“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” -Trump Article III The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.

if Wikipedia, an org with a shoestring budget and volunteer workforce can ban use of llms, what excuse do large orgs and universities have

Quite stark hearing how Bloomberg question @meadwaj.bsky.social when talking about wealth taxes and institutional reform, versus how they question hedge fund managers, central bankers, and investment bankers. Class interests are a powerful thing.

Just finished teaching my last policy economics class of the year. We had a brilliant guest lecture from Professor Ben Clift on the OBR, and he even signed my copy of his book! Key takeaways: crisis is the new normal. Economics needs to keep up. An easy win: invest in renewables, keep bills down.

> 17,400 businesses raided by UK ICE > car wash owner raided every three months, despite no illegal workers being found. > based on anonymous online tip-offs > former ICE officer says it’s often “competitors within the local area” filling out the forms www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

It's very convenient to have a 5-day pause at the start of the 5-day trading week.

You know how in a library no one’s trying to sell you anything? That’s how the internet was.

Overall, our results suggest that sustained human development did not begin suddenly in the 19th century. Instead, it emerged earlier and gradually, across several civilizations, over many centuries. Industrialization appears as a late acceleration of longer processes.

“The ‘privatisation premium’, according to an analysis by the Common Wealth thinktank, sees almost a quarter of the average household energy bill – roughly £450 – flow today into corporate profits.” Our latest briefing covered in @theguardian.com 👇 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

There is definitely a strategic play here for China and Russia to exploit the fuel starved Asian tigers and weaken America's position in the Pacific. Russia must surely be mulling over how to exert pain on Europe and strengthen their Ukraine position, too. The long twentieth century is over.

The UK's permission for the US to use its bases in attacking Iran amounts to complicity in the crime of aggression. It drags us into what could be an endless war, without democratic or even parliamentary consent.

Allowing British bases to be used in an illegal war of aggression is a catastrophic and historic mistake. Britain has been dragged into another war because our Prime Minister would rather appease Donald Trump than stand up for international law.

Besides the obvious, horrible, systemic risk that embedding AI into critical systems demonstrates... ...dude, is organisaing your desktop really something you need AI to do? Really?

Higher house prices not only add to household debt but also increase the need to work for longer. We can’t imagine a future of less work while housing costs keep on rising www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Ivan Illich's radical monopoly: You can buy the product from many different vendors, but you must buy it from someone.

For those I've been discussing this with earlier - a new version of the AI/AGI and the social contract paper. Feedback very much appreciated. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Thrilled to share a new paper with @stuartmills.bsky.social & @casssunstein.bsky.social. The paper discusses ManipulationDetect (previously NudgeDetect), a tool I launched a few months ago that uses LLMs to highlight 'manipulative' practices online. ideas.repec.org/p/not/notcdx...

New podcast episode: AI Bubble Economics 101! (W/Stuart Mills) A word that is increasingly being discussed is "bubble". But what is a bubble really, are we in an AI bubble now, and if we are: what’s next? Have a listen, share widely! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

2025 is coming to end and some people who claim not to be fascists are still associating themselves with fascist outlets like X. I claim, perhaps charitably, that it's because they don't understand how the internet works. Either way, this needs to change. berjon.com/fascintern-m...

Interesting! We are getting better at doing the wrong things! Drucker would have a few few things to say.... "There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all."

I have a new paper in the BMJ Open. We find 71% of GP surgeries do not follow NHS guidance around patient registration. The guidance says patients do not need documents like photo ID, but many surgeries demand them. This will reduce people's access to care. bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/1...

"One feature of capitalism is its ability to create work for people to do. A world without work is incompatible with capitalism," says me in this piece on AI and job loss - heartening to see a link to my book here www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture...

Something I'm working on: 1) On average, only 9% of US firms were using any form of AI to produce products in September 2) US firms are consistently overestimate the rates of AI adoption (dotted line) 3) Expectations are maybe(?) starting to outpace reality...

This is precisely it. We are living in an era of commoditised conflict, where local conflicts can now have global effects, conflict itself can be more ambiguous, and expensive prestige weapons are increasingly for show.

Nice to be quoted alongside stalwarts like Gary Marcus and Carl Benedikt Frey in this article about the AI bubble. I'm not sure I think AI companies *should* raise prices, only that I think they will *have* to. www.dw.com/en/will-the-...

This reads more like Rogoff advertising his books than him making some profound comment about the state of economics discourse.

Data suggest generative AI is being used for backroom firm activities, rather than on the frontline. Adoption rates imply low productivity returns, too, which is also consistent with backroom rather than frontline applications. Some thoughts from my ongoing research: siu2lh.com/articles/wha...

When people talk about AI boosting productivity, do they ever account for the time lost now that every website on the internet has to have an 'are you human?' check which depends entirely on whether Cloudlfare decided to switch their servers on today?

The US military took 15 years to restructure itself around IT. When they did, they followed Soviet ideas. The Soviets lacked IT, so needed to predict how the US would use IT, to learn how to counter them. Jumping head-first into AI means you're likely to get concussion. siu2lh.com/articles/how...

Right now, a smart government would be massively investing in publicly owned renewables, supported by commitments to domestic manufacturing and nationalised steel production. They'd be talking about driving the price of electricity in the UK to zero, and labelling anti net zero an energy tax.

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Is generative AI profitable? Probably not. Would businesses pay more for it? Also no. Is it politically useful? Yes. Would politicians pay a lot for it? Also yes. New paper with @richardrwhittle.bsky.social papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

This would be an enormous mistake for the UK and an error of judgement which will only compound as climate change bites. Gross negligence on the part of our politicians to bet the house on this stuff. Selling out our future for today's naive delusions.

10,000 have joined us as paid-up members! Some people have experienced issues due to such high traffic! It is a safe and secure platform so please keep trying: www.yourparty-membership.uk

Last week, I spoke to the BBC about contactless payments. I appreciated them reaching out to me, and they quoted me in their subsequent article. It's a reasonably normal thing which happens every now and then. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Last week I wrote to Coventry City Council about their £500,000 contract with Palantir. Palantir is a partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, collaborates with ICE in the US & is embedded in our NHS. Coventry (& the NHS) must divest from genocide & protect jobs, services & data.

The rumour is OpenAI and co. are seeking revenue splits from retailers as a way of making their products profitable. This raises big concerns about dark patterns and online manipulation. A whole new frontier for consumer protection. Some of my thoughts below. theconversation.com/openai-looks...

I increasingly struggle to separate the AI productivity debate from the computer productivity debate of the 1990s. Actually, I think it's all still the same debate. Some initial thoughts on what I think will become something more substantial: siu2lh.com/articles/are...

Again, I have some mild concerns about universities paying for unrestricted access to this technology to every single undergraduate on campus!

I think this is a larger pattern: "AI" allows you to roleplay competence.

This received quite a positive response so I wrote the paper. Comments are welcome. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

AI models downplay women's health issues. This is an important result, and one which should seriously temper calls to introduce AI into public life. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Letter of the day (in the Times)

truly abhorrent, and for a labour party to be doing this. it should be unconscionable. the UK needs jeremy corbyn and zarah sultana’s new party more than ever.

If you think A.I. will solve your problems, you don't understand technology and you don't understand your problems.

I laughed so hard I thought I was going to cough up an organ. Every line is gold.

I do firmly believe that refusing to outsource your basic cognitive functions to LLMs right now - as so many are stumbling over themselves to do right now, like hogs trotting to a pile of slop that’s been set up inside of a butcher’s delivery truck - will very much pay off in a few years.

We now have 300,000 people signed up and the establishment is clearly frightened. Westminster is broken, but the real crisis is inequality: just fifty families now own more wealth than half the population. Let’s change that together. Join us: yourparty.uk

I had the privilege of giving some lectures on AI and behavioural science this year, and I was struck by how pretty much all the applications which were proposed were, for lack of a better word, fascist. I'm thinking of developing this idea (image is the abstract). Comments or suggestions welcome.

<Angela Collier video intensifies>