1. LLMs do not reason
2. LLMs do not understand anything, they have no concepts: "pressure", "morals", you name it
3. It's a great headline but to "threaten" to use nuclear weapons is one thing (and actually key to MAD) but article also says LLMs going "full-scale nuclear war was rare."
It would be a very very very good thing for Starmer to show some principled leadership around now. And perhaps it might also focus the mind a bit, away from playground disputes.
... reducing marking burden will be part of it, as marking is a horrible activity. Plus something about gamification? Plus most people don't do "written work" (by hand) in adult world but lack of evidence around this (which is another thing, schools are terrible at engaging with research)
Ahhh now see the train of thought! Re "other learning materials" that will be budgets, if parents are buying the laptops cash strapped schools are just not going to spend money they don't have on 20+ quid a pop textbooks students may never open. "Replacing written work" more complex...
It's... just a bad headline? Article doesn't actually mention textbooks once nor does it say "textbooks bad, computers good".
![Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, who closely follows India’s progress, said: “If we get to AGI [artificial general intelligence], AI is going to be producing 80% of the global economy. All manufacturing, most agriculture, all services will be just done; managed by AI, produced by AI.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mo7wgmn53nbs64qzdzdpupde/bafkreibylcofnqqtd2ovhasy3ujnyvngtmf22epx2jy3oyzstglsmnipta@jpeg)
Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, who closely follows India’s progress, said: “If we get to AGI [artificial general intelligence], AI is going to be producing 80% of the global economy. All manufacturing, most agriculture, all services will be just done; managed by AI, produced by AI.”
Imagine, he said, an Indian village priced out of having a health centre. In the future, AI could design the hospital and “along comes a bunch of giant quad copters carrying the materials, and a bunch of robots come and assemble everything. Two weeks later, you’ve got a hospital.”
I'm astonished this statement could be reported so uncritically.
Let's be real: *IF* AGI is ever developed, all its efforts will be spent making OpenAI profitable and sending Musk to Mars.
From www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
That over-reliance on a heavily-subsidised technology isn't seen as a strategic risk by engineering leaders is baffling.
Before you start attributing this to AI, note that the biggest drops in employees has been in retail and hospitality - sectors with 122,000 fewer workers than this time last year.
(we are kicking off a project on AI workforce impacts though, so watch this space...)
"[The] report reveals three-quarters of CIOs admit to not having full real-time visibility into AI agents running in production systems, even though they have the ability to implement actions."
Only a matter of time til agent goes wrong and there will be panic.
www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/n...
Really really wish Oracle were not calling this an "agent" which suggests an autonomous AI tool making decisions without human in the loop (which this almost certainly is not, because that would be nuts)
The business model of LLM makers is blatantly unsustainable. In any other domain these companies would have hit the wall years ago. Anyone using LLMs for anything important needs to be asking "what happens when we have to start paying 10x current price for tokens?"
Major UK research resources get long-awaited access to GP data
Naomi Allen, chief scientist at @ukbiobank.bsky.social tells me it is a “watershed moment” for the resource and for global health research in @resprofnews.bsky.social
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-i...
I wrote an article for Ada National College for Digital Skills, who run digital technology apprenticeships in the UK
I don't think people appreciate enough the fact that, at a time where global warming was approaching an inflection point yet renewable energy was finally becoming economically viable, we decided to squander that opportunity because literal death cultists decided we needed Infinite Bullshit Machines.
The next round in our game of Who Wants To Be A Software Developer is called "Patching and Upgrades". You'll love it!
www.theregister.com/2026/01/30/o...
A colleague posts this morning...
"I have written a few agents on Co-pilot how do I get them to see docs in our local shared drive?"
As I say, lots of people about to discover things like the constant pain of managing permissions.
Hang on, I had missed the fact that the AI Skills Hub cost £4m. mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski... If this wasn't tax payers' money it would be quite funny. Also, can only assume PWC spent some time rolling around in gold because they did NOT spend it on building this
Reading an interview with Streeting in the HSJ on 31 Jan 2025
When asked if he would abolish NHS England his response was: "I could spend a lot of time and money changing job titles and email addresses and not make a difference to the patient interest"
2026 Streeting would strongly disagree
Getting the first 90% done of any tech project has always been quick and easy. The final 10% is where all the pain is. And *then* there's the ongoing support and maintenance to ensure business as usual.
Lots of people vibe coding, or playing with AI agents, or even just relying on Copilot to take meeting notes, will quickly find themselves in a tech support role when it misbehaves or breaks or just disappears. And they probably won't like it.
These AI companies are simultaneously the most money-grabbing, cash-burning, hyper-capitalist businesses we've ever seen, whilst they're also...
seizing the means of production.
A lot of people in Trumpworld - especially those who like to use the phrase "there's a new sheriff in town" recently - would do well to remember that 3 years from now the boot could well be on the other foot.
Plus these proofs of concept are all well and good when they have:
- no deadline
- no limit on tokens
- absolutely bare minimum expectations around quality
I just do not see a route from here to production.
Anything in the speech about working with people on frontline rather than doing everything from Whitehall?
Am still learning about waiting lists, very much not my area of expertise, but my understanding is there are BIG data quality issues here. Giving people greater visibility to these problems could actually create more frustration for individuals, not less.
Really wish more focus was on the climate crisis aspect of this story, rather than whatever nonsense the orange convicted felon blurted out today (which he will have forgotten by tomorrow) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Thanks to everyone involved in organising #ukgc26 and all the attendees for a really interesting day. Keen to keep the conversations going especially anyone who wants to get into it around the NHS / healthcare
Really, really scary stuff coming out of the US.
