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#academics

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🔴 💻 **Are chatbots reliable text annotators? Sometimes**

“_Given the unreliable performance of ChatGPT and the significant challenges it poses to Open Science, we advise caution when using ChatGPT for substantive text annotation tasks._”

Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlan, Miceal Canavan, Marton Kárdos, Mia Jacobsen, Lene Aarøe, Are chatbots reliable text annotators? Sometimes, PNAS Nexus, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2025, pgaf069, doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf.

#OpenAccess #OA #Article #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #LLMS #Chatbots #Technology #Tech #Data #Annotation #Academia #Academics @ai

Academic papers due at 4pm are criminal and shouldn’t be allowed.

At least the 45 pages of academic writing I have due in 14 days has reduced by 15 pages. *whew*

Now for:
- my final exam tomorrow *oof*
- 15 page paper due Mon
- and a 60min presentation along with my last 15 page paper due the following Monday.

what even is sleep

NYU canceled talk on USAID cuts for being ‘anti-governmental’, doctor says
University called Dr Joanne Liu, ex-head of Doctors Without Borders, after planning to speak on Gaza and federal cuts #gaza #compliance #academics #fascism #genocide
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m

The Guardian · NYU canceled talk on USAID cuts for being ‘anti-governmental’, doctor saysBy Anna Betts

US #academics. Who in your institution is most directly enforcing "compliance" blocking speech, thought, programming in accordance with racist/sexist/genderist aims of the admin?

Continued thread

From #LawrenceBritt's #CharacteristicsOfFascism

11. Disdain for #Intellectuals and the #Arts
"Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to #HigherEducation and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other #academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts."
kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/

The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism 
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 
2. Disdain for Human Rights 
3. Identification of Enemies As A Unifying Cause 
4. Supremacy of the Military 
5. Rampant Sexism 
6. Controlled Mass Media 
7. Obsession With National Security 
8. Religion and Government Intertwined 
9. Corporate Power Protected 
10. Labor Power Suppressed 
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 
12. Obsession With Crime and Punishment 
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 
14. Fraudulent Elections
kolektiva.socialDoomsdaysCW (@DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social)Attached: 1 image Lawrence W. Britt: 14 Characteristics of #Fascism "#Historian #LawrenceBritt studied the fascist regimes of #Hitler (Germany), #Mussolini (Italy), #Franco (Spain), #Suharto (Indonesia), and #Pinochet (Chile) and found they had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. 1. Powerful and Continuing #Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of #patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. #Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 2. Disdain for the Recognition of #HumanRights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, and long incarcerations of prisoners. 3. Identification of #Enemies / #Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: #racial, #ethnic or #religious #minorities; #liberals; #communists; #socialists, #terrorists… 4. Supremacy of the #Military Even when there are widespread #domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. 5. Rampant #Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional #gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to #abortion is high, as is #homophobia and anti-#gay legislation. 6. Controlled #MassMedia Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation or by sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Government #censorship and #secrecy especially in war time, are very common. 7. Obsession with #NationalSecurity Fear of hostile foreign powers is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. 8. #Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions. 9. Protection of #Corporate Power The #industrial and business #aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. 10. Suppression of #Labor Power Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor #unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 11. Disdain for #Intellectuals and the #Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to #HigherEducation and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other #academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts. 12. Obsession with #Crime and #Punishment Under fascist regimes, the #police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego #CivilLiberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations. 13. Rampant #Cronyism and #Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. 14. #FraudulentElections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by #SmearCampaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control #voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. This post is a summary of Fascism, Anyone? by Lawrence W. Britt published in 2003 by Free Inquiry magazine." https://voxpopulisphere.com/2017/08/23/lawrence-britt-14-characteristics-of-fascism/ #History #Histodon #RabidRight #Antifa #Antifascism #FarRight #Trump #Putin #Russia #MAGA #Project2025 #CharacteristicsOfFascism

#LawrenceBritt #CharacteristicsOfFascism Numbers 1 and 11...

1. Powerful and Continuing #Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of #patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. #Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

11. Disdain for #Intellectuals and the #Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to #HigherEducation and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other #academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Trump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museums

by Max Matza, 3/27/2025

"US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which operates more than 20 museums and research centres visited by millions yearly in Washington DC and New York City.

"The order directs the vice-president to 'eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology' from the institute's museums, centres and the National Zoo in Washington.

"It also directs the interior secretary to restore federal properties, including parks, memorials and statues, which 'have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history'.

"The move is part of Trump's effort to shape American culture, in addition to politics."

Read more:
bbc.com/news/articles/cdjy1jmv
#ChristoFascism #ChristianRight #USPol #Fascism #Authoritarianism #Fascists #TurdReich

An overhead view of buildings in Washington DC. There is snow on the ground
www.bbc.comTrump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museumsThe order says that "divisive narratives" must be purged from the US museums and research centres.

🔴 💻 **“Turning right”? An experimental study on the political value shift in large language models**

“_Our findings reveal that while newer versions of ChatGPT consistently maintain values within the libertarian-left quadrant, there is a statistically significant rightward shift in political values over time, a phenomenon we term a ‘value shift’ in large language models._”

Liu, Y., Panwang, Y. & Gu, C. “Turning right”? An experimental study on the political value shift in large language models. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 179 (2025). doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-044.

#OpenAccess #OA #Article #DOI #Rightwing #Politics #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #LLMS #Academia #Academics @ai

🔴 **Monitoring Reasoning Models for Misbehavior and the Risks of Promoting Obfuscation**

“_While we show that integrating CoT monitors into the reinforcement learning reward can indeed produce more capable and more aligned agents in the low optimization regime, we find that with too much optimization, agents learn obfuscated reward hacking, hiding their intent within the CoT while still exhibiting a significant rate of reward hacking._”

Baker, B. et al. (2025) Monitoring reasoning models for misbehavior and the risks of promoting obfuscation. arxiv.org/abs/2503.11926.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM #LLMS #ComputerScience #Obfuscation #Preprint #Academia #Academics @ai @computerscience

arXiv logo
arXiv.orgMonitoring Reasoning Models for Misbehavior and the Risks of Promoting ObfuscationMitigating reward hacking--where AI systems misbehave due to flaws or misspecifications in their learning objectives--remains a key challenge in constructing capable and aligned models. We show that we can monitor a frontier reasoning model, such as OpenAI o3-mini, for reward hacking in agentic coding environments by using another LLM that observes the model's chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning. CoT monitoring can be far more effective than monitoring agent actions and outputs alone, and we further found that a LLM weaker than o3-mini, namely GPT-4o, can effectively monitor a stronger model. Because CoT monitors can be effective at detecting exploits, it is natural to ask whether those exploits can be suppressed by incorporating a CoT monitor directly into the agent's training objective. While we show that integrating CoT monitors into the reinforcement learning reward can indeed produce more capable and more aligned agents in the low optimization regime, we find that with too much optimization, agents learn obfuscated reward hacking, hiding their intent within the CoT while still exhibiting a significant rate of reward hacking. Because it is difficult to tell when CoTs have become obfuscated, it may be necessary to pay a monitorability tax by not applying strong optimization pressures directly to the chain-of-thought, ensuring that CoTs remain monitorable and useful for detecting misaligned behavior.

🔴 **The human-driven ecological success of olive trees over the last 3700 years in the Central Mediterranean**

_“We hypothesize that cultural exchanges between Sicily and the Aegean in the Early-Middle Bronze Age have promoted the use of wild olive trees in the Messina area. At that time, olive trees could have been used for various purposes, including fruit production, but also wood and forage for animals. The development of olive groves followed a gradual, multi-stage process in the Central Mediterranean, with large-scale cultivation appearing only in modern times.”_

Palli, J. et al. (2025) 'The human-driven ecological success of olive trees over the last 3700 years in the Central Mediterranean,' Quaternary Science Reviews, 356, p. 109313. doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.20.