Andy McMillan

68 Followers
210 Following
438 Posts
I teach college biochemistry, with a personal interest in #evolution of enzyme activity and #ProteinStructure. Interested in other general nerdery especially #TTRPG. He/him

LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool -- they just auto opted everyone in (except folks in the EU, it seems)
I recommend opting out now (AND that orgs put an end to auto opt-in, it's not cool)
Opt out steps: Settings and Privacy > Data Privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement (OFF)

We shouldn't have to take a bunch of steps to undo a choice that a company made for us.
Orgs think they can get away with auto opt in because "everyone does it".
If we come together and demand that orgs allow us to CHOOSE to opt in, things will hopefully change one day.

LinkedIn seems to have auto enrolled folks in the US, but hearing from folks in the EU that they are not seeing this listed in their settings (likely due to privacy regulations).
If you're outside of the US, I'm curious if you're seeing this?

Why does opting out of training generative AI models matter? How does it impact folks?

Well, generative AI tools build outputs based on inputs they are trained on. AI tools have a hard time synthesizing new content so allowing AI tools to be trained on your original writing, photos and videos means it’s likely that elements of your writing, photos, or videos will be melted together with other people’s content to build AI outputs (without credit to you).

In short, you may find your original writing, photo, and video content “reused” or “rehashed” by AI, and *sometimes AI plagiarizes writing, photos, and video in their entirety*.

Opting out of participating in AI training is a good idea for anyone who creates original content.

Aleksandr Tiulkanov on LinkedIn: A simple algorithm to decide whether to use ChatGPT, based on my recent… | 85 comments

A simple algorithm to decide whether to use ChatGPT, based on my recent article (https://lnkd.in/eeZ5YNJh) | 85 comments on LinkedIn

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (by Andrew Spaeth, me) has 45 tenure-track positions and 4 teaching positions: http://bit.ly/facultychemjobs2025 #facultychemjobs
The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List

Google Docs
Good to come back from vacation and have a letter waiting for me that starts "Congratulations on all your professional achievements at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I am pleased to inform you that I am granting your promotion to the rank of Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. " #ProfLife
On vacation visiting my mom in rural Montana . Got some good #Bloomscrolling shots on the family land (plus one with bonus #dogsofmastodon )
@babe I really like how this turned out from a hike on a foggy day in Washington

Did you know there is a Bandcamp clone founded on the co-op model and they are running a Kickstarter to get themselves past MVP?

https://cohost.org/eramdam/post/5862782-mirlo-a-coop-bandca

I don't know these folks and can't vouch for them directly but they've made some specific promises about their plans for governance by the contributing musicians. Seems like an important project as Bandcamp continues to decay under the new union-busting ownership.

The project has an ActivityPub account @mirlo / https://musician.social/@mirlo/112400963855831687

@Jennifer Given some of the descriptions of what they found I imagine the EPA people didn’t want to put people at risk even being in the house to collect other possessions. Still sad that more couldn’t be recovered
This is part of the 2nd paragraph and keeps escalating each new paragraph
“I mean, this was definitely not planned. It was just supposed to be the removal of these shelves full of strange-sounding names, and so I’m sorry for whatever damage they’ve had and sorry they had to be evacuated,” https://ksltv.com/639989/holladay-homeowner-apologizes-to-neighbors-for-home-explosion/
#chemistry
Holladay homeowner apologizes to neighbors for home explosion

The Holladay homeowner where dynamite was detonated Wednesday morning is apologizing to neighbors for the damage to their homes and disruption to their lives.

KSLTV.com
Some pushback on using machine learning to predict "new molecules to synthesize https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers "I wouldn’t comb through more than 2 million new compositions as proposed by Google … I think the general methodology probably works quite well, but it needs to be a lot more focused around specific needs, so none of us have enough time in our lives to go through 2.2 million possibilities and decide how useful that might be." #chemistry
Is Google's AI Actually Discovering 'Millions of New Materials?'

"In the DeepMind paper there are many examples of predicted materials that are clearly nonsensical."

404 Media