'it’s interesting to compare how hard it was to differentiate a web browser with how hard it is today to differentiate a chatbot'
Fab piece from @thebenedictevans.bsky.social asking hard Qs of OpenAI when its tech is similar to other labs and has no network effects www.ben-evans.com/benedictevan...
an unsurprising take from someone who loves both Middlemarch and Infinite Jest
not to be a massive bore but in these times of A) received inter-gender polarisation and b) AI sloppified media/textual offerings it does feel insane to keep chiding men for... reading books
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
84% of the UK public are concerned about the government putting technology sector needs ahead of the public when regulating AI. Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8–24 September 2025
🎄All we want for Christmas is for AI regulation to work for people and society.
Our new polling shows the UK public are concerned that tech companies’ needs are being prioritised over their own when it comes to AI regulation.
Read the full findings ⬇️
www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...
academia friends, anyone got experience using Open Review as a Programme Chair? help needed please!
In the intro issue of New Left Review, Stuart Hall noted, “The humanist strengths of socialism—which are the foundations for a genuinely popular socialist movement—must be developed in cultural and social terms, as well as in economic and political.“
Zohran Kwame Mamdani‘s campaign got the point!
NVIDIA and OpenAi:
Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“
@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Either real-time bidding data or app SDK data is being bought and used by ICE to seize people from the streets. If you didn’t believe that the adtech stack is a human rights concern, I’m not sure what more evidence you need. www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...
It would be good if the only political pushback against Nigel Farage's plans to mass deport hundreds of thousands of our neighbours, friends, family and colleagues didn't just come from a handful of backbench MPs and one regional mayor
The headlines — £31bn in investment, new jobs, faster medical treatments — sound almost too good to be true. What are we giving up in return?
Me in @theguardian.com on today's US-UK Tech Deal:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
From BBC live news ticker: Police are not using live facial recognition in its policing of the 'Unite the Kingdom' demonstration which is beginning on London's south bank, reports the PA news agency. It said: • We're using a mobile CCTV van to help monitor the build up of crowds. Officers have been asked if it's using 'live facial recognition' - we can confirm it is not. The live facial recognition technology - which captures people's faces in real-time CCTV cameras - was used in the policing operation at the Notting Hill carnival.
Met Police’s policy on when they use oppressive facial recognition technology is made pretty clear here…
✅ Black community celebration / event
❌ White supremacist rally
Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai
hey im putting something together for my boss for his birthday. yeah can you write a letter or better yet an insane poem or horrifying drawing about the unspeakable crimes you all have committed together
Radical right accommodation really does not work.
New paper out with this exceptionally talented team
@katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk
doi.org/10.31235/osf...
Please apply for / pass on this vacancy with @tuc.org.uk!
You'll be working with the brilliant @adamc-c.bsky.social and with us @connectedbydata.org to ensure workers' voices are an effective countervailing force that shape the adoption of AI.
tuc.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/...
1. Incitement to violence is a serious offence, carrying a sentence of up to six months in prison.
2. What's it got to do with the health secretary?
3. I'm sure if I posted that Wes Streeting needed a good kicking, he would be very eager to send the cops round.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Keir Starmer: cut me and I bleed union j
the level of disorder on show in the UK right now in terms of kneejerk conspirational thinking against every possible intervention or source of authority is quite the concern!!
The trouble is that the very sector powering so much of America’s economic growth is squeezing the rest of its output. Housebuilders, for instance, cannot afford to be blithe about higher borrowing costs. Data centres have also constrained the rest of the economy by keeping energy prices high. Average American electricity bills have risen by 7% so far in 2025, at least in part because of the extra strain data centres have put on the grid.
Chart showing investment in AI infrastructure shooting up as investment in other parts of the economy declines
Spending on AI data centers is now so great that it’s crowding out investment in housing and other critical parts of the real economy, through higher energy costs and by propping up interest rates, argues The Economist
economist.com/finance-and-...
Far right demagoguery - thanks to crucial, repeated validation from the political mainstream - has painted a target on the back of every man of colour in this country.
Everyone knows what is likely to happen next.
Interesting work from Turing, adding to the growing evidence that significant performance gains — and possibly real-world utility — can still be gleaned from smaller and previous-generation foundation models
www.turing.ac.uk/blog/why-we-...
resonates with what we're finding in forthcoming Ada research on transcription tools in social work.
these tools are being rolled out without systematic evaluation, often with a singular theory of change -'productivity gains' - which risks obscuring other important impacts on work & care
Last month, Anas al-Sharif sounded the alarm on starvation in Gaza. Israel accused him of terrorism.
"We warned this felt like a precursor to justify assassination," said Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Today he was killed in a targeted strike on a tent housing reporters.
Arresting 400+ people for the "terrorist" offence of protesting against mass murder while large segments of the right are openly encouraging riots against immigrants is a tale of a very unhappy country and government.
'It is less that AI is the cause of degradation in reading and thinking, and more that the creation of a culture that views knowledge primarily in an instrumental manner has made it easier to misuse AI.'
fascinating paper on 'character training' LLMs - models fine-tuned to be 'warmer' are significantly more likely to promote conspiracy theories or validate incorrect facts, particularly when users express sadness 🤯 arxiv.org/abs/2507.21919
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
The Online Safety Act assumes that all tech, social networks, etc, are run by big tech, raking in profit from illegal advertising. Community-run and funded networks/sites — real non-Big Tech alternatives — are left in the dirt. I have never seen OSA proponents consider their needs or their value.
This, and it doesn't work.
Now, it is possible to address the harms of mass engagement-driven platforms. But doing so requires pushing back on the core biz models of the platforms, not tinkering on the edges w surveillant 'solutions' that increase surveillance w/o addressing the root cause.
