Frank Pasquale
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frankpasquale.bsky.social
Frank Pasquale
@frankpasquale.bsky.social
2.2K followers 570 following 610 posts
Law professor; author (The Black Box Society; New Laws of Robotics).

Interested in law & technology, AI, political economy, art, and social theory.
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Reposted by Frank Pasquale
joshmccrain.bsky.social
new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research
November 18, 2025 at 7:16 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Our first point of contact with most information is rarely the information itself but some lossily compressed derivative that’s already been processed and strained through a dozen layers of reinterpretation.”
nymag.com/intelligence...
November 17, 2025 at 2:05 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
Its “most subtle piece of deep infrastructure is its more than 70-million-person industrial workforce. Thanks to intense buildup of complex manufacturing supply chains, Chinese factory managers, engineers, and workers have decades of process knowledge.”
www.foreignaffairs.com/china/real-c...
The Real China Model
Beijing’s enduring formula for wealth and power.
www.foreignaffairs.com
November 15, 2025 at 11:58 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Good politics also requires…a healthy public sphere, in which at least the most egregiously bad ideas and bad actors are subject to sufficient scrutiny that they are weeded out.”
chrisdillow.substack.com/p/on-incompe...
November 15, 2025 at 3:11 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Under Josef Stalin, Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko advanced pseudoscientific doctrines to align with party ideology, while orchestrating the purge of biologists and geneticists who upheld empirical standards.”
techpolicy.press/how-politica...
November 15, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
christinaayiotis.bsky.social
“Theirs is one of at least six defamation cases filed in the United States in the past two years over content produced by A.I. tools that generate text and images.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/b... @nytimes.com #ArtificialIntelligence
Who Pays When A.I. Is Wrong?
www.nytimes.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:53 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Strategic pursuit of societal ignorance is a threat to achievements in areas ranging from public health to the rule of law and international stability.”
techpolicy.press/the-united-s...
November 13, 2025 at 2:14 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
Here comes a “world mediated not just by publications or social networks but by omnipurpose AI products that assure us they’re ‘maximally truth-seeking’ or ‘objective’ as they simply tell” algorithmically personalized audiences what they want to hear.
nymag.com/intelligence...
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia Is a Warning
The centibillionaire’s Wikipedia clone is ridiculous. It’s also a glimpse of the future.
nymag.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:21 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“On average, Chinese capital goods are 30 per cent cheaper than those of Europeans.”
www.ft.com/content/239e...
Can anything halt the decline of German industry?
Europe’s manufacturing champion is in free fall. Economists are suggesting radical steps to save what is left
www.ft.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
noaasm.bsky.social
Twitter is being investigated by Ireland’s Coimisiún na Meán focusing on how the social media platform handles user appeals against content moderation decisions under Digital Services Act
www.euractiv.com/news/irish-w...
Irish watchdog opens content moderation probe on Elon Musk's X | Euractiv
The investigation focuses on how the social media platform handles user appeals against content moderation decisions under the bloc's Digital Services Act
www.euractiv.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:04 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“In every case prior to the collapse [of an empire] there is a slow growth in inequality, oligarchy, corruption and factionalism between elites over the surplus of lootable resources.”
www.thetimes.com/culture/book...
November 12, 2025 at 2:52 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“In a heat death–type narrative of the internet’s demise, we are all infected and rendered senseless by the machine-driven decay of online content into meaninglessness. Human culture is sucked into the vortex of online collapse, and thought ceases to exist.”
www.emptysetmag.com/articles/ent...
Entropic Boredom
How did the internet get this boring? And where is boredom leading us?
www.emptysetmag.com
November 12, 2025 at 2:13 AM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
jtlg.bsky.social
Today's decision in GEMA v. OpenAI by a German court holds that ChatGPT infringes copyright when it memorizes song lyrics. The opinion cites my paper with @afedercooper.bsky.social on memorization in generative models, and its analysis tracks ours.

drive.google.com/file/d/1dUaD...
42-O-14139-24-Endurteil.pdf
drive.google.com
November 12, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
profhilaryallen.bsky.social
fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...
As I thought about this inevitability narrative, like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder: if technological progress were really so inevitable, should it really matter how lawmakers and regulators treat it? Marietje Schaake, formerly a Member of the European Parliament, tells a story about a dinner she once attended with top Silicon Valley figures. She describes how she was cornered and asked “did Europeans realize their tendency to overregulate was the reason why no equivalent of Silicon Valley existed there?” But isn’t that ultimately an admission that technological progress can be channeled and even stopped? The Silicon Valley folk treated this as an obvious failing on Europe’s part, but what if, to quote the movie War Games, “the only winning move is not to play”? What if Europe has in fact won by using law to hold some tech businesses back, protecting its citizens and letting other countries be the guinea pigs, ensuring that the worst of Silicon Valley’s pathologies haven’t taken root there? As technology scholars Greta Byrum and Ruha Benjamin have observed, sometimes the best outcomes (in terms of benefit for the broader public) are achieved with non-technological approaches and solutions. Has Europe won by using the law to preserve space for them?
November 10, 2025 at 4:32 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“The 21st-century algorithmic gaze dissolves both patient and doctor alike into never-ending streams of automated data.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
What we lose when we surrender care to algorithms | Eric Reinhart
A dangerous faith in AI is sweeping American healthcare – with consequences for the basis of society itself
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 12:11 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Governments are saying 'well, we don't want to step in too soon and regulate AI'. That's exactly what they said about the internet - and look at the harm it's done to so many kids.”
www.bbc.com/news/article...
November 10, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
rcalo.bsky.social
First time holding my book 🥹 Thanks UCLA!
November 8, 2025 at 1:50 AM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“AI maximalism across society is supercharging the ideological war on libraries, schools, government workers, and academics.”
www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...
November 6, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
williamlidc.bsky.social
AI summaries has got to be one of the biggest concerns about professional AI use:

1) people love summaries and will assume accuracy;

2) AI summaries often look authoritative (even citing sources);

3) if you take time to check the sources, they often don’t say what AI says in the summary
kathryntewson.bsky.social Kathryn Tewson @kathryntewson.bsky.social · 12d
@williamlidc.bsky.social and I were JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS
dkluft.bsky.social David Kluft @dkluft.bsky.social · 13d
#LegalEthics Tidbit: OK, #AI is not reliable for legal research. But it’s really good at accurately summarizing documents, right? RIGHT!?

In response to a summary judgement motion, a TX plaintiff’s lawyer wanted to submit a witness affidavit that compared ... (cont.)

lnkd.in/ePra8vFB
#lawsky #law
November 6, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
austinfrerick.bsky.social
“You’re a winner, baby!” 🥳😜

Honored to have won the best “Food Issues” book from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP).
November 6, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social
This from Ted is also usefully read in conjunction with the just-released statement from the MLA advocating for faculty representation on ed tech policy-making committees: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad...
November 5, 2025 at 7:51 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“Writing is the process of discovery through language…[exploring] what we know & what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn”
thepalindrome.org/p/coding-on-...
Coding on Paper
Coding as a process, not a product
thepalindrome.org
November 5, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
New paper just out on how changing sociotechnical systems of knowledge production and access - platforms, the cloud, AI - pose profound challenges to educational practice and research doi.org/10.1080/0305...
Knowledge infrastructure crisis: digital democratic deficits and alternative designs for education
The production and circulation of knowledge in education increasingly depends on large-scale digital infrastructures. In this article we provide a critical review of the transformation of the conte...
doi.org
November 5, 2025 at 12:50 PM
frankpasquale.bsky.social
“In…my advice to…other digital historians—I generally think that human beings are among the least promising topics of statistical analysis; I choose to visualize ships, books, and land but try to avoid visualizing the person whenever possible”
dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/computa...
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dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu
November 5, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Frank Pasquale
mkirschenbaum.bsky.social
Very proud to have worked on this statement of the Modern Language Association with @annamillsoer.bsky.social and other colleagues on the MLA’s task force on AI in Research and Teaching. It is a direct call for faculty input into Ed Tech decision-making, especially AI: www.mla.org/Resources/Ad... 🧵
Screenshots of the following text: Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents The following statement of endorsement was drafted by the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching. The Executive Council approved it as an MLA statement in October 2025. Software, specifically learning management systems (LMSs), is as important to teaching and learning as physical classrooms and facilities. The recent and hasty integration of generative AI features into those systems is already redefining student and instructor relationships, evaluative standards, and instructional outcomes—with no compelling evidence that any of it is for the better. At the same time, so-called agentic browsers are becoming widely available to the public. These offer AI “agents” that can navigate LMSs and complete assignments without any student involvement. All of this is unfolding at a time when contractual arrangements between institutions and commercial vendors often lack transparency, with worrisome implications for data collection and student privacy. Screenshots of the following text: The Modern Language Association therefore unequivocally 1. Advocates for full faculty and instructional involvement, including faculty of languages, literatures, and the humanities, at all levels of decision-making in the selection, procurement, and responsible implementation of instructional technology systems and software, including those incorporating AI.

The instructional mission cannot be fulfilled in the absence of faculty expertise, and this expertise extends not only to the “content” of the curriculum but also to the infrastructures and environments—virtual and otherwise—in which learning happens.
  2. Calls upon law- and policymakers, LMS vendors, and companies offering agent-based AI browsers to cooperate in order to prevent misuse and to ensure that academic institutions have the ability and option to block agentic AI when needed.

Without dedicated outside cooperation from lawmakers and technology providers, academic institutions may not have the technical capacity to do so on their own. If we do not act, we risk seeing the development of a fully automated loop in which assignments are generated by AI with the support of a learning management system, AI-generated content is submitted by an agentic AI on behalf of the student, and AI-driven metrics evaluate the work on behalf of the instructor.
November 4, 2025 at 1:09 AM