Open Science enthusiast & head of Knowledge Commons at UGOE / SUB Göttingen | MA LIS | PhD Math @bschmid1@mastodon.social
Göttingen
Joined March 2009
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Birgit Schmidt retweeted
🌩️How can we protect humanities data when threatened by conflict, censorship, funding cuts, cyberattacks or environmental disaster?
Our special collection “Weathering the Storm” invites submissions describing practical, urgent approaches to rescuing and safeguarding cultural data
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
AI people don't understand what copyright is.
Cameras, lenses, paints, brushes, software, and paper are tools and materials, none of them 'contains a copyright'. They also can't generate previously copyrighted things spontaneously for you.
Books, tutorials, and museums are all things meant to be learned from. Art, art history, and culture are all things you can learn from as well, and if you aren't plagiarizing or using those materials directly in your work without permission, there is no copyright issue.
AI is built directly from other people's work without permission, the models contain weights that essentially serve as compression and CAN generate copyrighted materials, both intentionally and unintentionally. It also competes directly with the people it steals from, which is NOT fair use.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also on record saying generative AI couldn't exist without copyrighted materials.
Pretending that literally every art tool or resource or source of inspiration is the equivalent of mass theft of the entirety of mankind's creative output is not just disingenuous, it's propaganda.
Do not listen to these people.
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
My latest *Locus* column is "Reverse Centaurs," and it sets out to unravel a paradox: how is that some AI's users describe their experience as a hellish ordeal, while others delight in the ways that AI is changing their lives for the better?
locusmag.com/2025/09/comment…
1/
ALT A business-suited figure seen from behind, climbing a tall, existential white stone staircase that rises to infinity. His head has been replaced with a horse's head. The background has been replaced with a shadowy panel of knobs and buttons.
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes
- Abigail Segel, Defector
defector.com/it-took-many-ye…
ALT Think of it. Forty-five hundred years ago, if you were a Sumerian scribe, while your calculations on the world's first abacus might have been laborious, you could be assured they'd be correct. Four hundred years ago, if you were palling around with William Oughtred, his new slide rule may have been a bit intimidating at first, but you could know its output was correct. In the 1980s, you could have bought the cheapest, shittiest Casio-knockoff calculator you could find, and used it exclusively, for every day of the rest of your life, and never once would it give anything but a correct answer. You could use it today!
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
New Normal Curves podcast out today! We discuss an MIT paper that recently made headlines like "ChatGPT rots your brain." Spoiler alert: The paper has a lot of problems. Listen here: bit.ly/chatgptmit or watch here: bit.ly/chatgptmitvid
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Stronger together: European e-Infrastructures are uniting for better collaboration and services.
At the recent Assembly meeting in Amsterdam, @EGI_eInfra, @Eudat_eu , @GEANTnews , #PRACE, & #OpenAIRE shared goals, progress, and a joint vision for the future of research in Europe.
Read the recap: connect.geant.org/2025/08/06…
#OpenScience #EOSC #eInfrastructure #ResearchCollaboration
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
How great was Tom Lehrer? In 2020, he moved his entire catalog into the public domain because he felt he'd made more than enough money off of it.
Enjoy every Tom Lehrer album:
tomlehrersongs.com/
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Tom Lehrer has left us, aged 97. An incredible talent who, in 2023, put all his songs and recordings into the public domain, making them free for anyone to use for anything, forever. What a remarkable bloke.
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks
ALT Image: A small, pretty English village. A girl with a bag on her shoulder runs towards a van on the other side of the village green. She says to herself "I've got to follow my heart and leave this sleepy village behind. A new life awaits on the open road, touring from town to town in a merry band of brilliant eccentrics!" Title: “Rebecca runs away to join the travelling library”
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
#RecommendedRead: Kherroubi, G.I., Erdmann, C., Gesing, S., Barton, M., Cadwallader, L., Hengeveld, G., et al. (2025) 'Ten simple rules for good model-sharing practices', PLoS Comput Biol, 21(1): e1012702. doi: doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi….
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Presentation slides for my talk yesterday at #SciPy2025
Barba, Lorena A. (2025). Embracing GenAI in Engineering Education: Lessons from the Trenches. figshare. Presentation. doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.…
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Incredibly important report on AI training & copyright released today by the European Commission. It gets lots right, slamming the idea that creators should be required to opt-out of having their works used for free by AI companies.
It says:
- Generative AI must be based on opt-in consent
- Current EU law does *not* permit generative AI training on copyrighted work without a license. Some claim Article 4 of the CDSM does, but this view is mistaken.
- Requiring creators to opt-out or have their work trained on for free would be unfair and contravene international law
- AI systems don't learn like humans, from a technical or legal perspective
It suggests a solution of a statutory exception for AI training with an unwaivable right of equitable remuneration for authors and rights holders. I'm not sure this is the right solution - but it's great to see the Commission coming out so strongly in favour of respecting creators' rights, and making it clear that tech companies' dreams of unpaid use of copyrighted works cannot be permitted.
Read the full report here: europarl.europa.eu/RegData/e…
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
This is what I wrote in the Preface to my book 6 years ago.
Peter Norvig told me that he almost stopped reading after this part, but people whom he trusted told him that it was worth continuing and he hasn't regretted he later told me.
Isn't it still true today with LLMs, VLMs, and all other LMs?
100% true.
While you are in distribution, everything works like a charm, but should your foot just slightly leave this nice comfort zone, things get ugly quickly.
This is how machine learning is, and as long as you remain in this paradigm, it will always be this way.
If you disagree with this state of affairs, you have three choices:
1. Become a scientist, and through decades of research (and sacrifice), and if you are incredibly lucky, formulate a new AI paradigm.
2. Become a liar like those infamous CEOs and their sycophants AI influencers.
3. Become a blind believer like the followers of those infamous liars and their sycophants.
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
The correct take:
- “stochastic parrot” is a top notch turn of phrase that does accurately convey something about what LLMs do
- stochastic parrots can be smarter than most of the people who like that phrase think
- but not as smart as the people who don’t like that phrase think
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Explore what’s new for researchers in the EOSC EU Node in the upcoming Ask Me Anything session on July 8th (14:00-15:30 CEST) to unpack:
- New user policies & credit models
- Training resources on OpenPlato
- Federated services
- Q&A session
🔗open-science-cloud.ec.europa…
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
Everybody, feel free to sign this even if you are not NL-based and ‼️ share ‼️ (anonymous signature is poss):
Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia
(link below)
Birgit Schmidt retweeted
#RecommendedRead: Ronald Snijder has written two blog posts (1) (2) outlining the impact these bots have had on the OAPEN Library and DOAB, where automated systems have drowned out genuine users:
-oapen.hypotheses.org/1265
-oapen.hypotheses.org/1450