink shorts in front of black statue with gold chinese characters. they are doing the two finger peace sign and smiling. Inha in her final presentation in front of two large TVs with her slides.
August 18, 2025 at 2:53 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Helped organize the "Toward the promise of open source AI" workshop at Berkeley AI Research, where I yesterday I gave a ✨new talk ✨:

BIG *isn't* open!

To make Open real, we need to (1) think beyond BIG, by (2) starting with USES we want to enable.
Yellow slide with big title "Big isn't open!", Big in bold and open in red. Subtitle "Who Big serves, how Big threatens Open, and small ways forward." Byline: "David Gray Widder • Berkeley Open Source AI Convening • 12 August 2025" Takeaways slide, with body: "1: Beyond Big AI Recognize that AI futures built on Big Tech are not open. Reject the “Foundation Model”-Fine Tune paradigm—massive open models handed down from the gods—because this is not very open. 2: Imagine the ends we want, then figure out the mechanisms Embrace Use-first—asking us what goals we want to achieve, for whom, then how. Open as means to an end! Where do we wanna go, and how can we re-imagine open to help us get there?" and at bottom: davidwidder.me/ + incentives.pdf, cloud.pdf, open-nature.pdf open.pdf • Thoughts welcome! david.g.widder@gmail.com Room full of people seated watching a panel discussion in the front of the room with four palensits and one monitor. A group of 6 people standing in front of a table of sticky notes from their brainstorming session.
August 14, 2025 at 4:24 AM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Thanks to: @maxvonthun.bsky.social , @vera-franz.bsky.social sky.social, @paulohm.bsky.social lohm.bsky.social, @jack-corrigan.bsky.social, @erie.bsky.social, @tnarecha.bsky.social echa.bsky.social, @inhacha.bsky.social, @rankandfreddy.bsky.social, @amabalayn.bsky.social ky.social and many others!
David Gray Widder is a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in the Digital Life Initiative, an affiliate of the Data & Society Research Institute, and an incoming assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Nathan Kim is a PhD student in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and a Research Intern at the Distributed AI Research Institute. With special thanks to Brian Chen, Max von Thun, Vera Franz, Paul Ohm, Jack Corrigan, Seda Gürses, James Ravenscroft, Erie Meyer, Tejas Narechania, Inha Cha, Julie Widder, Adam Pickersgill, Freddy Reiber, Agathe Balayn, Stephanie T. Nguyen, and unnamed government personnel for their advice at various stages of preparing this report. This report should not be construed to represent their own views, or that of their institutions. Any errors are solely those of the authors. Your questions and ideas are welcome! Correspondence to: david.g.widder@gmail.com <EUAISF logo> This work was supported by the European AI & Society Fund as part of their Global Market Power fellowship program. We are grateful to Crunchbase for access to their data.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Finally, fully *half* of all Big Cloud investments are made internationally, and each has their target countries.

Interestingly, Big Cloud invests primarily through accelerators abroad while prioritizing traditional equity investments at home.
3 heat maps of the world, one for each Big Cloud company. Amazon visibly invests a higher % of its deals in India, Google in Brazil and lesser in india, Microsoft in China. Two split bar charts, split in the same way as above, but with one bar chart for Non US and the other for US investments, showing that Google and Microsoft use Accelerator programs abroad more than equity investments, whereas Amazon prefers equity investments at home and abroad.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Big Cloud is also *investing* in a way that brings much of the same risks as vertical integration, which competition authorities watch for.

And startups operating in the AI supply chain *more likely to rely on Big Cloud as their lead or sole investor* when they invest vs other investors:
Two very large heat maps, each with Developer Services, As a Service, Cloud, Data, Internet Infra, and Hardware on the Y axis, and the Big Cloud companies alongside NVidia, Apple, Meta, Accel and Sequoia Capital on the Y axis. The temperature of each sell measures % of time that investor is the sole or lead investor respectively, and broadly show that AI supply chain companies are more likely to be dependent on Big Cloud investor as their sole or lead investor than other investors.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Big Cloud invests heavily through accelerator programs, locking in startups early:

• They offer *massive cloud credits* that smaller cloud companies can’t compete with
• Capture ecosystems by pushing startups to use their other tech
• Incentivizes compute-heavy tech, such as building Gen AI.
Split bar chart with red and blue bars per investor, showing that Google and Microsoft invest via Accelerator programs more than their other investments, whereas the reverse is true for Amazon. Of course, accelerators invest only through accelerator programs, and the biggest VCs make no accelerator investments. Other Big Tech companies have no recorded accelerator investments.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
We might remember Microsoft's huge investment in OpenAI, but this was just the tip of a massive hidden iceberg🥶:

Big Cloud deploys *hundreds of billions* over *thousands of deals*, often in smaller, lesser-known startups.

They invest like VCs — and *100x more* than other Big Tech companies.
The first bar graph in the report, showing google having the most investments (3501), Microsoft second (1681) and then Amazon (745), all way more than other “Magnificent Seven” big tech companies and way way more than all other investors, and in the same range of other bars representing Big VC and Active Accelerators. The second graph in the report, showing a similar trend to the last one, but this time as measured in the dollar size of the deals they participate in. Google and Microsoft invest in deals summing to an amount similar to big VCs, with Amazon at a smaller amount about one third that of Microsoft.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
📣🚨NEW: ☁️ Big Cloud—Google, Microsoft & Amazon—control two thirds of the cloud compute market. They’re getting rich off the AI gold rush.

In new work with @nathanckim.bsky.social, we show how Big Cloud is expanding their empire by scrutinizing their *investments*… 🧵

📄PDF: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...
The cover of the report, with dark blue title "How Big Cloud becomes Bigger" with "Bigger" in bold, and subtitle in light blue "Scrutinizing Google Microsoft and Amazon's investments", and light grey author line "David Gray Widder and Nathan Kim" on light grey page background with three clouds: white, dark grey, and very dark grey getting bigger and going towards the top right until they're off the page.
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
ironic ad for me to get this week 👀

(stay tuned for something big from me next week!)
Screenshot of a gmail inbox with advertisement reading "Google Cloud Startups: Scale with $200k, on us"
August 1, 2025 at 10:18 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
but I'm probably gonna tune into the last day of the Birzeit conference tomorrow morning as I work! :)

Livestream will be here: www.youtube.com/@BirzeitUniv...
conference schedule on Third Day - online only, 31 july, 2025, full text here: https://ialiis.birzeit.edu/conference/en/
July 30, 2025 at 9:05 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
I'm tuning into the "Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy" conference held by Birzeit University's Inst. of Intl. Studies:

ialiis.birzeit.edu/conference/en/

Now, Andrew Ross (NYU)'s keynote is about the closeness between academia and war: www.youtube.com/live/N-B5eo8...
Conference program with spiky artwork and title "Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy", and details: "29-31 July at Birzeit University and Online, Hall 243, Institute of Law Annex Building".
July 30, 2025 at 2:55 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
📣🔥❤️‍🔥 I'm excited to moderate a panel with none other than *Lucy Suchman and Joan Greenbaum* at Aarhus '25 - we'll hear them reflect on their work in tech social justice movements, and what we can learn and do today.

Join us on August 19th IRL or online:
tech-organizing-reflections.github.io
A green flier with title "From Tech Lash to Text Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decate of Collective organizing in Computing" with a QR code and link (same as one in body of post) and with blurb and details: Hybrid Workshop @ Aarhus Tuesday August 19, 8:30-11:30 am EST / 2:30-5:30 pm CEST Computing is a field plagued with presentism, oriented towards the new in ways that limit our design and research practices - as well as our capacity to understand and collectively respond to emerging crises. To improve our sensemaking and strategizing about today's crises, this workshop explores what Tamara Kneese has deemed the last decade's shift from "techlash" to "tech fash". What have we learned from the era of misinformation and bias, of "surveillance capitalism" and tech worker organizing that can inform our struggle against the increasing power of a techno-fascist oligarchy? We will also look towards previous generations of computing professionals and activists, who likewise sought to address the harms of emerging automated systems and the complicity of computing within violent, imperialist projects. This workshop will create space for participants to explore these questions collectively, bridging past and present moments in an effort to devise strategies moving forward."
July 28, 2025 at 6:54 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
"I hope this email finds you well. "

How your email found me:
tooooo many tabs
July 28, 2025 at 6:43 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
but wait did you see this:
July 24, 2025 at 1:17 AM
davidthewid.bsky.social
I have spent the last 4 hours staring at this diagram

add that to the 400 hours I spent doing so in my undergrad

<me learning to do data work again>
May 13, 2025 at 3:51 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Very excited to be at Michigan this Friday, presenting work with @siree.sh and Lucy Suchman, and talking about how accepting military funding, even for Basic Research, can enlist us in a warfighting agenda.

The talk will be live streamed, all are welcome!

esc.umich.edu/event/politi...
April 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
🍅🍅🥫Updates on my scheme to start a Tomato farm in Brooklyn. I built a greenhouse entirely from found materials, including shower doors lugged on the subway all the way from Times Square.
March 17, 2025 at 5:45 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Anyone else being bombarded with 100s of new follows from what appear to be Democrat supporting bots?
February 26, 2025 at 4:47 PM
davidthewid.bsky.social
Mine was "can-be-convinced-the-earth-is-flat-nobody-puts-baby-in-a-corner-crying" :'''( , and…
February 12, 2025 at 3:40 PM