zeynep tufekci

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zeynep tufekci

zeynep tufekci

@zeynep

Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @Princeton professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter @insight https://t.co/6Ky01N9JwA

floating in a most peculiar way Katılım Ağustos 2009
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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
Alternatively, this is where it very plausibly goes. Another mostly stable, wealthy system sacrificed to avoidable short-term folly. What’s with the wealthy, influential, powerful folks? Why aren’t they all screaming? Their first class ticket isn’t getting them off the Titanic.
zeynep tufekci tweet mediazeynep tufekci tweet media
zeynep tufekci@zeynep

"Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman on the first month of WWI is another essential book, along with her other classic "March of Folly." Both are excellent to help to fight the temptation of looking at world history teleologically.

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
Should add: Also recarbonize… Turn back to coal. The structure that held things together is no more. Even if it this ends tomorrow, many countries rationally will rush to adjust to this. Best case scenario looks like a painful transition.
Javier Blas@JavierBlas

MUST READ: Coal remains king — even in 2026. "... Across Asia, a sharp drop in liquefied natural gas supplies is pushing major importers back toward coal, undermining LNG’s long-held role as a stable energy anchor..." nytimes.com/2026/03/18/bus…

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
One result will be the human toll during the painful rush to decarbonize under Chinese hegemony (industrial base for that is there). This is probably baked in by now though depth of suffering depends on how and when this phase ends. Add to immense and ongoing toll of last year.
Heather Exner-Pirot@ExnerPirot

Some of you still seem to think oil is only used for gasoline for light duty vehicles, because that’s the only time you’ve physically encountered it. Expensive and scarce oil is an omnicrisis for the global economy. It cannot be replaced by electrons from solar panels.

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
@BrendanNyhan @CharlotteAlter They absolutely make stuff up often enough and in subtle ways even on the recent, paid frontier ones. It’s just not reliable enough unless you are watching every single line like a hawk and can tell when it’s confidently spouting nonsense. It’s not always but frequent enough.
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Charlotte Alter
Charlotte Alter@CharlotteAlter·
For me this moment was when AI told me my husband is Jewish (false) and told me we got married in a synagogue I’ve never heard of by a rabbi I’ve never met You think AI is helpful until you ask it about something you know very well and you see firsthand how wrong it is
Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸@gaughen

I didn't realize how hilariously bad artificial intelligence was until tonight, when I asked it about something I'm an expert on. I asked it about zoning laws in Pennsylvania and the AI hallucinated case law that doesn't exist. Silicon Valley wants us to rely on this slop? 😬

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Roger Parloff
Roger Parloff@rparloff·
“If you don’t approve this settlement, I will destroy you,” @mrddmia told Gail Slater, then head of DOJ’s antitrust div. (Davis denies.) This gift @WSJ article details alleged corruption/patronage in DOJ, starring Mike Davis & others .... 1/2 wsj.com/us-news/law/lo…
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Lee Vinsel
Lee Vinsel@STS_News·
Conversely, I think @zeynep is striking a different and better path. I have some questions about a few parts of it, which I hope to write about too, but her approach is more interesting to me as a starter. slideslive.com/39055698/are-w…
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Lee Vinsel
Lee Vinsel@STS_News·
More and more, I think this is the right take. Personally, I have found the "stochastic parrots" approach super helpful for thinking about the ultimate limits of these tools, but it can miss the sociological reality that tools can be limited and yet . . . still useful, to some.
Joe Weisenthal@TheStalwart

This is the schism of the left right here. By having staked the claim early on, that LLMs are a gimmick or a "stochastic parrot" that can't actually know anything, it's unacceptable, from the perspective of many, to actually take seriously the capabilities of the models.

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megan twohey
megan twohey@mega2e·
NEW: Last year, a former modeling agent who famously introduced Trump and Melania asked a top ICE official to have the mother of his son detained. Paolo Zampolli told the official that it would help him in a custody battle. The ICE official agreed to help. nytimes.com/2026/03/20/us/…
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James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️
James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️@provisionalidea·
the most amazing thing about this propaganda was that China kept it to itself for domestic use an American journalist had to find it through their own channels, upload it here, someone else had to run it through a translation service… it wasn’t distributed through eg tiktok…
Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸@AngelicaOung

Did YOU want to watch CCTV's AI Martial Arts cartoon about the Straits of Hormuz crisis? Complete with fighting Persian Cats? Well I subtitled it for you so you can enjoy it in all its trope-laden glory! Remember kids, the mountains will stay standing while the green water flows, and the true art of war is not figuring out how to fight, but how to stop!🥷😼🦅

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William Han
William Han@W_T_Han·
What a time to be alive. The final line, "war consists not in fighting but in stopping," refers to the composition of the Chinese character 武: martial, the first part of "wuxia." It consists of 2 parts: 戈, an ancient weapon, and 止, "to stop." In 597 B.C., King Zhuang of Chu, having won a grand victory, called for peace by pointing out the composition of 武 and coining the phrase 止戈為武 "war consists in stopping the war." However, King Zhuang knowingly relied on a false etymology. 止 in one sense means "to stop," but in ancient Chinese it also meant "toe," today written as 趾. The true etymology of 武 was weapon+toe, i.e. an image of marching to war. Nonetheless, "war consists in stopping the war" became a Chinese proverb, a reminder from the ancients that the true art of war is in securing the peace.
Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸@AngelicaOung

Did YOU want to watch CCTV's AI Martial Arts cartoon about the Straits of Hormuz crisis? Complete with fighting Persian Cats? Well I subtitled it for you so you can enjoy it in all its trope-laden glory! Remember kids, the mountains will stay standing while the green water flows, and the true art of war is not figuring out how to fight, but how to stop!🥷😼🦅

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
@saffronhuang @AnthropicAI Thank you! Very interesting. (Knives too!) I may reach out for a few more questions. (This relates to an ongoing research project we have).
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Saffron Huang
Saffron Huang@saffronhuang·
Great question. People named these tools as examples of neutral technologies themselves. We used Claude to identify broad themes from the responses by map-reducing summaries of people's answers to this question. This emerged as one such theme among those who said they weren't concerned about AI. Specifically, many reached for analogies like electricity or the internet (and also knives) to frame AI a neutral technology whose outcomes depend on how people use it. Claude also surfaced to us examples of individual users making this comparison.
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zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
Does anyone at @AnthropicAI want to answer this? Is the notion that “electricity or the internet” are examples of “a neutral tool” something respondents voiced NAMING those two OR did people just say “AI is a neutral tool” and @AnthropicAI researchers picked those as examples?
zeynep tufekci tweet media
Anthropic@AnthropicAI

We invited Claude users to share how they use AI, what they dream it could make possible, and what they fear it might do. Nearly 81,000 people responded in one week—the largest qualitative study of its kind. Read more: anthropic.com/features/81k-i…

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The Washington Post
The Washington Post@washingtonpost·
Last year, the Trump administration deported more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT, an infamous megaprison known for human rights abuses. A year later, little is known about the status or whereabouts of the deported Salvadorans. wapo.st/3NipQRE
The Washington Post tweet mediaThe Washington Post tweet media
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Kenneth P. Vogel
Kenneth P. Vogel@kenvogel·
Trump's DOJ this month quietly backed Alexander Smirnov's bid to withdraw his guilty plea & wipe out his sentence. Smirnov had admitted lying to the @FBI about Burisma's owner arranging to pay $5m in bribes to both Joe & Hunter Biden. 👀@DavidCornDC find link.motherjones.com/public/44694709
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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
@JoeyOtweets Well, see now that’s a good question. We are getting something, but as the report notes, need better tracking. Majority of this spending is providing suitable housing for this population AND convincing them to use it — and usage has nearly doubled since they increased the budget.
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Mr. Tweety
Mr. Tweety@JoeyOtweets·
@zeynep That it's a small number of people is exactly why it's so attention grabbing. I am close to people with severe mental illness, so I do appreciate the challenges, but if we're spending $80k/person with so little to show for it we are doing something wrong.
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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
How X works: Tweet goes viral, people say just give the money to the homeless, blah blah. No interest in WHO this population of a few thousand people actually are (hint: NOT the general homeless) or why countries like France, Australia, etc. spend similar sums on the same group.
Mike Bird@Birdyword

Absolutely astounding figures from the NY state comptroller: spending on services for the NYC street homeless population ran to $81,705 per person last year, up from $28,428 pp 6yrs ago. Figures do not include all kinds of other spending, supportive housing, policing costs etc.

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
Some of these illnesses — severe psychosis, schizophrenia — strike people in their young adulthoods. Kids who had happy, well-adjusted, successful lives, got into top colleges, etc. Suddenly lost to family often ends up in the street, hostile to shelter/services offers. If you want to target bloat, corruption, too much spending etc. there are certainly many targets in many cities and the US government. This happens to be a highly thorny problem, hence similar spending levels in France, Australia, etc.
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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
@JoeyOtweets It’ not everyone — it’s small population with a large portion of people the report describes as “severely mentally ill” and refusing treatment/shelter. You have children, right? Try reading some cases of how hard it can be even when parents have money, resources and effort.
zeynep tufekci@zeynep

You couldn’t be more wrong. The bar is extremely high since the 1975 SCOTUS decision, and it was horrifically abused before. See this tragic case with both money and will — one parent is prominent AEI scholar and other one is a prominent lawyer. nytimes.com/2018/03/06/opi… and nytimes.com/2015/11/17/opi… There is no magic wand here and we aren’t spending 80k per generic homeless person in NYC.

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zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci@zeynep·
Your practice is people/family approaching you! Very different. How are you getting “treating psychiatrists and his reports” for a population that’s actively refusing shelter and services options, who will not consent to guardianship obviously, and you’re going to locate their relatives how??? Nothing easy or cheap here, no?
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Keşfet

@BrendanNyhan @CharlotteAlter @mrddmia @WSJ @STS_News @OpenIsBest @saffronhuang @AnthropicAI