Prof Gina Neff Profile picture
Sep 19 7 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
A key Mu3k theory made it into the @nytimes opinion pages this week. Touted and burnished by a professor at a top university WITHOUT transparency that Musk funded him for $10 Million for the research. How? 🧵
Humanity is collapsing from population decline. Sound familiar? It's the pet theory of ultra-rich Western white guys like Musk. He funded the center run by the author of this @nytimes op-ed with a $10 million grant. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
What I find EXTRAORDINARY that this funding is not listed on website for the center, the Population Wellbeing Institute, nor did the author say in his op-ed bio that he leads PWI. But Bloomberg broke this story last month about Musk's donation to PWI. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Of course other media pick it up: father of 10 children and avid adherent to the population decline will lead to the end of humanity theory funds UTexas research center on the topic. The irony is rich.
And here we are, less than a month later, in the NYT with a piece built off of an pre-print (SSRN) on fertility and humanity's existential risks. A theory that is widely contested in demography. wired.co.uk/article/elon-m…
No mention in the Times' op-ed of another point of view. Much less that many people think this theory is wrong or dangerous. There is no mention that the UN doesn't believe this. There's no mention that there may be academic debate. INSTEAD the piece was given...
Slick gorgeous graphics by the NYT team adding serious weight to a wack-a-doodle idea. That's what $10M in a non-disclosed donation to the University of Texas can buy.

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More from @ginasue

Sep 27, 2020
.@trishgreenhalgh hate to break the news, but you still can't get tested in the UK if you are asymptomatic and have a close contact that is positive.

NHS messaging on this front is still "don't waste tests"

How is this responsible public health?

1/3
"If you do not have symptoms, you must not seek a test, as the scientific evidence shows that the test may not be able to detect whether you have the virus."

2/3
gov.uk/guidance/nhs-t…
From the Test and Trace letter sent to parents of school children: Full text here:
familiesonline.co.uk/news/parents-a…
Read 4 tweets
Sep 25, 2020
How in hell are we going into a second wave with this as the NHS messaging? Image
I say this having returned from a US state (KY) with free, rapid, on demand testing. Waste a test? Nobody wants to do nasal swab tests for fun. I flew back to the UK knowing I wasn't putting my family at risk (neg.)
And now I sit in 14 days legally mandated quarantine because I actually follow the rules.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 24, 2020
A case study: Ethics alone are not enough to ensure fairness in algorithmic systems.

@_KarenHao on the UK's A-level mess with quotes from me, @FryRsquared and @techchildrights
technologyreview.com/2020/08/20/100…

The best minds in AI ethics are not even one step removed from this mess.
The goals here were clear: preserve standardisation in unprecedented times. But public trust? Fairness? Equity? People in charge ranked those goals lower than that of standardising marks across schools. But absence of 'ground truth' here -- 2020 individual exam results --> FAIL.
We need instead to understand how these systems are rolled out in practice -- not just open the so-called black box but what's around that box: who built it, who is using it, what are they doing with it, who do they think it is for, what do people know/THINK they know about it.
Read 4 tweets
Aug 19, 2020
Covid is now the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.

In only six months since the first reported cases.
1. Heart Disease 647,457
2. Cancer 599,108
<Insert Covid here: 171,833>
3. Accidents 169,936
Data are for 2017 and cover the whole year. Of course we've only had 6 months of Covid data in 2020 (Feb-Aug), but already it it is the third top cause of death in the US.
cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 17, 2020
So is today a good day to talk about the gap between how AI & algorithmic systems work and how people SAY they work?

A thread about our new report 1/12
Last week we launched AI@Work, a report on the past year in the structual challenges of AI implementation. oii.ox.ac.uk/blog/ai-work-o… 2/12
What we find is a gap between the social and technological infrastructures to make AI systems work fairly, safely and effectively. 3/12
Read 12 tweets
Jun 24, 2020
This study found that for each year of a funders' research grant cycle, academics collectively spent the equivalent of 550 years preparing them.

bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e0…
They calculated the cost for academics' time preparing grants for this one cycle at AU$66 million, or 14% of the total of the grant money distributed.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 @RHendery 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Image
Read 4 tweets

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