AI raises a pandemic risk
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European governments and users accelerated AI adoption, while intelligence chiefs warned misuse could enable modified or synthetic pathogens and spark a new pandemic, experts cautioned.
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Reposted by Tom Griffin, Robert W. Wallace
My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse
February 11, 2026 at 8:20 PM
My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse
Reposted by Meredith Farkas, Stephen D. Murphy
Man I'm so goddamn sick of ai. "Wahhh you can't have a reasonable conversation about ai on here," yeah maybe be mad about the two year parade of scam artists and financial charlatans and environmental ruiners who have radicalized everyone against the spell check that agrees with you
February 12, 2026 at 2:45 AM
Man I'm so goddamn sick of ai. "Wahhh you can't have a reasonable conversation about ai on here," yeah maybe be mad about the two year parade of scam artists and financial charlatans and environmental ruiners who have radicalized everyone against the spell check that agrees with you
Reposted by David Johnson, David Peetz
This article that was going around the other day wasn't claiming that AI tools don't make workers more "productive" in some sense (they do self-report that they are getting more done!) but does suggest people end up working more while being less engaged & more stressed. hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It
One of the promises of AI is that it can reduce workloads so employees can focus more on higher-value and more engaging tasks. But according to new research, AI tools don’t reduce work, they consisten...
hbr.org
February 11, 2026 at 8:29 PM
This article that was going around the other day wasn't claiming that AI tools don't make workers more "productive" in some sense (they do self-report that they are getting more done!) but does suggest people end up working more while being less engaged & more stressed. hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...
Sadly the UK debt ignores a lot of very good work on the c impact of AI because it's so framed in terms of AI and not how AI interacts with organisational and individual routines, processes etc.
February 11, 2026 at 11:38 PM
Sadly the UK debt ignores a lot of very good work on the c impact of AI because it's so framed in terms of AI and not how AI interacts with organisational and individual routines, processes etc.
Exactly the same in UK and EU. The public debate is between evidence free extreme of "AI is all hype" and "it changes everything!!!".
Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....
Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....
February 11, 2026 at 10:58 PM
Exactly the same in UK and EU. The public debate is between evidence free extreme of "AI is all hype" and "it changes everything!!!".
Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....
Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....
Focusing on rear-guard action against AI's existence ensures that you do not have an influence in how AI will impact your jobs and industries: AI impacting us is inevitable, but how it impacts us will be shaped by the technology, protocols, norms, and regulations of different industries.
February 12, 2026 at 3:06 AM
Focusing on rear-guard action against AI's existence ensures that you do not have an influence in how AI will impact your jobs and industries: AI impacting us is inevitable, but how it impacts us will be shaped by the technology, protocols, norms, and regulations of different industries.
AI is really useful in academia and I'm tired of pretending that it isn't. It's particularly useful for those of us who lack resources such as research assistants, research budgets, or teaching assistants, there are lots of minor tasks that I can perform considerably faster.
I understand why people are exhausted by AI hype, and why those of us squarely in the corner of "human dignity uber alles" see AI doomerism as self-serving hype, but I *really* think people on the left broadly need to start thinking seriously about the possibiltiy of the hype being...true.
February 12, 2026 at 4:23 AM
AI is really useful in academia and I'm tired of pretending that it isn't. It's particularly useful for those of us who lack resources such as research assistants, research budgets, or teaching assistants, there are lots of minor tasks that I can perform considerably faster.
It is very dangerous to dismiss AI's capability & impact based on where models & tooling are today. Everything is evolving rapidly and already augmenting (for better or worse) key workflows in many industries: that will impact will explode in coming months & years as we evolve AI-first workflows.
I understand why people are exhausted by AI hype, and why those of us squarely in the corner of "human dignity uber alles" see AI doomerism as self-serving hype, but I *really* think people on the left broadly need to start thinking seriously about the possibiltiy of the hype being...true.
February 12, 2026 at 3:03 AM
It is very dangerous to dismiss AI's capability & impact based on where models & tooling are today. Everything is evolving rapidly and already augmenting (for better or worse) key workflows in many industries: that will impact will explode in coming months & years as we evolve AI-first workflows.
