John Burrows

The totalitarianism we warned of is happening. The European Union is at this moment forcing big tech companies to secretly engage in mass censorship. Google and Facebook are, apparently, going along with it. Only Elon Musk’s X, among the major platforms, is resisting. A few hours ago, Musk said, “The European Commission offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. 𝕏 did not.” And so now, the EU is preparing to punish X with massive fines — up to 6% of total global revenue. I can't imagine a more egregious form of foreign interference in our domestic affairs than foreign governments demanding mass secret censorship for ideological and political purposes. Most terrifying is the apparently direct involvement of government intelligence and security agencies, and their intermediaries, in demanding censorship. This is all happening at the very moment that the same governments, including our own, warn of Russian disinformation through spam accounts that hardly anybody ever sees. Don’t be fooled by what is happening. Governments and former intelligence officials in Europe, Australia, Israel, Brazil, and Ukraine and other nations are not only demanding censorship but also often spreading their own disinformation. For example, the EU claims that there is more false information on X than on other platforms, and more censorship would reduce it. This is false. Only X has the open-source Community Notes system, which allows for real-time corrections to false information. A recent study in JAMA, the Journal of American Medicine, found that 97.5% of the Community Notes were entirely accurate, 2%, partially accurate, and 0.5%, inaccurate. It’s not perfect. I myself sometimes disagree with them. And of course, science is never standing still, so what appears accurate today might not be accurate in the future. However, X’s Community Notes uses more speech, not censorship, to provide context to controversial content. You can still agree or disagree with the content, even with a Community Note attached. What the EU wants is for its committees of experts, not Community Notes, to secretly decide what we can read and say online. This is unethical and unconstitutional. Another key part of the EU’s disinformation is that “researchers” should have access to X’s internal data, which Musk cut off when he bought Twitter. But those people who want the data aren’t researchers. They’re censorship activists, many of whom have deep relationships with governments in general and intelligence agencies in particular. If the EU succeeds in censoring X, Facebook, Google, and every other major Internet platform, then there is no free speech. There is only government-controlled speech. Many people rightly worry about the implications of a single man, Elon Musk, being all that stands between us and foreign governments’ totalitarian censorship plans. I worry about that, too. Our speech is inalienable. It is not something governments give to us. We need to fight back. While we should be grateful to Musk for standing up to the totalitarians in Europe, Brazil, and Australia, we must build a citizen’s movement to fight back. There’s three things you can do. First, share this video to raise the alarm. Second, add your email to our list here, so we can involve you in the future. And, third, consider making a donation to build the free speech movement and urge Congress and other social media companies to stand up for free speech against foreign interference.

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible. After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars. WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people's right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom. Julian's freedom is our freedom. [More details to follow]

The most clearest and crisp explanation, I've ever heard, of how large language models compress and capture a "world-model" in their weights simply by learning to predict the next word accurately. Furthermore, how the raw power of these base models can then be tamed by teaching them to follow instructions from humans. Source: youtu.be/Ckz8XA2hW84?si=XFzn…

If you thought the drama here on X was amazing this weekend, just wait 24 hours until all of the best posts get screenshotted and put on Reddit and Instagram. Then wait another 2 weeks until the content makes its way to LinkedIn. The accountants and consultants are going to go wild over there.

There is only one obvious winner of the last 100 hours, and it's business school professors who have been looking for a sexy anecdote to get students interested in the principle that corporate structure is really important

In this new paper in @SciReports, @Amir_Ghasemian and I introduce the ENMITY PARADOX, namely, that for real social networks: Your enemies have more enemies than you do. nature.com/articles/s41598-0… #EnmityParadox #FriendshipParadox 1/

One of our key sources of human data is no longer fully “human"! We estimate that 33-46% of crowd workers on MTurk used large language models (LLMs) in a text production task - which may increase as ChatGPT and the like become more popular and powerful. arxiv.org/abs/2306.07899

We all have some choices to make about AI, and we need to make those decisions soon. Here’s some thoughts about what managers, leaders, and educators need to considering. oneusefulthing.org/p/catastr…

What if Wes Anderson directed The Lord of the Rings? We asked the community which video they want to see next and Lord of the Rings took the cake… or should we say Elven bread. We hope you enjoy this Midjourney to Middle-Earth. #LordOfTheRings #WesAnderson #MovieTrailer #LOTR

Star Wars vs Star Trek is to large extent about rebels vs authorities. ST showed big empire as good guys bringing civ to backward peoples. ST fans are eager to point out that ST is (a bit) more scientifically realistic than SW. Which is an authority sort of talking point.

Academia is in for a wild ride >Upload census data & data dictionary into GPT with Code Interpreter >"I would like you to generate some interesting draft hypotheses about industries & MSAs and then to test them with the data. make assumptions if you need to" >"Put it in a paper"