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.
A lifesaving injection given at birth to prevent severe bleeding has become collateral damage of the anti-vaccine movement.
talk to your coworkers about this. remember that the "taking advice from everyone except the experts" thing cuts both ways. you can be the non-expert guy at work who isnt an expert and gives someone advice they decide to follow based on vibes, but your advice can be the right advice instead. this is something we can all do.
the vitamin k shot has zero side effects, it is literally just a vitamin that does nothing except prevent babies from bleeding to death internally. its one of those things that does absolutely nothing except what it's supposed to do, is cheap, and has drastically reduced infant mortality this century and the last
also if youre wondering why the vit k shot is given (and it's a fair question!): some vitamin k is found in diet, but most vitamin k is typically produced by your gut bacteria. however, newborns have a sterile gut (meaning theyre born without bacteria in it) and dont start producing their own vitamin k until around 4-6 months of age. additionally, while there is vitamin k in breastmilk, its not enough to prevent life threatening bleeding and thats why we have the shot in the first place
vitamin k is important for making clotting factors that prevent severe bleeding from minor cuts.
more info here from uc davis's health blog
Vitamin K shots are part of routine care for newborns. However, there are many myths about vitamin K injections. Our experts give you the fa
I was disappointed to be asked like 2 or 3 times about whether to give vit k to my baby, and whether it should be oral or the injection. In part because they didn't explain why it's given so it felt kind of optional? They also didn't explain why they offered different preparations or that oral is not nearly as good.
But mainly because as a Doc, I think it should be standard treatment and presented as "this is a lifelong treatment we give for this reason. There are infinitesimally small risks if we give it and much bigger risks if we don't. This is standard recommended researched backed treatment. We highly recommend this for your newborn for these reasons...".
I hope they were minimal with their explanation because I'm a medical professional, but i worry that in the general chaos, parents may be declining bevause they aren't adequately informed.
If you haven’t heard, today PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome has been renamed to Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome. This change reflects that this is not a reproductive “problem” but a whole body disease.
(Text: PCOS affects an estimated 10-13% of reproductive-aged women. It is estimated that up to 70% of women with PCOS worldwide do not know they have this condition.)
The Lancet link about shift to PMOS. Spread this to everyone who works in health care now. People with uteruses and ovaries are in agony - yes, the whole body suffers a crisis every fkn month - and health care should help
Hey guess what i saw this a few days ago when i was in an absolutely scary slump and then i spoke to my counsellors and did what they told me to do and now i feel so much better. So this is true. Reblogging for more good luck
Because the essence of humanity and life as a whole is a constellation of connections with one another. We are all here in this cosmos together, from the tiniest creatures to the distant stars.
Americans will see someone express mild discomfort that they teach their children obliterating two civilian cities in the most horrific manner humanity has yet devised was a defensible wartime strategy and be like "to be fair,"
Fun fact! The Japanese were literally trying to surrender and were going through the Soviets (the US' allies throughout WW2) to negotiate but were only really holding out because they wanted assurances that America wouldn't execute the emperor (go figure, the leader didn't want to die because he said he gave up). America wasn't actually planning to execute him, but refused to accept anything less than unconditional surrender, and that was a condition. Regardless of conditions, Japan was going to be surrendering the moment the USSR invaded, which was planned to happen imminently. America knew this. America knew that once the USSR entered the war with Japan, they would have a seat at the negotiating table.
Anti-communist sentiments were already strong in US leadership. The US didn't want communists gaining any more ground on the world stage and nuking Japan was a way to kill two birds with one bomb: end the war before the USSR entered and show the USSR that the USA could wipe out any of their cities in the blink of an eye. People sometimes try to argue that the second bomb had to be dropped because Japan didn't surrender after the first, but Japanese leadership didn't even meet to discuss the first bomb until shortly before the second dropped. At that point, losing an entire city had little effect on leadership. They already had entire cities leveled with conventional weapons. They hadn't yet processed that Hiroshima was leveled by a single bomb. It didn't matter though. The fact that they delayed at all gave America an excuse to prove to the USSR that they could do it again. The US obliterated two cities in Japan ultimately as a shot across the bow for the USSR.
What popular history likes to gloss over is the chain of events that lead to Perl Harbor. The US initially supported Japan (along with selling resources to all sides in the European war), even as Japan committed war crimes across China and Korea. The US had good relations with Japan at that point and saw Japan's invasion of China as a way to get a foothold in a country that had a history of being restrictive of foreign trade. Japan didn't roll out the red carpet for America though; they realized that they had something that the USA wanted and planned to use that to their advantage in global politics and trade. In response, the US stopped selling steel to Japan for their war effort. US leaders/strategists were very aware that cutting Japan off from resources they'd been relying on for their war would invite retaliation, and thus Perl Harbor happened. The US only ever cared about gaining greater access to markets and labor and was willing to fight a war over it, but in such a way that Japan would make the first move.
The US might have ended up on the right side of WW2, but not for the right reasons. The war in Europe was already going in the allies' favor and the entrance of the US only really expedited the war, but it gave the US a seat at the table when deciding what happened after the war. It let the US build military bases in Europe and bring more US businesses into Europe. The US suffered the least from the war and was able to take advantage of the fact that they didn't need to rebuild entire cities like every European country did. it was politically and financially beneficial to the US to join the war late on the side that was already set up to win, especially with a little extra push.
And for the future, the US had a chance to show the world that they weren't afraid to wipe out entire cities with a single bomb. They didn't care about the children incinerated at school, or the handful of survivors who would die because of the radiation. There was no reason for the US to obliterate two cities in a single moment. The US could have chosen to end the war by then but refused to accept any conditions of surrender. The US only used those bombs to show the world how heartless they could be, and then spent decades feeding the public propaganda about how it was necessary so that no one would question why they would ever be willing to do something so horrific.
scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple
the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!
i genuinely can't fucking deal with the larger internet anymore holy shit what the fuck are you people TALKING about. i am at my limit with this stupid bullshit. who the fuck cares if a man is hired to draw medical diagrams for young girls jesus christ we're pearl clutching about medical illustrations now? next you're gonna tell me male pediatricians shouldn't advise parents on their kids' vulva issues? male surgeons shouldn't be in the room when performing a procedure where a woman's breasts or vulva might be exposed? male researchers shouldn't conduct gynecological medical research? sure. better for men to live in ignorance and NEVER ally themselves with us to expand access to sexual education and reproductive healthcare i fucking guess. Twenty thousand likes. i hate it here KILL ME
Ok, so there's something that's been bothering me in The Pitt fandom, specifically in fanfiction, regarding the nurses.
I need people to understand that Robby and Abbot are Dana and Lena's colleagues, not their bosses. Nursing staff are not under the supervision of doctors - organizationally. Medically, yes, nurses carry out physician orders and report changes in patient assessment to physicians, etc. etc.
But Dana does not report to either of them as her supervisors. None of the nurses do. The nursing chain of command is:
Registered nurses (RNs), Licensed Professional/Vocational nurses (LPNs/LVNs), and certified nurse assistants (CNAs) all report to the charge nurse. The charge nurse changes by shift. You can be on shift and not be charge that day because you're not the most experienced charge trained nurse on the schedule, but then the next shift you are and you get the unfortunate distinguished punishment honor of being charge.
The charge nurse reports to the unit nurse manager. For the ER that would be the ER nurse manager. Dana could technically be the ER nurse manager and it just hasn't been mentioned yet. Often times when you are short-staffed the nurse manager will take on patients and act as charge nurse. Nurse managers generally work day shift during the week and have weekends off with some on call times.
The ER nurse manager reports to the Director of Nursing sometimes called VP of Nursing (lol vpn). The director often supervises multiple units, like in the children's hospital I worked at that was attached to an adult hospital, our DON was supervisor for all the children's hospital units (General Peds, Peds ICU, Peds Step-Down, Outpatient procedures, etc.), but she wasn't over the ER because our patients came through the adult ER (we were building a Peds ER at the time I left but didn't have one yet).
Director of Nursing reports to the Chief Nursing Officer.
Please note, at no point is any nurse supervised by a physician. We even have a separate chief, they have the Chief Medical Officer, we have the Chief Nursing Officer. If a physician has a complaint regarding a nurse, they will address it with the charge nurse and the charge nurse will either address the issue themselves or report it up to the unit nurse manager. Do physicians sometimes yell at nurses in the patient's room and then go complain to the charge nurse? Yes, especially surgeons because they are dicks who think they are God's gift to medicine (I may have had beef with a surgeon...)
I have seen things in fics, specifically in Emma Nolan fics where she is paired with Park the Shark, where the author talks about the nurse being "on x physician's service" which... Honey, no.
Nurses are not on any physician's "service." We work on a specific unit, sometimes float to other units or pick up an extra shift on another unit, but the physician you work with changes. If you're working on a med-surg or general peds unit, you can have three different doctors for your patient load. If you work ICU or ER, it depends which attendings and residents are on shift/call. If you're an OR nurse, you're assigned to a specific surgical team and can have one or two different surgeries you're assigned to scrub in on, but you may or may not have the same surgeon for them.
Anyway. That is my rant about nursing and the misogynistic, patriarchal way we are constantly, even in the year 2026, viewed as physicians little helpers rather than as our own healthcare profession.
The Pitt discourse pisses me off, and I'm drunk enough to ramble about it.
(Rambles from an ICU/OR nurse)
It's a weekend, minimal staff (which is already dwindled to fuck-all). The weather has been cold; total hip replacement, total knew replacement. Oh, there's two emergency laparoscopic cholecystectomies, but shit-
A six year old is in ED, run over by a car. You go down, as anaesthetic support (ODP, idk what it's called in America), and immediately start CPR on this tiny broken body.
He dies.
Back to the OR, the appendix is waiting.
Soon as you're finished, an abdominal aortic aneurism is being blue-lighted in. Set up vascular theatre. You don't have a circulator; anaesthetist is gonna have to learn fast.
It's minutes after arrival to the OR that their abdomen is open. Counting gauze, suture needles, diathermy tips...it's all you focus on.
Success (loosely)...patient is on the ICU, but there's no time to wait. Necrotising fasciitise has just rolled in, already being brought up to the OR.
Extra precautions, like during COVID. You think briefly to the patients you proned in ICU, to the young adults who hadn't lived a full life, and to the deniers who'd roamed the corridors shouting COVID ain't real, whilst you're in the ICU using outdated ventilators to give someone a chance. Out of the window, you see the storage containters which define the extended morgue.
Over the years, you care for many patients. Cancer, freak accidents, neglect, abuse...every day, you try your best to change the future for the patient in front of you and somehow not think of the six year old who was killed by a drunk driver. Don't think of the three year old who you'd held, the first gentle touch he'd probably had. Don't think of the husband in tears as you tell his wife she has three months left to live. Don't think of the mom of three who's on end-of-life care. Don't think of your colleague who'd counted his days down to retirement, just to be diagnosed with metastasic cancer after a misdiagnosis of an aortic aneurysm that was being monitored.
Don't think of all the human life that was unjustifiably cut short because you're just doing a job. Carry on, sleep for five hours, do it all again in the morning. "That's your job", after all.
Imagine dealing with life outside of this. History, trauma, debt, isolation...there's so many aspects to hospital workers which go ignored because "they're coping"...not to mention the political, financial aspects.
Robby, I wish I'd lasted this long without crashing out.
@str4wbsstuff tagging you babes bc idk who else I can tag without them blocking me (I'm so sorry) ❤️
I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.
– https://searchmysite.net/
Search engine for the indie web, personal websites, digital gardens. You can also find them in websites like Neocities, Indieweb, Blogarama, and write.as. There is also a big list of personal websites.
– https://search.marginalia.nu/
Search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and promotes websites that aren’t usually at the top of the list.
– https://www.worldcat.org/
Search engine for items in libraries (books, but also maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, etc.)
– https://scholar.google.com/
Search engine for scientific papers, reviews, etc. It’s still google, but a lot better than the normal search engine counterpart.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
A list of search engines sorted by subject, area, and more. If you’re searching on a specific area, it might be worth checking if there is one focused on that area.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines
A list of academic databases and search engines.
– https://tineye.com/
Reverse image search alternative to Google’s.
Also, P.S.: Please stop using Google, and start using more privacy focused search engines, like DuckDuckGo or SearchX (opensource; personally haven’t used it yet, but it looks promising for privacy-focused users)
Doctor: no problem sir we'll stitch you up. Get me 100ccs of lorazepam stat and intubate. Oh no, why isn't this working? His feet are still in danger!
*uncovers sheets to reveal hooves*
Other Doctor Who Is More Woke: those are his hooves you bitch. Prep 10000ml of Ketamine.
First Doctor: damn. I was wrong and it almost cost this poor patient his life.
Second Doctor: 90% of all patients are secretly horses and anti-horse bias kills thousands every year. As Doctors we need to check our prejudices, and you can read more about this on www.somepatientsarehorses.com
Instead of being in settings its in the google app. Also, google, not chrome. Icon is a G, not the circle thing. Click on your pfp to open a menu
From there, go Settings > Gemini > Digital Assistants > Switch to Google Assistant. This disables Gemini, google's AI assistant, and switches you back to the old one. We aren't done yet.
Go back to Settings. From there, we go Settings > Google Assistant > scroll to find General > Google Assitant on/off > turn it off
They really tried their best to make it a pain, but you can eventually disable it. Holding the power button on your phone still pulls up a menu and asks you to turn it back on, but this is the least intrusive you can make it.
Applies to all non-apple phones afaik. For sure Samsungs and Pixels but idrk about others
Edit: thank you my friend @/teeth-kid for confirming that this also works on Motorola
the phrase "the poison drips through" has done irreversible damage to the Pitt fandom and perpetrates the idea that every one of Langdon and Samira's flaws are Robby's Fault. the department's problems are Robby's Fault. no, it doesn't matter that administration and American healthcare are the true villains, no, it doesn't matter that all of these people are grown, autonomous adults. it is All Robby's Fault.
it doesn't matter that Frank was already having issues with his marriage before his addiction was even uncovered, it doesn't matter that he's the one who stole the pills, it doesn't matter that he was the one who yelled at an intern, it doesn't matter that he views the healing journey as "punishment" instead of the consequences of his actions, all that matters is Robby is being so harsh with him. which apparently absolves frank of everything ever and makes it Robby's Fault.
it doesn't matter that Samira does not extend the same empathy to her coworkers as she does to her patients, isolating herself with her judgement and at times rude behavior, that she struggles to accept any correction, that she throws herself into the work, that she is stubborn, that she is struggling with her mother seemingly "moving on" without her. every aspect of her burnout is Robby's Fault. because he was mean to her, it absolves her of everything ever.
yeah. Robby should've given Langdon a forehead kiss and a pat on the back and welcomed him home because he didn't meaaan itttt. he should never correct Samira in any way ever because she's completely perfect and always knows better, as an R3, than the emergency department chief attending.
Robby is not faultless. not all all. he has contributed to Samira's burnout, 100%. he has contributed to how messy the Langdon situation is, 100%. he's flawed. he's human. he's a better teacher than he is a mentor, and he has a lot of amends to make once he's able, and no one is required to forgive him.
but he's not poison. and your faves are not perfect.
and you gun for frank and samira so hard because they're your "perfect" victims, your poor little children. because they get sad. they get more sympathy because they hang their heads and get all shaken up and widen their eyes. they're not like trinity, a cornered dog, snapping back against a perceived threat. not like Robby, irritable in his overwhelm, covering up his grief with anger to try desperately not to drown.
you only enjoy a palatable victim or a palatable struggle. you only sympathize with softer, easier to understand mental issues. you think that because someone with real, mental struggles might actually be fucking difficult, they are "poison."
you should be ashamed of the way you interact with this show.
I've always believed that a good TV series doesn't necessarily have to tell people what to do. It can reflect real-life issues, and showing people that is just as valuable.
I once interned in an EICU, and unfortunately, I witnessed many similar incidents.
My senior, who graduated from a top medical school and was doing rotations as a resident at a prestigious hospital, seemed to have it all. But she had to face the high pressure and harsh environment of the emergency department. In her first 30 years, she pursued perfection in academics and research to the extreme, only to find herself in a place where her individuality was gradually erased. Yes, she loves medicine and is eager to help patients, but the environment's encouragement for her was far outweighed by its toll on her. Where death is a number and healthcare is a procedure. In an environment where people die almost every day, it's easy to unconsciously overlook the more mundane, yet truly important things that make us who we are, our sense of self, free time, mental health, etc. Many doctors suffer from insomnia and spinal problems due to prolonged sitting, and the injuries and illnesses they incur from work prevent them from working forever, which then becomes seen as a lack of diligence. And yes we use hand sanitizer all the time because God knows how many germs are in this environment.
The point I'm trying to make is that the emergency department is a brutal environment, and the more sensitive a person is, the more it will destroy them. Either you numb yourself, leave, or continue to suffer. One thing I haven't encountered is someone changing this environment to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve. So, while Mohan's departure was painful, it wasn't unfamiliar to me. And for the TV show that portrays all of this, I am very grateful. Even if it does end up only describing it without offering any solutions, it wouldn't make it absurd or meaningless. Honestly, who can truly give me a solution?🫠
We have a girl at work right now who had a childhood cancer and radiation and then multiple attempts at reconstruction that did NOT heal properly and left her face kind of munted and her jaw internally disconnected on one side for 20 years and she was really. Really. REALLY asymmetric until NOW.
The fellers at work put it back and secured it in place and replaced the missing parts of her face with 3D reconstructive stuff. And she looks so symmetrical. Like. Only a little scarred externally. She can shut her mouth now. And her eye. And smile and eat and talk.
I’m uh fucking uh crying. Incredible shit. They gave her her face back! She hasn’t seen her proper face until now!
annaxmalina
prguitarman
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
areudirty
izzy806
