End of year overview of posts on my blog Soft Machines. Featuring -the UK's economic stagnation -why the UK's new nuclear build programme failed -good & bad reasons for growing UK manufacturing -scenarios for the future of AI -Moore's law -university/R&D policy for hard times softmachines.org?p=3218

Pleased to report that there’s been effective communication between @philipcball.bsky.social’s gnomes and Santa’s elves

How should universities work with combined authorities and business to support inclusive growth in our city-regions? Some reflections on my five years in Greater Manchester, to mark the year of my retirement from the University of Manchester. softmachines.org?p=3213

This by the excellent @jburnmurdoch.ft.com confirms my view that political trends are being driven by the halting of the upward economic conveyor belt - striking charts: www.ft.com/content/30a4... Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics

How should universities work with combined authorities and business to support inclusive growth in our city-regions? Some reflections on my five years in Greater Manchester, to mark the year of my retirement from the University of Manchester. softmachines.org?p=3213

An excellent response from @tomforth.co.uk to the TBI proposal for new R&D institutions outside universities. I agree that it would be better if the UK had more diversity in R&D institutions; Tom brilliantly identifies some blind-spots in the TBI analysis. To pick out a few key points...

An excellent response from @tomforth.co.uk to the TBI proposal for new R&D institutions outside universities. I agree that it would be better if the UK had more diversity in R&D institutions; Tom brilliantly identifies some blind-spots in the TBI analysis. To pick out a few key points...

A blogpost in which I return to a continuing theme: The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis. GDP per person grew by 2.3% a year between 1955 and 2008, when growth slowed down dramatically, never to recover. GDP per person is £16,500 (29%) lower than if pre GFC trend continued

A blogpost in which I return to a continuing theme: The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis. GDP per person grew by 2.3% a year between 1955 and 2008, when growth slowed down dramatically, never to recover. GDP per person is £16,500 (29%) lower than if pre GFC trend continued

Good to see the eschatalogical underpinnings of Silicon Valley belief systems stressed in this piece. Perhaps we should see Joachim of Fiore as the true precursor to Peter Thiel and his like. www.ft.com/content/1258...

Nice @richardaljones.bsky.social look at nuclear overspend/overbudget problems softmachines.org?p=3196 Tl;Dr: your colourful stories of regulatory intransigence are not the whole answer

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman thinks? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories?

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman thinks? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories?

How will AI change the world of manufacturing? Will the future consist of AGI powered humanoid robots building factories to make more robots, as Sam Altman seems to think? Or will AI be driving process & system optimisation in increasingly automated factories? A blogpost: softmachines.org?p=3203

Should the UK "reindustrialise", as Robert Jenrick says in FT this morning? Manufacturing share of UK economy should be bigger, imo, but important to be clear why - should be about increasing productivity, so for value, not jobs, & to be realistic about UK's place in world softmachines.org?p=3180

Great that the government has accepted recommendations of FIngleton Nuclear Regulatory review. Rationalising and removing unnecessary regulatory roadblocks is just the first stage in getting the expansion of affordable, safe nuclear power we need, though...

"Ownership, Control, National capability: learning lessons from the UK’s nuclear new build debacle" In 2014, the UK planned 18 GW of new nuclear build. A decade on, only 3.2 GW is under construction. What lessons can we learn from this failure? softmachines.org?p=3196

The noise about relations between the OBR and the Treasury obscure a more important issue. Nothing is more important for the future of the UK economy than the prospects for productivity growth, and the OBRs record in predicting productivity over the last decade and a half has been dreadful.

Important FT piece on China's challenge to the US and Europe in creating the world's leading innovation economy: "The focus has built deep advanced manufacturing ecosystems around scaling and integration into the real economy, rather than ‘blue sky’ science..." www.ft.com/content/3ecc...

A blog on innovation, universities and the regions that really, really need them. Written with my very good colleague @jcaustin.bsky.social and published by IPS (International Politics & Society) in Berlin. www.ips-journal.eu/work-and-dig...

A better way of visualising the historic awfulness of our current productivity growth performance. Are we really saying technological progress has come to an end and there's nothing more we can do about it? (Also, please join my campaign against plotting the derivative of noisy data)

It's good that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility has issued a document explaining its productivity prediction downgrade. It could, however, have been much shorter. Along the lines of: "As figure 5.2 shows, the OBR's productivity forecasts have zero credibility & should be ignored."

This post gets to the crux of our difficult economic situation - & this is the crucial plot. Our problem - we didn't invest in the future, & now the future has arrived. Now we need to move from consumption led growth to investment led growth.

Here is @richardaljones.bsky.social basically telling us how it is. I’ve been thinking about this since listening to him say this stuff out loud at the @royalsociety.org on Thursday. softmachines.org?p=3192

In case you are feeling too cheerful at the start of the weekend this @richardaljones.bsky.social piece on the likely future breakdown of consensus on science/R&D should take care of that softmachines.org?p=3192

UK Science in a post-liberal world - a blogpost I argue that a multi-decade period of consensus in UK science policy is likely soon to come to an end. We must respond to a new focus on re-building, re-energising, re-arming and re-industrialising for a changed & hostile world softmachines.org?p=3192

Should be a familiar story, but the rise of China, over just twenty years, as the world's dominant manufacturing superpower is an event of truly world-historical significance. (This plot from @IfMCambridge's 2025 Innovation report) www.ciip.group.cam.ac.uk/innovation/u...

Preparations for November budget once again dominated by discussions of UK's dismal productivity performance, with a threatened OBR growth forecast downgrade. Only two sectors showed any overall increase in total factor productivity between 1995 & 2020: manufacturing, & information/communication

Manufacturing accounts for 8% of UK economy: should we try & increase this? Yes (imv), but it's important to distinguish some good arguments for this from bad ones (and recognise some uncertainties) my blogpost: softmachines.org?p=3180

Manufacturing accounts for 8% of UK economy: should we try & increase this? Yes (imv), but it's important to distinguish some good arguments for this from bad ones (and recognise some uncertainties) my blogpost: softmachines.org

The Liverpool City Region has been growing strongly in recent years – not too far behind Greater Manchester and third in the leaderboard of Northern productivity growth. But why is this the case? And what can we learn for the UK productivity problem? Short 🧵 1/5

Remembering my mother, Sheila Howell Jones, who died on Friday softmachines.org?p=3177

Reflections on this year's economics Nobel prize, role of innovation in driving economic growth, and UK's changing institutions of innovation since the Industrial Revolution. "the laureates have taught us that sustained growth cannot be taken for granted" softmachines.org?p=3173

Reflections on this year's economics Nobel prize, role of innovation in driving economic growth, and UK's changing institutions of innovation since the Industrial Revolution. "the laureates have taught us that sustained growth cannot be taken for granted" softmachines.org?p=3173

A recent flood of articles suggests that AI is a bubble, with even main protagonists agreeing. Earlier this year I suggested 3 scenarios for AI: 1. Intelligence explosion 2. Excel in prose 3. Crash and burn It's Silicon Valley's belief in 1 that makes 3 more likely My piece: softmachines.org?p=3125

A recent flood of articles suggests that AI is a bubble, with even main protagonists agreeing. Earlier this year I suggested 3 scenarios for AI: 1. Intelligence explosion 2. Excel in prose 3. Crash and burn It's Silicon Valley's belief in 1 that makes 3 more likely My piece: softmachines.org?p=3125

📊 New report by @joshmartinecon.bsky.social and Cliodhna Taylor for The Productivity Institute and @escoeorg.bsky.social tracks UK labour productivity across 184 industries from 2009–2023, more than double the granularity available from official datasets. 🔗 www.productivity.ac.uk/research/lab...

To state what should be painfully obvious, if you want to increase productivity in an environment that's close to full employment, you need fewer people working in hospitality, not more

What sector of the UK's market economy showed the largest productivity growth since 1995? The answer probably won't surprise you...

UK's fiscal difficulties arise, as much because we don't earn enough, as because govt spends too much. Cause is the productivity slowdown - without that we'd all be 36% richer Maybe there's something to learn from Greater Manchester's outperformance in productivity growth

Some thoughts on my five years at the University of Manchester, & the progress we've made working with partners in the city-region to realise the University's potential to support Greater Manchester's economy www.linkedin.com/pulse/though...

Three statements of local ambition stand in Halifax, West Yorkshire: the Town Hall, the Borough Market and the Piece Hall. Such monuments of civic pride still bear the names of farsighted local leaders from past generations. 🧵 1/13

the 'social license' for universities (and the case for a 'national' perspective) set out by @profserious.bsky.social profserious.substack.com/p/on-our-soc...

Some worrying issues in science teaching - continuing shortages of subject specialists (esp for physics), and lower than average retention rates, all adding up to blockages in the STEM talent pipeline

Really interesting "Lunch with FT" featuring physicist turned hedge fund boss J-P Bouchaud. I remember hearing a great talk at the Cavendish by him, visiting Cambridge in mid-90s when he was still a physicist, on Lévy flights ...

Bit of a magical misty autumnal atmosphere in the birch woods & moors above Froggatt this morning

Interesting proposal to build advanced modular reactors at Hartlepool A back to the future element to this - idea of a high temperature, gas cooled reactor with TRISO fuel (graphite + ceramic wrapped UO2 pellets) was developed in UK's Dragon demonstrator, closed in 1976. www.ft.com/content/3999...

Disappointed not to be considered sinister enough to be named as a contributor to the Dept of Business & Trade's "Growth School" series of external speakers in this exposé.

Wisdom at its best here. Very much worth your time reading this. Also the word 'eschatology' is used!

Good FT piece highlighting disappointing progress in AI driven drug discovery. One lesson: finding new drug candidates isn't rate limiting step in developing effective new medicines, as much as lack of screening techniques and disease models that have good predictive power www.ft.com/content/9a8a...