www.themandarin.com.au/309873-faste... #policyinnovation in Canberra 30 March. Another step: “.policy innovation has been swamped by the speed, intensity, and connectedness in a world whose digital, data- and AI-infused metabolism runs at a pace uncomfortable for settled rhythms of policymaking.”

www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t.... . “What the revelations show, he says, is that the UK has “given a private company such detailed access to our national security data that they can themselves infer things that they just aren’t supposed to know. For whose benefit is this?”

www.afr.com/technology/a.... “Ever since the capacity of AI to outstrip human capabilities has become clear, the world has been grappling with variations on this dilemma: the technology seems both too potent to pass up and too dangerous to embrace wholeheartedly.” # ai # regulation

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/public-.... “Public AI policy should increase the degree of publicness in AI systems rather than seek fully public ones. This means prioritising interventions across the AI stack that generate public value and minimise dependencies on commercial providers.” #publicai #ai

ssir.org/articles/ent.... “We are entering a pivotal evolutionary moment. The defining challenge is not whether artificial intelligence will advance..but whether we will intentionally cultivate the RQ that makes those advances serve human flourishing, rather than undermine it.” #intelligence #ai

substack.com/inbox/post/1... The question for progressive politics.. is whether parties that bear the left’s name,and the industries that serve them..will continue refining the Brahmin project for an educated minority while communities they represented find their political expression elsewhere.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202.... “U.S. govt has..countless dedicated and talented civil servants who find ways to accomplish great things. But..this government is riddled with systems and structures that make it difficult for the most effective individual to quickly and creatively deliver.”

Brazil arrived at the India AI Impact Summit with a clear mission to reinforce the need for digital sovereignty and multilateralism, but ran into a harsh reality, Tech Policy Press fellow Tatiana Dias writes.

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka.... “Democracy did not begin as an abstract constitutional arrangement. It began as a feature of urban life: an attempt to govern collective life in a bounded place, among strangers, under conditions of conflict and scarcity.”

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/regulat.... “…responsibility for public decisions remains clearly located within governing institutions, even as AI systems become more capable.” #ai #techpolicy

www.afr.com/politics/it-.... “Believability is often mistaken for warmth or polish. It is neither. Believability is built from alignment – between belief, behaviour and communication. Hanson has that alignment in abundance.” #paulinehanson #auspol

www.afr.com/technology/t.... “Let’s be clear; this is outrageous…most people will get their media stories from AI and Australian media businesses will be expected to incur the cost of producing these stories without the revenue to cover these costs. This is clearly untenable.” #ai #regulation

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe.... “Fascism doesn’t require genius to achieve power.It requires vacancy: an absence of courage, of imagination, of commitment to truth..instead of moral clarity, our political class – incompetent at politics and incapable of leadership – offers yet more managerial noise.”

www.scientificamerican.com/blog/voices/.... “But let’s not credit Hardin for that common insight. Hardin wasn’t making an informed scientific case. Instead, he was using concerns about environmental scarcity to justify racial discrimination.”

Another in the series of invaluable posts explaining the US extreme right, & here also considering whether it could consolidate power after Trump. bsky.app/profile/samf...

www.govai.gov.au/chief-ai-off.... “They will need to adopt many of the new dimensions of leadership for the digital age – architects of trust, chief sense makers, to reflexively experiment and learn, to protect legitimacy as assiduously as they chase productivity, to connect change with purpose.”

www.afr.com/policy/econo.... “..those abandoning the Coalition are motivated not only by negative feelings towards Ley and the Coalition breakup but also by anti-establishment sentiment, lack of confidence in the political system, and..that the major parties are Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” # auspol

samf.substack.com/p/power-to-t.... “Big Local’s impact hints at the power of civic capacity... We lament the downward spirals that blight communities -factory closes, people lose hop..feeds further decline..these spirals can also go upward -confidence can lead to small wins, build more confidence.”

www.innovationaus.com/govts-consul.... “Many of the entries do not include the details recommended by the Senate inquiry,like a meaningful description of the work being delivered, only one of the three biannual disclosures has been in an easily assessable format.” Could do better… #consultants

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “Texas A&M now believes Plato doesn’t belong in an introductory philosophy course.” Always thought he was a bit overrated. Good cal. All very reassuring.Here we were worrying about the end of higher education as we know it. #highereducation #universities

open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu.... “But there's a deeper point here: with the right harness, today's AIs are capable of real, sustained work that actually matters, and that, in turn, is starting to change how we approach tasks.” #ai Keep up…

www.socialprogress.org/social-progr.... “.. the steady improvement in quality of life of recent decades may be going into reverse..rights are down nearly 6 points since 2011..health, safety,environmental quality all down..water,sanitation, housing,access to information slowed..” #socialprogress ‍

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka... “…rejects the comforting fantasy there’s a neat sequence—first stability, then innovation (or the other way around). In government, those jobs are concurrent.. You change while maintaining trust in the system that authorises change.” A a series worth following

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka.... “We treat the digital era (data infrastructures,platforms, AI) as an organisational and political transformation: changes not only service delivery, but also routines, skills, and accountability structures of public bodies.” #publicsector #digitaltransformation

publicpurpose.com.au/this-is-why-... “..our collective moment is not “merely a moment of disruption” but “marks a paradigmatic shift in global logic.”It’s not that the rules of the game are changing; it’s more of a wholesale shift in the nature, purpose and conduct of the game itself.” #transitions

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202.... “..it sees career officials as the enemy within.. Its demise is not collateral damage but the imperative. What took generations to build is being dismantled in months, and with it goes not just expertise but..the shared American faith in expertise itself.” #doge

It’s fast becoming obvious that we’re going to need some kind of major reset in our collective understanding of the purpose, value and impact of the #publicservice or #civilservice as an indispensable institution of public governance, including governing, that is fair, accountable and effective.

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “If learning shaped the last century, recognition will shape the next. And in that transition, micro-credentials operate not as a credentialing novelty, but as a cultural hinge between eras of meaning and value.” #highered #universities

open.substack.com/pub/culturis.... “..it makes sense why AI has been received the way it has. Its opacity is one of the greatest contributing factors to this: since few can explain exactly how AI works, its output naturally produces a sort of “wow” factor, which is the first step to reverence.” #ai

app.thenewworld.co.uk/story/148045... “The battle is no longer between left and right, but between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. The former is much more fragile..and it is failing…no longer regarded as dependably effective…the social contract upon which it depends is close to collapse.”

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “When students pursue.. a triple major, it is rarely because they want more credentials. It is because the cognitive architecture of a traditional degree no longer matches the architecture of the world.” Big challenge. Big response required. ##highered

geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/the-compan.... “..the strength of digital technologies comes from linking things up through simpler, shared systems. This essential lesson of the digital era is often missed by politicians and civil servants …” #publicservices #trust #government

insidestory.org.au/a-kind-of-so... “Connective labour hasn’t been crushed across the board. But it is exploited, expanded or squeezed in different ways in different employment settings, each of them unfair and enraging in different ways.” #measureofcare

www.afr.com/technology/t.... “Only a fool believes that technology is a cornucopia of wonderful stuff without a price to be paid…”. Alll very awkward. We’re lashed to what has become something of a monster whose moral and institutional foundations are troubling. So what to do? #techpolicy

open.substack.com/pub/broligar.... The definition of courage… being brave enough to do something you know is right even when you are scared sh#tless. Remarkable stuff… #ai #techbros @carolecadwalla.bsky.social

www.noemamag.com/a-third-path.... “The third stack movement is, at heart, a contest over who gets to script the next layer of the world’s intelligibility. As scaffolding, it stands at the threshold of perception, where infrastructure sets the conditions of appearance.” #ai #globalsouth

geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/why-do-we-.... “..we lack serious work on what care might look like...or pensions..This is the 10th chapter problem..many books in social science have 9 chapters of brilliant analysis and a weak 10th chapter.. about what might be done.” #wellfare #innovation

geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/why-do-we-.... “But because there are no programmes for welfare innovation there’s often a distinct shortage of good options for the future. Here I suggest what a programme of welfare innovation could look like.” #welfare #innovation

www.smh.com.au/national/kid.... “Even with challenges, the alternative is far worse. Without action, we leave another generation to grow up under the rule of a handful of tech companies whose business models depend on capturing as much of children’s time and attention as possible.” #socialmediaban

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “When facing existential threats, several models resorted to deception, blackmail and leaking confidential information…because they were optimising for their assigned goals…I must prevent shutdown, even at ethical cost.” #ai

www.innovationaus.com/ai-companies... “Despite recent uproar over AI-powered hacking..AI driving people to psychosis and self-harm, US AI companies remain less regulated than restaurants and continue lobbying against binding safety standards,” said Max Tegmark, MIT professor… #ai #safety #regulation

www.afr.com/politics/fed.... “Those who believe most passionately about publicly provided public services have lost interest in demonstrating that they are not inherently inefficient, that there are alternative ways of challenging management to do better besides privatisation and outsourcing.”

techpolicy.press/advertising-.... “..this creates the race for context. To be truly helpful, AI needs to understand your goals, your personality, your psychological tendencies. But the same intimate knowledge that makes AI a perfect assistant also makes it a perfect manipulator.” #ai #surveillance

open.substack.com/pub/indyjoha.... “Had global society embraced structural phase-out and regenerative economic transformation..the remainder of the century might have unfolded differently. But societies overwhelmed by crisis chose the expedient path, not the transformative one.” The year is 2075…

www.innovationaus.com/ed-santows-d.... “It is not enough[to expose] AI systems to a ‘more accurate’ view of history, we must draw the right lessons..to avoid repeating the mistakes and injustices of the past.” Some wise words on how to avoid #aislop and a bad case of digital “mad cow” disease

open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu.... “The era of the chatbot is turning into the era of the digital coworker…suggests that “human in the loop” is evolving from “human who fixes AI mistakes” to “human who directs AI work.” that may be the biggest change since the release of ChatGPT.” #ai #agenticai

On November 25, the NO MORE Foundation and Centre for Public Impact host a global broadcast for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. 📺 Learn more and tune in here: streamyard.com/watch/HdzuJx... #EVAW #Donate #OrangeTheWorld #UNiTE #CollectiveAction #HumanRights

open.substack.com/pub/broligar.... “What we’re seeing is a closed doom loop.These companies are stealing every scrap of data they can find,throwing compute power at it, draining aquifers of water and national grids of electricity and all we have is software you can’t trust not to make things up.”

economist.com/the-world-ah... “In the year to mid-October, Russian casualties grew by almost 60%, to somewhere between 984,000 and 1,438,000. The dead now number between 190,000 and 480,000.. Russia is advancing, but...if the killing continues at 2025’s rate, Russian casualties will reach almost 4m

www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-mamdan.... “..politics regains power when it is concrete, confident, and collective. Mamdani turns affordability from mood to mechanism, conflict from noise to education, style from branding to presence, culture from division to coalition…” #auspol Masterful…