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.
if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills
where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*
i wish we were able to talk about women's rights without someone mentioning how much they do or don't want to have sex with them. i don't care if you're a lesbian Stop finding worth in women purely from their perceived attractiveness
"I think women should not be expected to shave for societal respect / to avoid discrimination" "yeah𤤠i love bush" ok well that's not what we're talking about is it.
i hate how many posts about trans women deserving respect always devolve into "I love girldick" or "trans rights but I don't want to date a trans person" because that's entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. you should not respond to feminism with "YESSS I loveeee you because I see you as nothing but a sex object" you people sound like other men I get stuck talking with that end up saying "free the nipple so I can see boobies in public" and thinking they're feminists. why can't we just respect women regardless of your attraction to them or not. why does it need to be brought up in every conversation regarding their rights
Everyone's talking about Artemis II, the first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years
Historic, right? BUT nobody's talking about the Deaf people who made it possible.
In the late 1950's, NASA had a problem.
They needed to understand what weightlessness did to the human body but every test subject kept getting violently motion sick
NASA needed to figure out FAST during the space race!
So, they went to Gallaudet University. They recruited 11 Deaf people.
Because a number of Deaf people had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children which also damaged their vestibular system.
Their inner ears couldn't be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.
NASA put them in centrifuges. Put them on zero gravity flights. A room for 12 straight days.
(All caps) It rotated the entire time.
One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters, the researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.
Their bodies gave NASA the data and research it needed to send humans into space.
No Gallaudet Eleven? No Mercury. No Apollo. No Artemis II.
They stood on the shoulders of 11 Deaf people most people have never heard of.
"Kill your local sex offender!" Oh, you mean the guy who went streaking at his local college football game on a dare one time? That's a sex crime.
"No, I mean-"
Oh, maybe the woman who had to pee in a public park that only had pay toilets, so she tried to hide behind the bushes but got caught? Public urination is a sex crime.
"What? No, I mean-"
Oh, maybe you mean the homeless guy who had to strip down to get his clothes in the laundromat to clean them for the first time in weeks? He tried being subtle, but someone called the cops on him, and now he's on the sex offender registry for public nudity.
"Rapists and pedophiles! Kill rapists and pedophiles!"
Oh, like the trans woman who got called a pedophile groomer for helping a trans kid escape her abusive parents?
Or maybe the black man who got labeled a rapist because he came on to another man's wife, and he decided to get back at him by charging him with rape?
How about the 17 year olds who were fooling around, fully consensually, in one of their bedrooms? That's still technically underage sex and thus rape of a minor.
Oh, or maybe you're talking about the doctor who performed genital reconstructive surgery in a state that just voted to get that classified as rape?
People will do everything they can to get you convinced rape and pedophilia are the worst crimes possible, then accuse whoever they like the least of being either a rapist, a pedophile, or both, counting on you turning on them just for being accused of the crime.
"Oh, so you're saying you don't want to kill a serial rapist?"
That's exactly what I'm goddamn saying.
Once we decide a group is okay to kill, the government will do everything they can to convince you that their political enemies are either part of that group, or just as bad as that group, to get you to kill their enemies for them.
The only way out is to accept every life as worth saving.
EDIT: If you're going to go on this post to say that no, you think you really should be allowed to kill people you decide are rapists and/or pedophiles, I'm going to block you. I have already been blocking you, because it's clear that you aren't willing to engage with what I'm saying.
Also, if someone says something like that we'd be better off with rapists being dead BUT that they won't let that opinion shape their stance on public policy, and you reply to that person to accuse them of wanting to murder people, I'm also going to block you, because what the fuck that's a completely different sentence.
EDIT 2: Since so many people seem to fail basic reading comprehension, let's state it again, in different words:
1. Killing people is bad.
2. Killing someone can never be undone by any means we have.
3. If the government can kill people, they will want to kill their political opposition and other undesirables (WHICH CAN INCLUDE YOU PERSONALLY AND ANY IF NOT ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY).
4. If there is a class of people OF ANY TYPE who the government can LEGALLY KILL, they now just need to convince you their enemies count as that class (ever wondered why there's so much emphasis on claiming gay people are pedophiles? Now you know!)
5. If there is a class of people OF ANY TYPE that the public can LEGALLY KILL, murderers just need to convince people that their victims counted as that class (I murdered him because he's a rapist. Anyway now his job is free promote me into that position plz.)
6. As pointed out in the notes (thank you everyone pointing this out!), if the penalty for a crime is death, people are much more willing to silence witnesses to that crime (for example, murdering their rape victims), which is EVEN WORSE than just committing the initial crime.
7. THEREFORE the only way to keep those from happening is to have NO category of people it is considered okay to kill FOR ANY REASON.
I think that would be so much funny. He wakes up on a remote beach in Jamaica and he only speaks/understands Brythonic and Medieval Latin. Locals assume he was a tourist who fell from a cruise ship or received a head injury and floated away from a resort. The authorities cannot match his description to any missing persons reports and his fingerprints and DNA produce no hits on INTERPOL. They suspect he may be Welsh or French because the language he speaks resembles Welsh or Breton but France and the UK both state he is not a citizen of their country. Stateless and deeply confused, he is taken in by the community near the beach where he was found, being cared for by a number of local families and doing odd jobs. He slowly learns English and adjusts to the contemporary world, uncertain if his belief that he is the legendary King Arthur was formed by whatever traumatic event caused him to end up Jamaica or if he is actually King Arthur and Prydain is in eminent peril. Mysterious letters from Morgan begin to reaffirm his belief he is King Arthur. He must choose between staying in Jamaica and continuing the happy life he has made for himself or finding a way to get back to Britain without any documentation.
He gets to Britain and everyone expects him to sound like a posh noble Englishman because that is the picture Malory painted but he prefers to speak Welsh and when he has to speak English, he speaks with a thick Jamaican accent.
also the way he pulls britain out of said peril really pisses off the right wingers, at least in part because he recognises that he cannot do it alone and chooses those he trusts (his jamaican community) as his knights
Absolutely, Guinevere is the Jamaican nurse who took him in in this universe and many of his friends in the Jamaican community that took him in are analogous with/reincarnations of common characters from Arthurian mythology. Except for Merlin. Who is the original Merlin. Who is living a retiree lifestyle in The Bahamas for plot and wizard foresight reasons.
Unrelated side note, I love slipping in an occasional Prydain in place of Britain just to remind everyone King Arthur was not English. The landmass is Ynys Prydein to him. âď¸
âThis month, Finland launched the worldâs largest sand battery, enabling residents to remove oil from their district heating network and reduce emissions by nearly 70 percent, as reported by Euro News. If it continues to operate as efficiently and affordably as expected, sand batteries could become common worldwide. Developed by Finnish company Polar Night Energy, this battery uses excess clean electricity to heat sand to high temperatures, storing thermal energy that can later be released to heat homes and power local industries. This is not Finlandâs first sand battery, but it is significantly larger. The facility in Pornainen is an insulated silo that stands 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide, containing 2,000 tonnes of crushed soapstone. The sand retains heat remarkably well, losing only 10 to 15 percent during storage and recovery, according to The Cool Down.â
â
Sand batteries are a significant advancement in clean energy technology.
Holy shit, this is incredible.
âThis new facility can hold 100 MWh for about a month in summer and a week in winter. Â Thatâs enough for the town of 5000 local residents.
TechCrunch estimates the Finnish batteryâs costs are under $25 per kilowatt-hour, compared to around $115 for leading lithium-ion batteries.90% efficiency.It doesnât use any ârare earthsâ or critical materials. Â Instead using locally sourced, recyclable materials.Units are scalable and modular to fit different needs and uses.
Suits small towns (like the current facility) and large scale industrial uses.
13 meters tall and 15 meters wide. Independent of geography. Â
No supply issues due to any geo-political problems.
Designed to store energy when itâs cheap and plentiful and supply when itâs expensive.â
Go Check out Neet- sheâs awesome (her socials are at the bottom of the linked page if you want to see some of the training videos for this and other silliness)
I do think itâs interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. Itâs very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isnât to say the stories of Olde didnât have fun with loopholes either though).
Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. Heâs possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone whoâs regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because heâs already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.
He knows now that he doesnât have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly heâs already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.
Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.
All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! Itâs just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise Iâve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monsterâs plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!
So yeah. Dracula isnât stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like⌠That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and arenât even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century heâd probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldnât help.
Dracula's entire channel is just him doing random shit around the house, but on camera it looks like objects moving of their own volition because *he* is invisible. The channel is crazy popular because everyone assumes this is some video editor flexing his skills on the side for fun.
Though come to think of it -- even if he vampires cannot be SEEN on camera, can they still be heard? He might also just be a game streamer who happens to only do audio, never showing his face on camera but being heard perfectly clearly.
one of the things the atla universe writers can never do properly is write about the entire bender vs non bender situation lol. they consistently have plots where non-benders want recognition and justice because they feel like they're being mistreated by the benders, and the writers always make them out to be the villain. i still think in the original show they dealt with this topic fairly well, but the legend of korra and the movie is where it really just falls flat in the face. both the movie and tlok constantly sideline and neglect their non-bending characters, or just not have any (except the ONE token non-bender!), and then try to act like the in canon non-benders are stupid for saying they're being mistreated. like you are LITERALLY proving their point !!!!!!!! for example, the movie essentially making sokka entirely useless (except giving him a flying bicycle for one hype aura moment which inevitably leads nowhere), and then erasing almost ENTIRETY of it's other non-bending cast, just makes me think, hey maybe the denied have a point actually. i understand that it's a movie and they can't bring in every single side character, but was suki not a part of the main gang by the end of the show? was sokka not a leader, a strategist and eventually a politician? why couldn't we hear sokka's thoughts on the denied? i understand that the denied are violent and have disruptive ways of being seen and heard, but isn't their core principle right? are the non-benders not treated worse?
this isn't even a new point that was first mentioned in tlok. you see it in the original show. except they never spell it out for you. you see it in the way sokka feels about himself, you see it in the way toph initially treats sokka and assumes he's useless because he can't bend. the boiling rock episodes aren't just fun, but they're such good examples of sokka, suki and hakoda, (and mai and ty lee!!!!) who are all non-benders, doing most of the heavy lifting to get them out. sokka with his brain, suki with her fearlessness and dedication to her art, and hakoda with his strength. the atla universe always comes so close to addressing this issue with maturity and dignity and then just backtracks when it realises it can't give it too much time because it isn't as cool as bending. it just makes me angry.
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