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.
Celine knew that Miyeong and Rumi were from a long line of Hunters. In fact, they were descendents of the original hunters. Though, Celine always thought some of their family history from the archives was missing. 3 female parents? No way. Where was the father figure in some of those generations too? Now, facing her 3 pupils with wide eyes after hearing Rumi's pregnancy announcement and the way the child was conceived, Celine comes to a disturbing realization that the honstrap has been used a lot longer than she thought. Maybe it's time the hunters write about the honstrap and its consequences for future generations.
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
KPDH AU fic idea but only the beginning cause I have no idea for where it could go later on.
Rumi is raised by the Sajaboys. They were friends with Rumi's dad and once Mi-yeong and him found out there was a way to help demons get their souls back, they helped the Sajaboys. The night Rumi's family is attacked, the Sajaboys arrive in time to save Rumi, but not Mi-yeong or her father. Before dying, Rumi's father asked them to take care of Rumi. Celine and Thirdlight arrive mere minutes after the 6 leave and see the carnage. Confused why there is demon dust and one demon is turning to ash slower than they have ever seen. This one having iridescent patterns. While investigating and ignoring Mi-yeong's the body, Celine finds an envelope addressed to her and Thirdlight. It is a letter from Rumi's father explaining that he's a demon (they were not aware) and that they found a way to help demons get their souls back. Inside is also 2 identical pictures: Rumi, her father (with patterns out), and Mi-yeong. Celine takes one and so does Thirdlight.
I have an idea for the first encounter between Celine, Mira, Zoey, Rumi, and the Sajaboys will go but I will put it below the cut.
Celine had found Mira and Zoey a couple of years ago. They've been struggling to find the 3rd member of the new generation. Well, more like struggling to keep up. Seems she's always on the move. Always going AWAY from the hunters. As if she knows and does not want to be a part of it. However, tonight they finally caught up.
Celine walks up to the door and knocks.
"I'm so excited!!" Zoey says as she grabs Mira by her arm and shakes her.
A few moments pass before the door opens slightly barely revealing a face. "You need to leave."
"So you are keeping the third hunter away. Why?"
"Not interested. Now go". The barely visible eye flashes gold.
Celine pushes open the door, gok-do and shin-kal flash to life.
"Wait!"
To everyone's shock, Celine holds back Mira and Zoey.
"I've only seen one other demon with patterns those colours before. Who are you?"
"What the hell is going on, Celine?" Zoey stammers
"Celine! What the fuck are you doing?!" Mira's clearly enraged by what seems like their mentor betraying the Hunter code.
Before Celine gets a chance to respond, there's a pink cloud and suddenly there's a teenage girl, clearly around Mira and Zoey's age standing just behind the tall, dark haired demon. Long purple hair in a braid, pale with flushed cheeks, and iridescent patterns covering what's visible.
"Jinu! Who's her- Oh. Oh no... Hunters..." The girl sounds congested and now looks horrified.
Zoey and Mira feel as though a final piece of a puzzle has slotted into place.
Mira's eyes go wide when it clicks. "There's no way..."
"Our third is a demon?!" Zoey yells.
"Half-demon," the purple haired teen grumbles in response.
"You're Mi-yeong's daughter. Rumi, isn't it?" Celine whispers in awe. Having made the connection between the photo in her wallet and the purple hair.
"WHAT?!" Two identical shouts from the young hunters.
"You do know who I am," Rumi sniffles. She looks impressed that Celine recognizes her.
"I guess a talk is in order. Tea anyone?" The hunters jump. When had these 2 demons gotten behind them and blocked the doorway?
"We're back with meds and kimbap for Rumi!" The demon with the pink hair and huge muscles states. He looks wary of the hunters. The shorter, teal haired one must have asked about the tea.
This is as far as I get. I don't really have a direction. I just like the idea of Rumi being raised by these 5. Also, I'd like to think that Rumi would argue against the Golden Honmoon because it puts her and her family, and any other possible half demons at risk of being sent to Gwi-ma's realm. And she would rather die than be sent there. She's heard enough horror stories from her 5 father figures.
oops this was supposed to be an organized post about zoey having anger issues but now its just a long ramble, oh well, enjoy i guess
i wrote an big ass essay in @plslemmedie’s comments and still had more thoughts so I’m just making my own post lol(go look at his post(and all his stuff) its very good) i will repeat my points from the comments tho so don’t worry about missing anything
To start, the character introductions mention that zoey gets scary in rap battles and that “you better watch out” while mira’s only mentions that she is the black sheep of her family. Zoey’s aggression is one of the first things we hear about her, so it’s clearly important, and it’s a description of her from others, while mira is only ever described(in the movie) as aggressive by herself. We see mira being direct with rumi about how she thinks rumi is acting strange and hiding something, but she only pushes the issue on the train, after rumi has already dodged her questions several times, and she doesn’t get insulting or physical, she just asks questions that rumi doesn’t want to answer. To rumi(and the audience because rumi is the main character) this feels aggressive because mira is hitting a sensitive point, but mira isn’t being unreasonable when she asks for answers.
Zoey shows anger and aggression as well, she just pushes it down or directs it at herself. At the doctors office, she seems to get upset at his reading of her but she quickly laughs it off. When she gets mad at rumi for wanting to change the takedown lyrics, she tries to destroy her notebook, directing her anger at her own work rather than at rumi.
But when they are backstage after golden, zoey is the one to confront rumi about the patterns, and to get mad at her association with jinu. “How can we be together when we cant tell your lies from your truths” feels much more angry than “i knew it was too good to be true” which just feels sad and resigned. Overall i read mira as someone who is not afraid to address and talk about her emotions, and others emotions as well, she starts the emotional exchange before the idol awards and shes the one whos trying to figure out whats wrong with rumi so they can fix it. She might be insecure about this trait because she sees it as aggressive, but it actually makes her a great communicator and by far the most emotionally intelligent of huntrix. However, zoey is someone who pushes her emotions down because they are “too much” giving her much more potential for an emotional blowup than mira.
I think the problem with putting zoey in the mediator role is that there is nothing for her to do. Mediators are there to make people be honest about their emotions rather than avoiding them or devolving to insults, but mira is already someone who is honest about her emotions and trying to make rumi do the same, and even when rumi is mean to her we don’t see anything to imply that mira would start being mean too. Notice how in the train scene zoey only stops the fight when they need to focus on killing demons, she isn’t trying to meditate the fight because it doesn’t need mediating, mira already fills that role. Zoey trying to stop them wouldn’t be helpful because this is a conversation they need to have, and there isn’t anything in miras method that she needs to change
i want more fics with aggressive, emotional zoey and mediator mira. I think this could actually make *both* characters more interesting because i think mira would see her mediation as more aggression, she is making rumi and zoey acknowledge things they dont want to talk about and in doing so upsetting them, and even if its for the better i bet she would feel bad about it. Maybe zoey and rumi can help her realize that her being “aggressive” is what made them finally acknowledge their emotions so they could begin to heal.
I also find it interesting that mira doesn’t really acknowledge when Zoey’s upset in the movie, she doesn’t even look at zoey as she tries to rip up her notebook. The actual reason for this is probably just that rumi is the main character so everyone is focused on her, but it would be interesting if mira had to deal with guilt at not noticing zoeys built up anger. Maybe zoey is mad at mira for being so attuned to rumis emotions but not noticing zoeys impending breakdown, maybe she thinks mira just doesn’t care. why should she? Zoey is being unreasonable anyway
imagine after the idol awards mira is just glad that her family is back together, maybe she has a little bit of anger but she quickly acknowledges it and works through it either on her own or in a conversation with rumi. Rumi is still working through her shame but she knows now that mira and zoey dont hate her so she’s already in a much better place. And zoey is… fine. Sure she was angry at rumi for lying to them but mira worked through it and rumi isnt mad at them for reacting poorly so everything is fine. If everyone else is okay then zoey being angry still would be unreasonable and rumi and mira shouldn’t have to deal with her being so overly-emotional. Maybe she gets a twinge of anger when rumi continues to hide her true feelings out of habit but she quickly pushes it down (she’s a hypocrite but Rumi’s feelings are valid and a lot of them come from trauma so she deserves to have help working through them, zoey should be able to figure out her emotions herself). Eventually that anger explodes and she knows shes being unreasonable but she never learned how to stop the anger and now thats its out she cant push it down no matter how hard she tries
I like the idea of zoey not having any big major trauma and discounting her feelings because of it. Miras family is abusive, and rumi was raised to hate herself, they’re allowed to be angry, be sad, be messy. but zoey had a good childhood, yes it wasn’t all easy but most everyone has dealt with a bit of bullying, parents fighting, moving countries, its nothing *that* bad. it would be wrong of her to act like she understands anything mira and rumi have gone through, it would be selfish to make them help her with her feelings when they deal with way worse. Rumi and mira have to help her understand that just because her life has been “normal” doesn’t mean she came out unscathed, just because those traumas are common or relatively small doesn’t mean they aren't traumatizing, and you don’t have to experience any amount of bad things to “deserve” to feel
or i think an interesting interpretation if you really want to put zoey in the mediator role is just having her be a bad mediator. If you want to interpret her stopping the fight on the train as an attempt at mediation then maybe her idea of mediation is just stopping any conversation with negative emotions, even when it’s important. Mira tries to get rumi to open up but zoey stops her because it could cause tension. After the idol awards zoey stops any attempts at a serious discussion of what happened because they’re all together again and she cant take that risk. Zoey accidentally pushing her own emotional repression onto rumi and mira because she never learned the difference between an important emotional conversation and a relationship-breaking fight
or maybe you could explore the similarities between rumi and zoey, both feel so much shame for taking up any space in the lives of those they care about. Rumi constantly pushing herself to be the perfect leader, never resting or leaning on her friends. Zoey constantly sanding herself down to avoid being too much, she never lets herself feel anything that might put a strain on others. On the surface their relationship is fine, they have fun together and do love each other but have they ever had a deep conversation? How much do they really know about each other when all they’ve ever talked about is the easy, surface level stuff, each making themself as palatable as possible at the cost of a deeper connection
idk this was supposed to be more organized but then it got rambly again, i just love zoey and think there is so much more to explore with her then people give her credit for
Something that is incredibly ironic and therefore so deeply funny to me is that when I came out as a lesbian to my mom, she said "Aw. Guess I'll never have grandkids from you" (she specifically meant bio grandkids). Meanwhile both of my cishet siblings have had procedures to become sterile and I am the only one wanting kids. Just for my body to decide that I am infertile. Like, haha mom. No bio grandkids for you at all and you can thank karma for that. Deal with it.
I like zukka as a ship but I cannot go into the tags for content about it. why is everyone so insistent on making zuko a little femboy. so many people just see a long haired man regardless of culture/time period and call him femme. And they make sokka hypermasculine like hello????? he’s so fucking flamboyant ?? he wrote poetry, loved arts and crafts, wore a gay little purse, and did DRAG. in CANON. In a modern setting sokka would fix your car and then say SLAYYY do a death drop
if anyone else tries to insinuate zuko’s long hair inherently makes him androgynous/less masc I’m gonna start going around saying iroh has nonbinary swag
ok I wanted to highlight your tags cause a lot of people in the notes are getting carried away with “har har but iroh does have nb swag” when it’s missing the point that people refuse to see men with long hair as masculine, without considering that it’s the norm for many cultures, or the emasculation of East Asian men (esp in context to atla)
this is not saying “there is only one right way to exist in fandom stop telling people what they can and can’t say” but like,,,, consider Looking Inwards when what you’re saying has racial/colorist connotations and why you feel so inclined to say it.
there’s a leaked image of the gaang from the upcoming atla movie, and because it’s leaked it’ll go under the cut, but I wanted to show an example of the way people feminize zuko as soon as his hair is past his shoulders
THIS SHOULDNT NEED TO BE SAID BUT DONT GO AFTER THIS PERSON FOR THIS PLEASE BE NORMAL PLEASE BE NORMAL THEYRE NOT AN IRREDEEMABLE PERSON FOR THIS OR ANYTHING ITS JUST AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT
ty for tags that very eloquently summarize my feelings! some of the things people are doing are not only common in fandom, but also not inherently bad, BUT it’s important to consider the consequences of when tropes are applied tactlessly. also these tags:
it’s interesting you bring up this up considering this poll I saw recently 🤔
I just want to remind everyone that it is absolutely Rumi who helps fixes orders. She is the one to say "Excuse me. We asked for hot water" right at the beginning of the movie. Then later when the Sajaboys enter, Mira and Zoey hide behind her. Like, that woman known as Rumi deals with wrong orders and fans for her girls in canon.
(The girls are having a horror movie marathon.)
[Werewolf guy: "NO! You don't understand! They can't know! They can't know that I'm...that I'm a monster! If they know, they might hate me. They might leave me. They-they...they might even try to kill me! It doesn't matter how lonely I am, if I allow them to get too close, they'll find out. I can never let them find out! Nobody can ever know my horrible secret! Nobody can ever see the monster that I am...the monster that I have ALWAYS been..."]
Rumi: this character is so stupid and overdramatic. You should just talk to them, you idiot! They can't guess your feelings or what's going on with you! You don't know that they won't accept you for being a werewolf! Seriously, this guy wouldn't have half the problems he did if he was just open and honest with his friends!
(...)
Rumi:*notices Mira and Zoey are both silently glaring at her*...what?
Zoey and Mira would probably view this as the better outcome too, all things considered. Truth be told, Zoey probably picked this werewolf movie for their marathon because she wanted to gauge how Rumi reacted to the plot of it.
(Lemme just...)
[Werewolf hunter: "you lied to me! You lied to all of us! I trusted you! Why would you keep a secret like this from me!?"
Werewolf guy: "I-...I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want you to be scared. I'm so, so sorry. I never wanted you to find out like this."]
Rumi: ohhh, look at that! His friends are upset with him now because he kept his dark, horrible secret! If he had just told them himself, they wouldn't have found out in such a bad way!
Zoey: unnie, his friends are werewolf hunters! He was completely in the right to be scared of their reaction!
Mira: and...I mean, his friend did just point his gun at him. So it's not like his fear was completely unwarranted or anything.
(...)
(...)
(...)
Rumi: wait a minute-
I hear you, and I agree with you, but I don't think it's fair of Rumi to hog all the self loathing when Zoemira could totally be shouting at the other werewolf hunters like "obviously they hid that from you dumbass! Killing werewolves is your whole fucking job! I think Imur should be allowed to just fucking kill Yeoz and Arim at this point"
Zoey and Mira see so much of themselves in the two werewolf hunters in the movie (like, so much. It's almost scary actually.) and they've been internalizing it the whole time so that they don't smash the TV. They're in this picture, they don't like it!
Rumi has no idea that she's just making it worse.
Zoey: After everything he's been through the whole movie, I would still 100% be on his side if he had just lunged at his friends and attacked them right then and there!
Rumi: What!? No, they didn't do anything wrong! Yeoz and Arim would just be doing their jobs if they killed Imur! They were trained to kill werewolves, Imur is a werewolf! That just makes sense! Why would you want to punish them for doing what they think is right!?
Mira, rapidly losing her patience with both this movie and Rumi: Why do you want to punish him for being justifiably scared that his friends would kill him when they discovered the truth of his identity!? Especially AFTER that scene where they showed him all the wolf pelts and told him how excited they were to make one of the wolf they were hunting!?
Rumi: We-well, because...he...wait. I feel like you two are making this movie about something else.
Mira: YOU THINK WE'RE MAKING THIS MOVIE ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE!?
(This stupid werewolf movie is tearing this family apart-)
What Zoey was hoping would happen when she put on Pop Punk Werewolf Hunters for her girls - Rumi would find solidarity with the main character because of their (incredibly suspicious) number of similarities and would find it easier to open up to them about everything she's been bottling up for years.
What actually happened when she put that movie on - "RUMI, DID YOU ASK CELINE TO KILL YOU!??!"
[Less than five minutes after the movie is turned off.]
Bobby: oh girls~! I'm here for movie night! I brought sweet and salty popcorn for you-*sniff sniff* hey, is something burning-?
(When he rounds the corner from the entrance, he sees the girls sitting in complete silence on the floor, their TV on fire. They turn to stare at him.)
(...)
(...)
(...)
Zoey: hi, Bobby. We need a new TV.
Bobby: ...it was "Howard the duck", wasn't it? I told you they would hate it.
Post-movie and post Polytrix becoming a thing, Huntr/x decide they want to interact more with their rainbow fans but on the more incognito side. They decide to perform as drag kings and thought it would be funny to be drag king versions of themselves: Rumin, Miran, and Joey. Their performance is an over the top lip sync of one of their own songs (can't be TOO obvious about their identities). Of course they are not actually being that sneaky about who they really are whatsoever but everyone is genuinely enjoying their performance and seeing this side of Huntr/x. At least one member of Huntr/x realizes that they are not cisgender.
During a game show, there was a trivia section. One of the question is "How many minutes in a year?" (Or something lol) And before anyone could respond, Zoey starts belting Seasons of Love from Rent. Due to their own confusion, Rumira are then made to watch Rent later that night and there are many tears. Maybe some charity streams come from it
Now that Mira and Zoey are aware of half-demons and Gwi-ma has been banished, the new threat is a half-demon WILLINGLY serving Gwi-Ma. And Gwi-ma is actually refusing to take their soul because he doesn't want them to become a full demon. So now Huntr/x has to decide what to do or else they will have actual blood on their hands rather than the typical pink dust. And they have to decide fast because this half-demon is wreaking havoc and learned to cause tears, even in the new Honmoon.
Wanna add a bit more angst? The half-demon actually had a good childhood and backstory but is just choosing to be evil. Mira and Zoey are aware that people can and do choose to be bad. Though Rumi has convinced herself that they succumbed to their demon half and is panicking because what if she succumbs to hers? Would the Golden Honmoon have actually saved her from her demon half? Can they still turn it gold? Since Celine refused her request, would she ask the same of Mira and Zoey?
germansingergirl
yousharknotpass
kaledo-art
baratheonpilled
dededos
kianamaiart
