Dr Abeba Birhane's Avatar

Dr Abeba Birhane

@abeba

Founder & PI @aial.ie. Assistant Professor of AI, School of Computer Science & Statistics, @tcddublin.bsky.social AI accountability, AI audits & evaluation, critical data studies. Cognitive scientist by training. Ethiopian in Ireland. She/her

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Latest posts by Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba

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Israeli attacks on UNIFIL peace keepers tonight. Irish service men were not directly hit, but they aided their counterparts from Ghana. This will further deteriorate Irish Israel relations.

06.03.2026 22:33 πŸ‘ 355 πŸ” 177 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 11

I definitely want to hear more deep thoughts from the guy who claimed Elon Musk's purchase of twitter would "extend the light of consciousness"

06.03.2026 21:19 πŸ‘ 2376 πŸ” 384 πŸ’¬ 82 πŸ“Œ 24

I am once again tapping the "support independent, worker-owned, billionaire free news" sign. the most powerful people in the world should not be deciding whether or not we know about this sort of thing. putting Marisa's subscription link below

06.03.2026 22:34 πŸ‘ 1439 πŸ” 364 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 1

pervert glasses. so apt

06.03.2026 23:25 πŸ‘ 75 πŸ” 15 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

This is what I keep saying when people play the AI productivity card. A lot of productivity tech doesn't actually solve productivity problems, it enables or even exacerbates them.

06.03.2026 22:35 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

if the invention of emails was to make us efficient and effective, how come i can do emails till the cows come home yet feel unproductive, inefficient, and irritable

06.03.2026 17:08 πŸ‘ 56 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2

a. piece. of. software. is. not. the. type. of. entity. that. can. gain. consciousness.

06.03.2026 15:44 πŸ‘ 162 πŸ” 47 πŸ’¬ 9 πŸ“Œ 1

the harder the industry invests on pushing narratives of AI as (only) positive, inevitable, and inherently good for society/business, the more any criticism of this narrative becomes β€œtoo radical”, β€œunworkable” and β€œunrealistic”

06.03.2026 15:40 πŸ‘ 199 πŸ” 42 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 6

Hey, suprise! The big foundation model providers are not complying to the @ec.europa.eu AI act.

06.03.2026 11:08 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
One hour of the Tree of Life Simulation
One hour of the Tree of Life Simulation YouTube video by Lana Sinapayen Research

My student ThΓ©o de Pinho (University of Lille) made this video showing the dynamics of a multi-agent simulation showing the evolution of speciation.

youtu.be/GJsBIk-9iyE?...

06.03.2026 05:01 πŸ‘ 18 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 2
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Where things stand with the Department of War A statement from Dario Amodei

I think one of the most staggering industry shifts in my 16 years as a tech reporter is that it’s not become a question of β€œshould our product help the government kill and/or surveil people?” but β€œto what extent?”

www.anthropic.com/news/where-s...

06.03.2026 03:06 πŸ‘ 1518 πŸ” 462 πŸ’¬ 36 πŸ“Œ 48
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Workshop on genetics, eugenics and scientific racism next week! #Philsci #Philosophy #Ethics #HPS #Sociology #AcademicSky
We will be conducting hybrid sessions, you can find the zoom link at www.imseam.uni-heidelberg.de/en/heinzelma...

03.03.2026 12:21 πŸ‘ 34 πŸ” 23 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer Machines A prompt injection in a GitHub issue triggered a chain reaction that ended with 4,000 developers getting OpenClaw installed without consent. The attack composes well-understood vulnerabilities into so...

I am convinced we are on the verge of the first "AI agent worm". This looks like the closest hint of it, though it isn't it quite itself: an attack on a PR agent that got it to set up to install openclaw with full access on 4k machines grith.ai/blog/clineje...

05.03.2026 18:46 πŸ‘ 156 πŸ” 70 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 13

because the rest are cowards

06.03.2026 07:59 πŸ‘ 154 πŸ” 28 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1
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Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

Reuters Exclusive

"U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school."

"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the ​Middle East."

06.03.2026 02:50 πŸ‘ 9910 πŸ” 5224 πŸ’¬ 620 πŸ“Œ 627
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Dozens of our readers say they were evicted shortly before the new rental rules came in β€œI received an eviction notice on Friday – just one week before the change. I’ve barely slept since,” one reader said.

This law to increase rents has had the completely foreseen side effect of also increasing evictions (so the landlords can put up rents).

www.thejournal.ie/your-stories...

05.03.2026 16:10 πŸ‘ 77 πŸ” 32 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 1
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Shabana Mahmood accused of mimicking Trump as she announces immigration plans Home secretary announces plans to overhaul system, including an end to permanent refugee status

βœ… Wilfully lying about people seeking asylum and other migrants
βœ…Framing migrants as criminals or a "burden.
βœ…Inflammatory rhetoric
βœ…Increased deportations
βœ…Deporting children
βœ…Targeting specific nationalities
Etc etc
Labour is absolutely copying Trump

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

05.03.2026 14:58 πŸ‘ 92 πŸ” 39 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 3

Tech companies have until August 2026 to comply with the EU AI Act's rule requiring public summaries of AI model training data.

New analysis shows that the big AI players (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft) have so far neglected this requirement for GPT, Gemini, Claude, and other models.

05.03.2026 18:46 πŸ‘ 20 πŸ” 11 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
GPAI Training Transparency

The team (Dick Blankvoort, @harshp.com, & Maximilian Gahntz) will be presenting this work at FAccT πŸŽ‰ in June, and you can access the preprint and analysis here: aial.ie/research/gpa...

If you have feedback and/or are interested to collaborate with them, please reach out to them.

end/

05.03.2026 18:32 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

And here for more coverage: www.euractiv.com/news/researc...

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05.03.2026 18:24 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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How Big AI Developers are Skirting a Mandate for Training Data Transparency We need better visibility into what data AI developers are using to train their models, write Dick Blankvoort, Harshvardhan Pandit, and Maximilian Gahntz.

This work is timely and is already being covered by media:

www.techpolicy.press/how-big-ai-d...

15/

05.03.2026 18:23 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Even though obligations entered into effect August last year, enforcement won't start until August this year. Hope this work helps ensure accountability from Day 1 where the AI Office identifies and takes swift action when training is not transparent and rights are not being respected.

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05.03.2026 18:22 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

For the big providers, this is a warning that typically-used tactics like obfuscation, intentional misinterpretation, or making claims without backing them up will not necessarily work. This quality assessment surfaces such tactics and hope enforcement and penalties follow.

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05.03.2026 18:21 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

For smaller providers, especially open source and hobby projects, the analysed summaries and their high scores should help provide assurance that good compliance standards are being met, and that meeting obligations is not a significant burden.

12/

05.03.2026 18:18 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

A key challenge has been obtaining the public summaries, as locations, names, and modalities vary across providers which makes it difficult to locate them. The team recommends the AI Office to set up a centralised portal to host these summaries.

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05.03.2026 18:18 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The developed framework is helpful to identify the extent to which these summaries meet the intended goals of the obligation and the template, and provide a quantifiable measure to see where improvements are needed, or to take enforcement action.

10/

05.03.2026 18:16 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The team also found a sparse document on Microsoft Phi's repo which contained sections that matched the summary, but which wasn't labelled as such. Since Microsoft hasn't provided any other document, they scored it anyway. It received a failing grade as it is nowhere close to being complete.

9/

05.03.2026 18:14 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Bielik also scored well, though considerably less in Usefulness due to lack of some key information. Still, their good score in other sections is commendable. The team reached out to all four providers, and only Apertus responded, and agreed to improve their next summary.

8/

05.03.2026 18:14 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The team scored summaries from Apertus, Bria, and SmolLM, whose documents scored high, were clearly provided with good faith, and are both transparent and useful. Apertus in particular scored the highest. All had minor issues that can be trivially fixed, and none affect rights exercises.

7/

05.03.2026 18:13 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

To measure the transparency and usefulness, the team created a set of 242 questions that comprehensively assess each field of the public summary, including how it was provided, whether it gives all info – including bonus points for optional content, to derive a score and a grade.

6/

05.03.2026 18:12 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0