~I've got no idea what I'm doing~

28 | Struggling (to write) Fanfiction Author and member of many fandoms. Constantly indecisive and agonzing over my choices~

[tjpones]

“…and coffee. Black.”

[ffiamgoku]

[mx-kennedy]

Hello! Would you like the "Where's my wife?", or, "Where's everyone going, bingo?"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Worst part of these as that they're always made of bullshit and don't even keep you warm properly any more

[theoccasionalhyperfixation]

That’s why it’s survival horror, they do a horrifyingly bad job at helping you survive the cold

[ffiamgoku]

@redxera

Hmm, the Joel or Leon fits, decisions decisions....

[justalurkr]

Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.

But... Stochastic Parrots.

Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.

Her name is Timnit Gebru.

She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.

The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.

The paper had not even been published yet.

Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.

The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.

This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.

The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.

The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.

Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.

Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.

The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.

In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.

The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.

In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.

The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.

Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.

This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.

The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.

The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.

Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.

She was making that argument from inside Google.

Then Google proved her right by removing her.

The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.

Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.

Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.

The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.

Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.

The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.

The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.

And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.

[tiffycat]

HES HERE ! HES HERE ! HES HERE !

[pencilsponyforge]

Poor Trixie, not pulling quite the same crowd after that little incident.

On this subject, do help out your favorite artists out by donating to them, even little bit helps them to keep working on the content you like. Not only by allowing them to have a nice thing every now and then but by creating them buffer of funds in case of something happens like equipment breakage or life throwing something nasty their way. The longer you can support them the more substantial even the smallest donation grows. I know the effects of this first hand thanks to my wonderful patrons who have allowed me to focus more on to my comics and also provided me the means to maintain and upgrade my equipment. 

So thank you all who have provided me help this year and let’s make next year ever more pony now that I can do more of it!

And if some new people want to help me out on Patreon, and bring me closer to being able to even buy food every month here’s the link:

https://www.patreon.com/Pencils

[datasoong47]

[officialuablog]

@doomcannotbethisadorable

[ffiamgoku]

@errantindy

[comicstarsblog]

18 and Broly

[dcxdpdabbles]

Zatanna answering the phone: Hello?

John: Love. Love. You have to come pick me up. Quickly. Please.

Zatanna: What? But I thought you got along with Bruce.

John: I do! But normally, I have access to my magic when I'm on a loony adventure with Bruce. Normally, I can portal out when things get scary! Please, you have to come get me.

Zatanna: John, I can't go pick you up. I'm traveling the world to find the ingredients to lift your curse.

John: I know the plan was for me to stay with Bruce so he and his family could protect me while you broke my Magic-sealing curse, but Zatanna... these people are weird. I don't feel safe.

Zatanna: Is this because Bruce said you're not allowed to drink in his home? You can go to bars-

John: No. Its not the drinking or the smoking or the awkward crush I have on Bruce and his butler-

Zatanna: What?

John: Zatanna, it's the Ghost King posing as a child. He calls Bruce "Dad" because Bruce adopted him! And Bruce has no idea!

Zatanna doubtful: The Ghost King? The most feared individual in the multiverse is posing as Bruce's kid without Bruce's knowledge? The same Bruce that used Math to beat a god half a year ago?

John: I tried to tell him, but Bruce just laughed and said Danny was his only civilian child. He won't listen to me! None of them will!

Zatanna: Uh-huh. And how old is this Danny?

John: He claims his only fourteen but I know better.

Zatanna: What does he look like?

John: Like the face of evil.

Zatanna: Let me guess. Evil has dark black hair, and blue eyes with a tragic backstory that just needed a safe place to call home?

John: Yes but-

Zatanna: Look, I'm really busy right now. I have to haggle the soul of a never-touched-by-sunlight shrimp from a mermaid merchant- who I know is trying to cheat me!- and I don't have time to listen to you freak out about one of the Waynes kids.

John: No! No you're not listening! He's the Ghost King!

Zatanna: He's a Wayne. That bloodline and anyone adopted into that bloodline, are weird but harmless.

John: Please pick me up. Save me.

Zatanna: John, I can't. Treat this as a vacation. Bruce will let you spend whatever money you want, and since its Bruce, I'll give you permission to try to get him in a throuple with us or just you for a little fun.

John: .....I want that so much but Danny-

Zatanna: Is harmless. Bruce comes with kids, and yeah, all his kids are weird, especially that first one. I don't trust his bubbly personality- I know there is rage underneath that circus upbeat boyish glee. Terrible rage. But that doesn't mean you're in danger there.

John: Zatanna please- *gasp* The Ghost King is watching me from the upstairs window. He's knows im trying to escape.

Zatanna: Are you outside? Good! Go for a walk. Bruce has a lovely forest surrounding his Manor-

John: A walk?! In the woods!? Where the Ghost King can get me alone!? Do you want me to vanish with a trace!?

Zatanna sighing: Nevermind.

Mermaid: I don't have all day. I have other customers and a business to run. Are you giving me your hair or not?

Zatanna: I got to go John.

John: No! PLEASE! Z, PICK ME UP-

Zatanna hanging up and pointing at the mermaid: For the last time I am not shaving my head!

Mermaid: Do you want the soul of a shrimp that has never seen sunlight or not!?

Zatanna: That is not worth ten years of growing out this amount of hair! I can give you my bangs.

Mermaid: Bangs!? Those aren't bangs- they're barely long enough to cover that whale-sized forehead!

Zatanna: SAY THAT AGAIN, FISH.

[humanoidhistory]

Various awesome techno-displays in the original Star Wars (1977)

[dragonfire42]

I've been a fanfic writer on AO3 for two years, have 50+ stories and over 350k in words, lots of fun reader engagement and stay active on Tumblr to promote my stories and fan creations.

Last night I got an angry message on my Tumblr from a user asking why I was flaming their story on AO3.

I never leave negative comments (and I've left over 500 positive ones!). I looked into it, and the hatebots on AO3 used my username with (Guest) at the end to send one of the most vile messages I've ever read to a user in a completely different fandom from me.

I straightened it out with that user and explained about the hatebots. But their initial message to me was angry, they'd found me off AO3 on Tumblr and called out personal details from my page because they thought I was bullying them.

I still can't really fathom why these hatebots do what they do, but I'm also a little scared that a misunderstanding like that could lead to someone getting doxxed. And I'm also extremely sad that this bot is posing as me and threatening other users. I encouraged the one reaching out to me to report and block and made a note on my page explaining that (Guest) comments are not from me in case anyone else had that experience.

I still love AO3 for the ability to write and share and connect over our stories and fandoms, but this is really discouraging and scary, in addition to the almost daily art bot scams I get on AO3 too.

And my heart breaks for the user who thought even for a moment that a complete stranger would say such awful things to them using my name.

And it's devastating to think of so many writers waiting for feedback on a story they worked so hard on who are getting hateful comments like these. Or to think someone could internalize those hateful comments without knowing it's a bot.

My heart breaks especially for newer writers on AO3, it's definitely a different landscape from when I joined two years ago.

As a kid who grew up watching Terminator - I'm not sure I envisioned the robot wars looking quite like this!!

Here's the form to report abuse if you have a comment from a bot: https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new

Here's a link with additional information on the different types of bots on AO3: AO3 Comment Bots - Fanlore https://share.google/m9IhE4NEGMNgHjtWq

Here's a way to fight the bots by leaving positive comments, join the AO3 comment fest bingo: https://ao3org-tumblr-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/ao3org.tumblr.com/post/808198255312781312/welcome-to-feedback-fest-2026/

And anyone who sees my name or any of my pseuds with (Guest) please know it didn't come from me, and don't let a random hate bot discourage you from continuing to write!

[joyandotherstories]

Eesh. If anyone ever gets a negative comment from me, you can know immediately that it was a bot! I would never!!

[sorion]

⬆️⬆️⬆️

[depsidase]

[memeuplift]

[softwarepony]

2021 vs 2026 redraw! Changeling-shy ! 🩷🌷

[tenrose]

2x13 // 4x13

[ffiamgoku]

@nathaylee

Donna did it better XD

[oliviawhen]

Job hunting in a hostile environment. ✨

[nnalyart]

Shooting star by Nnalyart

[soranatus]

NIGHTBROTHER TRAGEDIES THE CLONE WARS (2008-2020) MAUL - SHADOW LORD (2026-)