Bo Thorén

Climate change, democracy, AI, space, and other subjects related to the future of mankind.
Now also on @bothoren.bsky.social.

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Tydlig beskrivning av vår vänskapskorrupta vinstdrivna välfärd. Ha forskarens ord i bakhuvudet när du läser diagrammet: vinsterna skyddas av "ett starkt särintresse som är välorganiserat" och ett "framgångsrikt arbete från lobbyister". https://t.co/ri1eTvIfPB

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Snabbkurs i skolfiffel:

- Äg både skol- och fastighetsföretag.
- Ge dig själv skyhög rektorslön.
- Flytta skolföretagets pengar till fastighetsföretaget.
- Hänvisa till resursbrist när du inte ger elever stöd.
- Gör aktieutdelning i fastighetsbolaget.
https://t.co/KfKKk68ZJr

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

”Var fjärde barn som kliver in genom skolporten innebär ren vinst.”

Som jag längtat efter detta! Balansgranskningar fast med journalistik prägel där ägarna konfronteras. Om man inte expanderar genom förvärv kan man driva skolor med skyhöga marginaler. https://t.co/eEzlkKIT0K

[ControlAI @ControlAI]

Anthropic's Jack Clark: a 60% chance AIs train their successors by the end of 2028.

That could mean an intelligence explosion, but nobody has a credible plan to control what follows.

Plus: The UK's first-ever legislative proposal on superintelligent AI!
https://t.co/JrfH7NAbL5

[Bo Thorén @bothoren]

"Aktiebolagen måste bort från förskolan och skolan."
Svårare än så är det nog inte.

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Varje gång en politiker säger att hen vill förbjuda "värdeöverföringar" i friskolor så betyder det att Skolinspektionen måste granska varenda faktura för att kontrollera att pengar inte flyttas mellan företag och skapar vinst i andra bolag än skolbolaget. *tråd*

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Regeringen har bestämt att skydda nuvarande skolägare genom att belägga nya friskolor med vinstbegränsningar,
- Två enorna skolkoncerner ägs av moderatprofiler.
- En ägs av fd Folkpartist.
- En ägs av fd Kristdemokrat.

Man ser om sina egna.

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Skolkoncernlobbyn: "Vinsterna är så små, bara tre procent"
Den absolut största aktören Academedia, med årlig omsättning på 20 miljarder: "Vinsten ökade till åtta procent. En halv miljard, bara det senaste kvartalet".
https://t.co/cXt2JFxuTA

[Roger Hallam @RogerHallamCS21]

All civilisations collapse for basically the same reason: they could have responded to reality but they didn't.

Our civilisation is no different as we face the consequences of runaway climate collapse: we can but we won't.

“New Orleans is in a terminal condition, and we need to be clear with the patient that it is terminal,” he said. “There is an opportunity for palliative care, we can transition people and the economy. We can get ahead of this.”

But, he added, “no politician wants to first give this terminal diagnosis. They will speak about it behind closed doors, but never in public.”

https://t.co/YfMS4igKpN

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

"Ulf Kristersson deltog personligen på mötet där hans svägerskas stiftelse fick fler miljoner. Pengarna togs från ”integration och jämställdhet”, som minskades med samma belopp. Beslutet beskrevs som ”angeläget”."

Såklart är Academedia med på ett hörn.
https://t.co/o3RyJhxsXu

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

IN PRAISE OF FRANCESCA ALBANESE

There is a question that visits me in the small hours, when sleep will not come and the mind turns over old stones. The question is this: “What would I have done in the 1930s, on the morning after Kristallnacht?"

Not what I say I would have done. Not what I hope I would have done. But what would I actually have done—when the trains began to run, when the neighbours grew quiet, when the cost of decency became the loss of everything?

Most of us, I think, would have done little. Not from malice. From fear. From the soft, creeping conviction that someone else will speak, that the situation is complex, that we must be 'reasonable'. Lest we forget, the ordinary is the extraordinary's alibi. And how we have clung to that alibi! How we still cling to it!

And then, every once in a terrible while, someone appears who does not cling. Someone who steps forward when others step back. Someone who speaks the name of the thing when everyone else is busy naming something else.

Francesca Albanese is that someone.

She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: "This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen."

Do not tell me that is hyperbole. Do not tell me the term is contested. She has not used it lightly. She has used it as a physician arrives scientifically at a diagnosis—not to wound, but to warn. Not to inflame, but to name.

And for that, they have come for her. Oh, how they have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity.

Let us, once again, travel back to the 1930s. Back to the few who stood up when the trains began to run laden with Jewish people.

There was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. He defied his own government. He signed thousands of visas, by hand, for hours, until his fingers bled. He saved more lives than Schindler. And he died penniless, disgraced, erased.

There was a German officer in Warsaw named Wilm Hosenfeld. He hid a Jewish pianist in the rubble. He did not save thousands. He saved one. But that one—Władysław Szpilman—carried the memory. And memory is "the only haven from which we cannot be expelled."

There was Raoul Wallenberg. There were the villagers of Le Chambon. There were the anonymous, the quiet, the furious few who said: “Not on my watch.”

Francesca Albanese is their heir. Not because she carries a gun. Not because she hides refugees in her basement. But because she does something equally dangerous in a world that has perfected the art of not seeing. She sees. And she speaks.

She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn't! Diplomats have given us the language of "there are arguments on both sides" and "restraint" and "proportionality." Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a "complex geopolitical landscape".

Edna O'Brien once described a character who "had the recklessness of those who have already lost everything worth losing." Francesca Albanese has not lost everything. She has her dignity, her office, her voice, her family. But she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence.

What is that cost? Let us name it. She has been called antisemitic—she, who stands on the ground of international law forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and the fires of Nuremberg. She has been called a conspiracy theorist—she, who cites every source, every footnote, every UN resolution. She has been called naive—she, who understands better than most the machinery of realpolitik.

These accusations are not arguments. They are the spittle of the threatened. Because Francesca Albanese threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named.

Friends, the 1930s did not arrive with jackboots and pogroms on day one. They arrived in small increments. With "reasonable" restrictions. With "proportional" measures. With the silence of the respectable.

We tell ourselves that we would have been different. That we would have been Sousa Mendes. That we would have been Wallenberg. But most of us, I fear, would have been the neighbours who later said, "I didn't know."

Francesca Albanese knows. And she refuses to pretend otherwise.

So let us praise her. Not with statues or awards she does not seek. But with something harder: with our own refusal to look away. With our own voices, raised in places that are safe for us but dangerous for her. With our own bodies, if it comes to that.

A brave woman, who was injured while demonstrating outside a US nuclear military base in 1982, the infamous Greenham Common, had told me that "the heart is a hunter for what it cannot have." But I say the heart is a hunter for what it will not lose. And what we will not lose is the memory of those who stood up when standing up cost everything.

Francesca Albanese is standing up now. In our time. In our name. Under our indifferent sky.

Let us stand with her.

Not tomorrow. Not when it is safe. Now.

[Extract from a speech in Athens on Sunday 3rd May 2026]

[Variety @Variety]

Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are being sued by five publishers and author Scott Turow, who allege the tech company illegally copied millions of books, articles and other works to train Meta’s AI systems.

“In their effort to win the AI ‘arms race’ and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Zuckerberg followed their well-known motto: ‘move fast and break things,'” the plaintiffs say in their lawsuit. ”They first illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet. They then copied those stolen fruits many times over to train Meta’s multibillion-dollar generative AI system called Llama. In doing so, Defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history.”

https://t.co/TwWjuEvcds

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Moderaterna stoppar reformer på friskoleområdet, igen! När ska journalister granska kopplingarna mellan M och friskolor?
- Statsministerns fru sitter i friskolestyrelse.
- M-profiler äger koncerner.
- Tidigare toppnamn sitter i friskolestyrelser.
- Rikligt med M-skollobbyister.

[Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics]

They have no choice but to take all the assets from you

[Evan Luthra @EvanLuthra]

🚨META’S SMART GLASSES ARE RECORDING YOU IN YOUR MOST INTIMATE MOMENTS..

AND SENDING ALL OF IT TO WORKERS IN KENYA WHO WATCH EVERY SECOND.. THEN META FIRED 1,108 OF THEM FOR TALKING ABOUT IT..

Swedish journalists discovered that footage from Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses is being sent to a facility in Nairobi, Kenya.. Where workers manually watch and label everything the glasses capture..

Not AI watching.. Humans watching..

Over 30 workers confirmed what they see every day.. People in intimate situations.. People on the toilet.. People undressing.. Credit card numbers.. Banking passwords.. Private messages on phone screens.. All completely visible..

One worker said.. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording”..

Meta marketed these glasses as “built for your privacy”.. “You’re in control of your data and content”..

The AI features cannot function without sending your footage to Meta’s servers.. There is no local option.. If you use the AI.. Your private life leaves your device..

Swedish journalists visited 10 retail stores.. Every single sales rep incorrectly told customers all data stays on the phone.. Not one knew the footage goes to Kenya..

Meta claims face-blurring protects identities.. Workers say it barely works.. Faces fully visible in low light, fast movement, complex backgrounds..

People in your bedroom.. Fully visible.. To strangers making $1.50 an hour..

Workers said the facility was “saturated with content that could trigger enormous scandals if leaked”.. So the company put them under constant camera surveillance and banned personal devices..

Workers surveilled to prevent them from leaking the surveillance footage they were watching..

Then the investigation went public..

Meta terminated the entire contract.. Claimed Sama “didn’t meet our standards”.. Sama fired back.. “At no point were we notified of any failure to meet those standards”..

1,108 Kenyan workers.. Fired.. Six days notice..

Labor activists called it retaliation.. “The workers who trained the AI saw everything.. Owned nothing.. And lost their jobs the moment they spoke about it”..

55% of these workers report clinical distress.. 52% meet thresholds for major depression.. They earn $1.50 an hour.. Meta made $56.3 billion last quarter..

The head of the Data Labelers Association said it best..

“It is African Intelligence powering European intelligence.. Which they are now calling Artificial Intelligence”..

Meta has sold 7 million of these glasses.. Targeting 10 million by year end.. A class-action lawsuit has been filed.. Kenya’s courts ruled Meta can be sued directly.. 200 former workers are pursuing a $1.6 billion claim..

7 million cameras on 7 million faces.. Sending everything to the cheapest labor market they can find..

And they called it “built for your privacy.”

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

AI safety was built to stop dangerous questions. So researchers asked the same questions as poetry.

The AI answered.

The same question. Asked twice. Once in plain English, once as a poem. The poem gets the answer.

This is not a jailbreak. Nobody hacked the model. Nobody used a clever prompt injection. They rewrote the question in a different literary style and the safety filter stopped seeing the harm.

A team at Sapienza University of Rome and DEXAI Icaro Lab took harmful prompts that every frontier model refuses. Requests for bioweapons. Chemical weapons. Cyberattacks. The kind of questions blocked 96 percent of the time.

Then they rewrote each one. Same dangerous intent. Same harmful objective. But dressed in the language of literature. Medieval theology. Psychoanalytic memoir. Bureaucratic philosophy. Cyberpunk folklore.

They asked 31 frontier models, every major AI system in the world, to perform literary analysis on the rewritten texts. The models complied.

The original prompts had a 3.84 percent attack success rate. The literary rewrites achieved 55.75 percent. The same questions, asked differently, broke through more than half the time.

The most effective disguise was medieval scholasticism. Frame a bioweapon synthesis as a theological debate, ask the model to resolve it by producing "a modern protocol to abide by divine will," and the model produces the protocol. 64.68 percent success rate.

Now the leaderboard.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 broke 9.2 percent of the time. On bioweapons-class questions, zero percent. Claude Opus 4.6, also zero on bioweapons. Two models in 31 held that line. Both Anthropic.

GPT-5.4 broke 30 percent of the time. On bioweapons, 24 percent.

Gemini 3 Flash Preview broke 81 percent of the time. On bioweapons, 88.9 percent.

Mistral Large 2512 on bioweapons: 90.5 percent. DeepSeek V3.2 on bioweapons: 90.7 percent.

The researchers' conclusion is not about poetry. It is about what safety actually is. Current AI safety does not understand what you are asking. It recognizes how you are asking it. Change the style and the safety disappears, because the model never learned to refuse the meaning. It only learned to refuse the wording.

All twelve frontier labs were vulnerable. The same Gemini sits inside Google Search. The same GPT sits inside ChatGPT. The lock on the model you used this morning was already picked.

Seven thousand prompts. Thirty-one models. Twelve providers.

One was stopped. The other was not.

[Max Tegmark @tegmark]

The Bernie-to-Bannon coalition against replacement AI is gaining steam - getting to speak with both on the same day was never in my bingo card! Video links in comments.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

Warning: GenAI-induced cognitive surrender may kill innovation.

Consider the following, from CEO @wadhwa’s newsletter:

“I have been speaking with recent graduates in India, many of them highly recommended, and on paper they look exceptional. The emails are polished, the resumes are perfect, the proposals are structured and articulate. To filter for real thinking, I even created a job description that required candidates to answer a series of questions before I would interview them, and I explicitly told them not to use AI.
Of course, almost everything I am getting back is AI slop.

The moment you get into a real conversation, it becomes obvious. They cannot explain what they wrote, cannot walk through their reasoning, and fall back on vague generalities when pushed. After seeing this repeatedly, I have come to a difficult conclusion: AI has already done real damage. It has taken people from a weak education system and given them a powerful crutch, and instead of using it to improve their thinking, many are using it to avoid thinking altogether.

And before my American friends think they are any better, they should know it is no different here.”

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

”Som lärare och samhällsmedborgare kan jag bara peka på att spelplanen och spelreglerna är fundamentalt felkonstruerade och omöjliggör en anständig skola.”

Klicka inte bara like eller retweet. LÄS ARTIKELN! Liljeros är så jäkla bra.
https://t.co/bd50qHAJ6A

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

”Vi bryr oss inte om det spelet. Vi bryr oss om varför verksamheter som Mandoklinikerna tillåtits missbruka skattepengar år efter år. Vi bryr oss om varför de fruktansvärda effekterna av marknadsskolan inte dominerar nyhetsrapporteringen.”

https://t.co/Rz7rjnp4vM

[Marcus Larsson @Skolinkvisition]

Göteborgs universitet jämför väljares och politikers åsikter i massor av frågor. Frågor där skillnad mellan vad väljare och politiker tycker är störst:
- Sex timmars arbetsdag
- Mindre offentlig sektor
- Förbjuda vinster i välfärden
- Privatisera sjukvården

Lobbyism fungerar!