I find the research increasingly compelling — this week's example being a case in point: www.nature.com/articles/d41... I look forward to reading your book and having these concerns placed in the context of earlier technological transitions and their attendant panics.
Who's Who of AI
Alondra Nelson
Science and technology policy scholar
Scholar, author, policy advisor
alondranelson.com
Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab
https://www.ias.edu/stsv-lab
What they're sharing
Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good nature.com
A civic grammar for AI rights | Science science.org
The Elon Musk v Sam Altman battle is a distraction | Karen Hao | The Guardian theguardian.com
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Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026) vatican.va
wsj.com
[2604.16106] Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI: Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability arxiv.org
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Ontario auditors find doctors' AI note takers routinely blow basic facts theregister.com
Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers the-decoder.com
Anthropic's Mythos Recall and the White House's Missing AI Safety Playbook techpolicy.press
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direct.mit.edu
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direct.mit.edu
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The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails | Nature nature.com
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Articles & links
AI companies are writing their own constitutions. Meanwhile, a shared vocabulary for contesting algorithmic power has been traveling across red and blue states, from legislatures to civil society. New from me in @science.org: "A Civic Grammar for AI Rights" www.science.org/doi…
Alondra Nelson reposted
So much attention has been paid to the Musk v. Altman trial. But real accountability for the AI industry will not come from a billionaire mudfight. It will come from the movements around the world resisting the empires of AI. My op-ed for @theguardian.com. www.theguardian.com/…
Now watching: the Vatican conference following the release of Pope Leo's encyclical on AI (www.vatican.va/content/leo-...) www.youtube.com/live/EEM7a3m...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- Pope Leo XIV's 42,300-word Magnifica Humanitas, signed May 15 and published May 25, addresses AI as the central challenge to human dignity.
- The encyclical states AI systems are 'cultivated' not 'built' and explicitly denies they possess experience, a body, or the capacity to feel pain.
- Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah spoke at the Vatican's May 25 presentation alongside theologians and three cardinals.
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-Water used at power plants that supply electricity to data centers can be greater than the amount of water used in the data centers themselves. -" $170 billion of AI data-center capacity has been blocked, stalled or canceled since 2024" www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-d...
Alondra Nelson reposted
In "Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI," @cyberlyra.bsky.social, Ben Shestakofsky, Alex Taylor, and I are particularly keen to understand how the project of AI involves numerous "decoys" that misdirect critics' attention, undermining efforts to hold AI to account. arxi…
www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/0...
Alondra Nelson reposted
Court holds Google liable for false claims in AI Overviews. Seems significant. "A regular search engine just points to outside websites. But AI overviews generate 'independent, new, and substantive statements' by evaluating and combining content from various third-party sites"…
AI Weekly's analysis
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- Munich's Regional Court declared Google's AI Overviews its own speech, rejecting traditional search-engine hosting liability protections.
- Google's AI Overviews answered correctly around 91% of queries, but 56% of those correct answers couldn't be verified through the linked sources.
- Google confirmed it will appeal the ruling, which could set precedent for AI answer engines including ChatGPT and Perplexity across Europe.
Read full analysis →
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Alondra Nelson reposted
Two days after Dario Amodei called for mandatory frontier AI testing, the US ordered Anthropic to cut off foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5. I consider how Washington's improvised response exposed the lack of an AI safety playbook.
Alondra Nelson reposted
People often pitch AI as unprecedented. But what if we already have the organizational tools to evaluate & negotiate its use? Our new book Auditing AI opens in the 1980s with the story of the US Network for Organ Sharing how how they test & decide on their algorithms direct.mi…
Alondra Nelson reposted
"Auditing AI" is open access. We wrote it for leaders / organizers of all kinds who want to *do something* about AI, so if you want to read it for yourself, you can find it here. If you find it useful and share it with your communities, let us know! direct.mit.edu/books/book/6...
Alondra Nelson reposted
Is the purpose of science and 🧪 training to churn out papers or to create a healthy knowledge community? In a @nature.com comment, @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I check in on how AI helps with the former while jeopardizing the latter 1/
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