ratwell

25 | @greasypriv | no i do not sell feet pics

[ratwell @greasymax]

*forgetting the terms missionary and doggy* so uh, hot dog or hamburger style?

[barbarism critic @barbarismcrit]

Democrats will of course not use this to their advantage

[Fano Plane 🇻🇪 @jjjjjjjjojohohn]

No fucking way

[ratwell @greasymax]

vapes are like dmt you have to let them come to you or you will lose your divine protection

[spencer 🦈 @Unpop_Science]

We need to stop acting as if people like this are “not convinced” and start recognizing them as “committed to a lie.”

[ratwell @greasymax]

who up trying to make it look like an accident

[ratwell @greasymax]

*pings your device* mwah

[Earth Liberation Studio @EarthStvdio]

Another anti-AI hand drawing.

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

Funny. I thought it was morally wrong for Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive worth more than $800 billion, to eliminate humanitarian aid that will cause 4.5 million of the poorest kids on the planet to die in the next 4 years.

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[amanda 💛🖤🩵💙 @Mandae_Bell]

Reminder that Pride jerseys are still banned in the NHL. Bettman is on a council to ban trans people in sports. The League’s culture suppresses LGBTQ+ players. One PR event a year doesn’t change that. Talk less and do more, NHL.

[Educator @DrAnnLopez]

The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.
James Baldwin

[Fuck You I Quit @fuckyouiquit]

How this isn’t an immediate impeach and remove from office situation blows my mind. There isn’t a word invented in the English language for this level of pure corruption. This country is fucking cooked.

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

Honestly pure dictator shit. A real democracy would immediately imprison him for even trying this

[Science Cowboy 🦉 @aadityad9]

No one thinks this. It takes an astonishing level of cope to believe this, especially when right wing politicians are constantly trying to pass “vaporize every animal on sight” bills and the “bulldoze every national park” acts

[Tim @trouble_man90]

There aren’t adequate words to properly express the depth and scale of trump’s corruption, it’s completely on a scale of its own with no historical equivalent to point to.

[ratwell @greasymax]

man what the hell is this app

[Kyle Blomquist for U.S. Congress @BlomquistForMI]

We should elect more people that endure the economic violence of our current system because they are more likely to change it.

[Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

This is what local accountability looks like:

In Festus, Missouri, a town of about 14,000 people, the city council quietly approved a $6 billion Ai data center to be built on 360 acres just north of Highway 67.

Residents say they were never properly heard. Meetings were held in private. Documents were released too late. A week after the approval, the town held a regular election. Voter turnout jumped 129 percent.

Every single council member who had voted yes lost in a landslide. A 70-year-old first-time candidate beat an 8-year incumbent by 40 percentage points.

Now a recall petition is circulating to remove the mayor as well. The lawsuit against the city is already filed.

Has your local government ever been held accountable like this? 🔥