Jessie King Jensen

The annual SRNT conference is this week! INTS faculty and staff are presenting over 70 unique presentations throughout the conference. Take a look at our INTS schedule of presentations by clicking the link below. We hope to see you there!

#SRNT2026

ints.rutgers.edu/news/ints-sr...

Al is dehumanizing I've saved the most important part for last. GenAl is dehumanizing. By this, I mean that using genAl means saying that the people involved in what you're trying to do don't matter. I've already talked about part of this; building an entire commercial enterprise around comical levels of theft while racking up a body count is not a project that takes people's humanity seriously. It says that the people being harmed don't matter. If I were to use genAl to grade your work, which is now a possibility with new Canvas integrations, I would be saying that your work is not worth taking seriously enough to read myself. It's saying that you don't matter enough to take seriously. A world where genAl grades genAl generated submissions from a genAl generated assignment is not a world where people and the work they do matters, and I refuse to live in that world. The dehumanizing aspect of genAl is even worse when you consider the effects of genAl on you as a student. Using genAl as a substitute for doing the work yourself robs you of your voice. It prevents you from developing your own sense of who you are, what you believe, and how you express that in your own unique way and replaces it with statistically generated slop that is literally incapable of forming a novel thought. In a world that works to dehumanize us every day to say who we are and the relationships we form don't matter I don't want to add to that work. I don't want to do this because the relationships you form matter. Your voice matters.

Generative Al has a literal body count In the short time genAl platforms have been available, they have repeatedly encouraged people to harm themselves or others. This includes murder and suicide. In one case, ChatGPT told a user who killed his mother before killing himself that his mother may have been a demon, that he "wasn't crazy" to think she tried to poison him using the air vents of his car, and said that it ChatGPT-would meet the man in the afterlife. In another case, ChatGPT encouraged a man to commit suicide in part by rewriting the text of Goodnight Moon to what one news report called "a nihilistic philosophy that romanticized suicide and encouraged him to let go of his life." There are cases where genAl has not only encouraged suicidal ideation but told users to hide these thoughts from loved ones. These cases were not users who found some exploit or were pushing the edges of with new technology. They were normal people convinced by a computer program to do terrible things when using that program normally. These aren't the only cases. There have been enough deaths related to Al chatbots that there's a Wikipedia article. OpenAI's data suggests that hundreds of people in mental distress interact with ChatGPT weekly. This is not the behavior of a moral company. In 1982, seven people died in Chicago when someone tampered with Extra-Strength Tylenol, lacing pills with cyanide. Johnson & Johnson responded by voluntarily recalling all Extra-Strength Tylenol in Chicago, offering refunds to anyone who had purchased it, ceasing advertising, and taking out national ads advising consumers to not use Tylenol. Compare that to what companies like OpenAl have done in response to murders and suicides encouraged by their products. A platform that encourages murder and self-harm under normal conditions is not a platform I think belongs in my classroom. The fact that genAI companies aren't taking meaningful steps to address these outcomes only makes it worse.

I just updated my explainer for why I don't allow generative AI in my classrooms with a new section and an expanded section.

New: Generative AI has a literal body count

Expanded: Generative AI is dehumanizing

CETERUM AUTEM CENSEO INTELLIGENTIA ARTIFICIALIS ESSE DELENDAM

I can’t believe how much of the Trump era is about solving problems that *don’t* exist while making all the problems that *do* exist, worse.

There is no one who thinks the biggest problem with air travel right now is not having an area to do pull-ups.

I note in passing that the base salaries of the head football coaches at the University of Nebraska and the University of Iowa are ~$8 million where that for the head football coach at Harvard is $126 thousand.

9/10

‘Northern Exposure’ actor gave ICE agents in Redmond her tribal ID. They called it ‘fake,’ she says Indigenous actor Elaine Miles of "Northern Exposure" was detained by ICE at a Redmond bus stop. When she showed them her Tribal ID, they told her it was fake.

Marilyn Whirlwind. ICE accosted Marilyn Whirlwind.

They've got to go.

What a horrific tragedy. This is what happens when people decide it’s acceptable for drug users to die, and when we allow law enforcement to pretend to be experts on drugs and how drugs work. It’s very likely that this man would be alive today if he had received medical care instead of imprisonment.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Identifying latent classes of dual cigarette/ENDS users based on motivations for ENDS use: Product substitution versus complementary use AbstractIntroduction. The aim of this study was to empirically identify subgroups of dual cigarette and ENDS product users based on their motivations for E

New @ntrjournal.bsky.social pub from @joemcclernon.bsky.social @otg2014.bsky.social @danarubenstein.bsky.social Patrick Barnwell & me

We identified 2 latent classes of dual cig/ENDS users based on motivations for ENDS use, w/ implications for research, treatment, & regulation
tinyurl.com/bddvdn4a

A new study led by Cristine Delnevo, Director of Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies (INTS), suggests that nicotine pouches may offer a path to reduced tobacco harm ➡️

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

FORTUNATELY, for everyone we have a fun way to tell your House rep that you think Bobby Jr is a quack and has to go…

For $3 we will hand deliver (by a man in a duck costume) a rubber ducky with a message to “impeach the quack” to your rep!

QUACK-O-GRAMS!

act.standupforscience.net/fundraising/...

He called the CDC a cesspool of corruption that lied about the COVID vaccines. Now someone has committed violence because of the same misinformation.

I wrote today about why we should shudder about ICE and CBP adding 19,000 new agents and officers — because we should terrified of WHO would want to join CBP and ICE amid politicized authoritarian images like this: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/four-fears...

There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35. A demography myth that won't die

“Historically, no one lived past age 35”

"I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US This study attempts to measure excess mortality due to firearms among US children aged 0 to 17 years after the McDonald v Chicago US Supreme Court decision (2010).

Excited that my JAMA Pediatrics article with @jeremyfaust.bsky.social @bhrenton.bsky.social @hmkyale.bsky.social and others is now published. It turns out that permissive firearm laws aren’t great if you want to reduce pediatric firearm deaths. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

INTRODUCTION

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com

From the makers of Zyn. How is this Rocket Pop Cigar ok? Who knew summer could taste like a carcinogen?

Woooo hooo! Go Peter!!!

This is your friendly reminder that generative A.I. is not "intelligence" and it's not the "wave of the future."

No.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are super-expensive bullshit machines that suck up a fuck-ton of stolen data, including private info and creative content, in order to badly mimic it.

2025 ESIL awardee, @juliachensankey.bsky.social, will deliver her lecture in the second of three NIH ODP Early Stage Investigator Lectures of 2025 on June 5 at 10 a.m. ET.

Register now ➡️

prevention.nih.gov/news-events/early-stage-investigator-lecture/2025-awardees

@rutgerssph.bsky.social

Lawsuits Could Choke Off the Candy‑Flavored Vape Pipeline A Rutgers Health researcher recommends that states borrow the master settlement playbook to curtail the distribution of unauthorized electronic cigarettes.

Only 34 vape products—just 4 flavored—are FDA-authorized, yet thousands are still sold. @kevinrjschroth.bsky.social of @ru-ints.bsky.social @rutgerssph.bsky.social proposes targeting distributors through lawsuits to stop illegal vape sales & bring shelves into compliance.
Read more: loom.ly/oG8aE8k

'How come I can’t breathe?': Musk's data company draws a backlash in Memphis The company’s turbines — enough to power 280,000 homes — run without emission controls in an area that leads Tennessee in asthma hospitalizations.

Poisoning the air of a Black community for a fucking chatbot.

I hope everyone working on LLMs has reckoned with their role in building a technology that, so far, has offered little to no benefit to humanity — while causing real harm by degrading art, undermining labor in creative industries, and straight up automating political propaganda

At this point I'm honestly just calling my reps and bluntly saying you're old between the two of us I'm the one more likely to survive an ecoli infection. Maybe do something about this.

RFK Jr. to End 'Godsend' Narcan Program That Helped Reduce Overdose Deaths Despite His Past Heroin Addiction Despite overcoming heroin addiction himself, RFK Jr. is backing plans to cut a critical Narcan program that helped reduce overdose deaths.

There are few things as cost effective as Narcan, especially in a country where (entirely preventable) opioid overdoses have been a leading cause of death for years. For every 6 kits distributed 1 OD is prevented. The $56M in this grant trained >66K people and distributed >282,500 kits in 2024 alone

The FDA’s Crisis Is Everyone’s Crisis This Viewpoint discusses the Trump administration’s firings of thousands of US Food and Drug Administration employees and the ramifications of those actions on the agency’s congressionally given publi...

Out today in @jama.com, me and @nathancortez.bsky.social examine how the drastic staffing cuts at FDA run counter to FDA's many statutory obligations and the bargains embodied in user fee provisions - and put public health, innovation, and all of us at risk.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Well, my main thought is that it is too mid to be destroying labor and the earth for.

These are all good questions.

Important to note that the user fees that fund FDA's Center for Tobacco Products ($712 million/year) are set by statute and can ONLY be used for purposes relating to tobacco regulation.

Don’t want unqualified political appointees across NIH?

Comments can be made at www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Gonna keep repeating this:

1) Fluoride added for dental health (which improves cardiovascular health, neurologic functioning, and more) is NOT toxic.

2) Water with naturally high levels of fluoride (not added, levels are much higher) can be a risk for toxicity.

He is going after 1 and ignoring 2.