One of Ireland’s largest institutions of higher learning, the University of Galway stands tall. Yet, beyond the ivy-clad offices looking out onto its historic quad, buried underneath the press releases, ‘gender pay gap’ showcasing, and social media posts heralding progress on issues of equality — including Bronze and Silver Athena…

A data-driven analysis of lecturer pay across Ireland’s major universities Tableau Workbook containing a range of data visualization of Irish lecturer pay, including… Tableau Workbook containing a range of data visualization of Irish lecturer pay, including comparisons, starting and…public.tableau.com As an American who took up a lecturer position at an Irish university at the end of 2021, I have seen a great deal of confusion concerning academic ranks, pay equity, and orgnisational structures.

As millions rush to integrate ChatGPT and generative AI apps in their daily workflows, information is being reassembled and reconstructed through machine-interpreted patterns guided by human instructions. While I am not a ML or computer engineer, I understand that the tools are works in progress. Unlike us, ChatGPT is not…

Ask and you shall receive. After a straightforward but persistent dialogue with the “Feb 13 version,” I received — in alphabetical order, no less — an itemized list of 37+ news sources claimed to train OpenAI’s language model as of the cutoff date of September 2021. I also received lists…

We have a range of topics to get through, but could you be so kind as to briefly describe what your title is, and what you do? I am Assistant, a large language model developed by OpenAI. My main function is to understand and generate natural language text based on…

The Third Act: When Hate Becomes a Verb — For years, across social platforms, app ecosystems, and the rest of the web, I’ve studied the intricate networking and organizational amplification of outrage. The grievous acts that follow in the wake of progressively extreme ideologies are the conspicuous product of globally connected cells, misguided prejudices, and attention amplification mechanisms.

Pages are fabricating metrics and overriding bans — This is the last installment of The Micro-Propaganda Machine, a three-part analysis critically examining the issues at the interface of platforms, propaganda, and politics. The third part of my analysis of Facebook prior to the midterm election, looks at granular enforcement and Facebook’s challenges in enforcing its community standards and…

How political lies and conspiracies are spreading without detection — This is the second installment of The Micro-Propaganda Machine, a three-part analysis critically examining the issues at the interface of platforms, propaganda, and politics. In 2016, discussions about Facebook and the election tended to focus mostly on pages and paid ads. Well, it’s 2018, and this time around, we have…

Analysis of political ads, groups, and rule enforcement on the platform show that the problem is only getting worse — This is the first installment of The Micro-Propaganda Machine, a three-part analysis critically examining the issues at the interface of platforms, propaganda, and politics. Before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, I took an extensive look into the state of Facebook’s platform and what I found was interesting—and terrifying. Three months…