Duncan Brown
@duncanjbrown.com
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đ„ 372
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CTO for Digital Prevention Services, NHS England
https://mechanicalsurvival.com
reposted by
Duncan Brown
Jeni Tennison
5 days ago
This fantastic paper "proposes a vision of AI that embraces local vernaculars, the multiplicity of objectives, the responsibilities that come with producing persons, and the potential of instigating rather than circumventing political contestation."
read.dukeupress.edu/public-cultu...
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From Thin to Thick | Public Culture | Duke University Press
https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/35/3%20(101)/417/383266/From-Thin-to-ThickToward-a-Politics-of-Human
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A few ideas on what "good software" (not "good code"!) is, touching ethics, interop, commercials and functionality đ§”
add a skeleton here at some point
17 days ago
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"[Open standards] can feel like a burden to the participants. They should! The alternative is each product imposes its incompatible opinions directly on the users rather than working through the trade-offs with competitors first." Yet as we outsource "the work" to suppliers, we outsource this too.
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21 days ago
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This morning's AWS outage prompted reflections in NHSE towers that "disaster recovery" and "inclusive services" directly overlap. For instance, the Record a vaccination service have designed a paper-only data capture process for when the internet is unavailable
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24 days ago
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ClichĂ©s take hold in political language, a vicious cycle that runs through campaign speeches, through citizensâ expectations, and down into the software we build or procure by clichĂ©, whose accordingly poor performance invites further calls for simplification.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/design-...
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Design by cliché
We reject cliché. We require true names
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/design-by-cliche/
26 days ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
olizilla
about 1 month ago
a wonderfully humane take on the real consequences of our choices around ai and teamwork and diversity and pretty sure i would have been ugly crying by the end.
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Duncan Brown
Rob Bowley
about 1 month ago
Some reflections on
@duncanjbrown.com
's recent article "Team dynamics after AI", which is one of the best/most important pieces of writing I've read on AI in a long time
add a skeleton here at some point
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Why yes that IS a
@charity.wtf
sticker on my work notebook! đ
about 1 month ago
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Why I don't believe in "small giants":
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dy...
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Team dynamics after AI
Small giants and real giants
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/team-dynamics-after-ai/
about 1 month ago
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If prompts are all we have left to record our intentions when we're programming, we should keep them. Automatically, if possible.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/prompts...
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Prompts are design documents
...and we should keep them
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/prompts-are-design-documents/
4 months ago
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In praise of AI applications that can finish.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/structu...
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Structuring unstructured data is a correct use of AI
Who wouldn't want to be desirable, verifiable and adoptable?
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/structuring-unstructured/
4 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Gavin Freeguard
8 months ago
A *massive* thank you to
@duncanjbrown.com
, Elliot from HFEA,
@ayymanduh.bsky.social
and
@mrdudders.bsky.social
for being brilliant at Data Bites last night - one of the best we've done Watch back as live:
app.sli.do/event/6buz4o...
#pddatabites
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
AndreasThinks
10 months ago
If you're interested in UK
#govtech
or
#opendata
, the Incubator for AI have just open-sourced this like of "Awesome UK Government Datasets" and are looking for contributors!
github.com/i-dot-ai/awe...
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GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets - GitHub - i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets: A curated set of references to useful UK Government datasets
https://github.com/i-dot-ai/awesome-gov-datasets
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đ§” Some standout quotes from this paper, which uses the Prison Service as an example of how centralised political control can impoverish us when it annihilates the autonomy of people directly responsible for delivering public services:
bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journal...
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https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/pp/aop/article-10.1332-03055736Y2024D000000053/article-10.1332-03055736Y2024D000000053.xml?tab_body=pdf
10 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Peter Thomas
11 months ago
Ministers and officials need to confront the two lies that dog spending reviews: effiencies are rarely that, instead they lead to blunt cuts with unconsidered consequences; the Treasury's self-identity as a strategic performance budgeter is shattered by their increased use of input controls
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It is time to confront the 2 great lies of UK spending reviews
As we head into an unusually significant âoutcome focusedâ spending review ministers and senior officials should reflect on two mistruths that have dogged public expenditure controls and the accompany...
https://www.civilservicereformuk.com/single-post/it-is-time-to-confront-the-2-great-lies-of-uk-spending-reviews
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This was an honour! â€ïž
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11 months ago
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Chris Cunningham eat your heart out
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11 months ago
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This is righteous. Imo gatekeeping is not only a plausible explanation, but *the best explanation* for all the gratuitous complexity in frontend development thatâs sprung up over the last decade.
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Rachel Coldicutt
11 months ago
More detail in here. Test and learn sounds sensible but (a) we all know secondments will mean PwC, (b) planting people from small teams as heroes in big orgs is tough on everyone, (c) why not just give more money and power to people who know what they're doing?
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
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Government seeks Whitehall âstartupâ culture with tech worker secondments
Pat McFadden to urge departments to adopt âtest-and-learnâ approach as part of ÂŁ100m scheme for public sector reform
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/08/uk-government-whitehall-startup-tech-worker-secondments?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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At DfE âboardâ had got mixed up with âauthorityâ so people reached for the first when they wanted the second
add a skeleton here at some point
12 months ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Vicki
12 months ago
Thinking about this post a lot this week
www.ftrain.com/wwic
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The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)
I look forward to your feedback.
https://www.ftrain.com/wwic
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New language today: the expression âcode pieceâ instead of âpiece of codeâ, for an LLM output. The speaker meant piece as in âartefactâ, not piece as in âfragmentâ, and the LLM had âbrokenâ the piece by making a bad edit.
about 1 year ago
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How do you refactor a country? Whilst top-down reform on a national scale is obviously the road to hell, I think we should take the
#Platformland
invitation to radicalism seriously.
mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/the-way...
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The way to Platformland
How do you refactor a country?
https://mechanicalsurvival.com/blog/the-way-to-platformland/
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Duncan Brown
Terence Eden
about 1 year ago
My old team is recruiting. If you're interested in setting the UK Government right on AI, stop snarking online and put your career where your mouth is.
ai.gov.uk/join/
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