Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan) header
Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan) profile picture

Assistant Prof @DukeSanford, Affiliate @datasociety, Affiliate @CITAP, PhD from @RutgersCommInfo. Platform governance, tech ethics, mom.

New York, NY
Joined January 2009
Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)Photo by Robyn Caplan (@robyncaplan)
Read the long-awaited (sorry about that) follow-up in my "Working History of the Verified Badge" series for @datasociety. Part II: The battle between Friendsters and Fakesters datasociety.net/points/a-wor…
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Robyn Caplan retweeted
Announcing the Call for Papers for Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing! Rapid AI progress is raising *so many* philosophical questions; but philosophers aren't as involved in the conversation as they should be, for many different reasons. One is that, aside from some work in logic and philosophy of mind, philosophy of AI and computing has often sat on the margins of the discipline. One reason for *that* is that so many philosophers working on AI have had to do so basically on their own, figuring things out for themselves as they go along, without a real community around them. OSPAIC is going to help fix this! We're going to have an annual conference and volume. The conference (in DC! where much of the future of AI will be decided) is especially important as we think about the nature of intellectual life in a world where AI systems can one-shot a superficially-plausible philosophy paper. OSPAIC sees philosophical progress as being about more than just the accumulation of true claims. The conference is a big part of our vision for how we contribute to philosophical progress. And our aim is also to help philosophers be part of the broader public conversation! To that end we're also going to be launching, soon, a subcode on arXiv for philosophical foundations of AI (cs.pfai), and encouraging everyone who submits to OSPAIC to also upload their draft to arXiv (at present, use keyword PFAI). We're also partnering with @cosmos_inst, who will be sponsoring an annual prize for the best paper on philosophy and AI, as well as helping fund the first round of the conference and Open Access publication for the volume. And with Cosmos we'll be highlighting some of the most interesting submissions to cs.pfai as they come in. I'm the executive editor; Jeff Howard (UCL) and Rachael Sterken (University of Hong Kong) are associate editors; Ned Howells-Whitaker (JHU and Pittsburgh) is the assistant editor. We're grateful for the support of a wonderful advisory editorial board, including brilliant philosophers and computer scientists from academia, industry, and civil society. The deadline for submissions is 11.59pm Feb 14, 2027, anywhere on earth. All details are at ospaic.org.
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My desire to spend at least 25% of my time at @AoIR_org in the hotel pool is slightly at odds with my desire to never be seen in a swimsuit by colleagues.
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Robyn Caplan retweeted
Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.
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Robyn Caplan retweeted
“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows
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We are making the same intellectual mistake with concerns about AI and its ability to persuade as we did in the algos and misinfo debate. We keep treating persuasion as some sort of tech capability rather than a social process.
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Robyn Caplan retweeted
Tomorrow on the podcast. David Robinson quit his job on Open AI's safety team. In his first interview since leaving OpenAI, he tells me why.
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I haven’t known what to make of the other AI whistleblowers, but I very much trust @dgrobinson.
New in The Atlantic: @dgrobinson resigned this week. He was among the longest-tenured employees at OpenAI—and oversaw safety reports on 12 frontier launches. He is very worried: “The time for trial and error is over.” You can read his essay here: theatlantic.com/technology/2…
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I really want to write a book about comment sections – like stories of comment sections, viral comments, the best comments of all time, how comment sections make us feel hope and/or despair (etc)...but alas, I am currently writing not that book.
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Writing a book is very hard because as soon as you finish one chapter, you have to start a new one.
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There is something very “what if the company behind Kool-Aid funded Heaven’s Gate” about the current AI doomsday hypotheses.
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Kinda hard to take an industry seriously that's currently in a loop of “we’re all gonna die, but we can’t slow down because of China, even though they regulate AI and reverse engineer our models, so the faster we go the faster they go actually.”
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So happy for my close and personal friend, the television show, Widow’s Bay.
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A lot of the AI doomsday scenarios seem to believe persuasion is some sort of magic power.
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📚 New book: De Gruyter Handbook of Technology, Media, & Democracy Co-edited by DWC faculty @pmnapoli, @robyncaplan & Ken Rogerson Learn about the Handbook: degruyterbrill.com/document/…
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I just walked downstairs to get a drink, and then walked upstairs without a drink and realized that instead of getting the drink, I'd cleaned the toilet bowl downstairs. Middle age is wild.
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It's baby's first edited volume! Check out the book I edited with @pmnapoli and @rogerson, now published by @degruyter_brill, with chapters from @Ali_Christopher, @blakeplease, @jonathan_c_ong, @TomDivon, and many others!
New book: The De Gruyter Handbook of Technology, Media, and Democracy, co-edited with my Duke/DeWitt Wallace Center colleagues, @robyncaplan and @rogerson. Contributors from across the world, as well as a number of contributors from the Duke community. degruyterbrill.com/document/…
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I also wrote a chapter for the book: "The Problem of Authority in Platform Governance: A Platforms-in-Society Approach." In it, I offer a broader definition of platform governance (in case you were looking for one). Access it here: degruyterbrill.com/document/…
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tfw you're writing a book chapter for an edited volume, and you have to rewrite an argument you've already made but somehow do it differently.
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Also, "tf" are just "I don't wanna, I don't wanna, please don't make me do it."
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Robyn Caplan retweeted
If you're interested in this issue I wrote about it a few weeks ago in my newsletter, Converger: converger.kevinbankston.com/…
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