Hiawatha Bray

Tech reporter for the Boston Globe, and author of You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves...makes a great gift!

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

I wrote about the Pope and why Christian tech critics often have a more compelling response to the AI crisis than their secular counterparts. Simply, Christian writers aren't afraid of "human nature" talk, and they understand THE question of the AI Age is: what are people for? 🧵

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

An excellent point about this horrible tragedy.

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Well done, you mouth-breathing cretins. And well done to all the pricks on social media who have done nothing but race-bait over this tragedy. Shameful across the board.

As a psychologist, I’ll bet you £100 this is what happened with poor Henry Nowak. Cops suffer from empathy burn out. 90% of the time they deal with nothing but scum. It doesn’t make it right, but that cynicism will have come into play, here.

They get a 999 call saying, “A Sikh has been attacked.” They arrive at the scene, there’s a Sikh saying he’s been attacked and someone (Henry) acting strangely. The weapon has been hidden. They will have immediately thought ‘drink or drugs’, and they see no obvious wounds. The murderer laid on exactly the scene the police would have expected to see, had the complaint been genuine.

These are pure human confirmation and anchoring biases at play: the cops saw what they expected to see from the info they had going into the situation. They were tricked. Humans make mistakes.

Where the cops royally fucked up was not following normal procedures when someone says they have been stabbed, and checking them all over including skin. They should lose their jobs over that negligence alone and for allowing their biases to override their training.

I guarantee you “I can’t breathe” inadvertently made things worse as that’s what every single scumbag says when they get arrested, since George Floyd.

This absolute tragedy is a sad combination of confirmation and anchoring biases, excessive cynicism, and a criminal failure to follow correct procedures, not to mention a lying, murdering piece of shit and his piece of shit family doing everything they could to confuse the police and muddy the waters. It has nothing to do with diversity.

Henry Nowak should not have died at all, but he would have died whatever the police did. However, in these circumstances he should have died with someone holding his hand, trying to save him, and telling him it would be ok, not in handcuffs being read his rights. The police officers who made this dreadful error should lose their jobs and will have to live with that for the rest of their days.

Final point: well done to the Hants Police detectives who shredded the murderer’s story and secured a conviction.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@DavidAFrench Attack of the Clones? I'll never forget staying up till midnight in Honolulu, with a plane to catch to Taipei in the early AM, because I just had to be among the first to see it. I came out of the theater spitting mad I'd lost so much sleep to see that piece of crap!

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

An agentic AI system called Pine tracked down a cheaper home insurance policy for me, then helped me purchase it. Is this the future of online shopping?

https://t.co/hNPy0lGYNv

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@didem5654 Yep. Keep your shoes on in public.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@mkhammer Meanwhile....

https://t.co/fq4fM8NWRq

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

Throwdown at CBS News!

https://t.co/fq4fM8NWRq

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@mattyglesias I'm a Coke Zero man and have been from the start. I dunno how people manage to choke down Diet Coke--especially when an excellent alternative is at hand.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@JonahDispatch Seriously, Jonah. How do you know this is wrong?

To be sure, I need more data to evaluate this. Like, has the data center said where it's getting its water? From local groundwater? We just need more info and less opinionating.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@otokyo My Congolese family uses mayo. Ick.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

A new online tool from MIT researchers will give you a hint about whether AI is coming for your job...

https://t.co/3nUeXKPF1G

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

Want to see lower housing costs? Welp, you could try...building a lot more housing! Yeah! That might work!

Matter of fact, it does work!

https://t.co/SPa0NnTnpw

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@asymmetricinfo I write for a newspaper, and when I find a relevant fact that was reported in a different newspaper, I look for the original source of the fact--because newspapers sometimes get it wrong! I'd hope academics would do the same...

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@DavidAFrench Amen!

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@christopherrufo BTW, the article also notes that many other news orgs are in trouble, for reasons having nothing to do with Trumpian budget cuts. For instance, the newly Bari Weiss-led CBS is in hot water, facing a ratings collapse for CBS Evening News...

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@christopherrufo Actually, it's terrible news. To be sure, I'm a journalist and therefore biased in favor of news. And so I'm worried when ANY news organization is in crisis, regardless of its editorial slant. Besides, I'm quite partial to Morning Edition.

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@PhilipDBunn Does he know about Plessy? That infamous ruling came out of a test case too...

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@PorcDalmatian @NancyAFrench You need to quit! :-)

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

@NancyAFrench Almost everything on the Popeyes menu is better, actually. One major exception: Chik-Fil-A's surprisingly good kale salad. And I hate kale!

[Hiawatha Bray @GlobeTechLab]

In towns throughout Massachusetts ,there's a backlash against Big Tech data centers.

https://t.co/p4XVURoSPr