So disappointed with the New Yorker Anthropic piece. No critical probing or context, just gullible parroting of a self-serving corporate marketing pitch. This needed a hard Chotinering

Anthropomorphizing the user interface of a sociotechnical apparatus? Sounds like a marketing project.

This sickens me so deeply because anyone who knew young people and their families within the trans community knew this was true. Could viscerally feel the damage that has been done to a whole generation. And the instinct from Labour was not to address the harm – it was to cover it up. Unforgivable.

ICYMI The deadline for this call is 28 February.

I trust you, but your AI agent is a snitch: Why we need a new social contract. We’re chatting on Signal, enjoying encryption, right? But your DIY productivity agent is piping the whole thing back to Anthropic. Friend, you just created a permanent subpoena-able record of my private thoughts...1/

For deeper analysis on AI advertising and other business models, check out @cdt.org’s recent report Risky Business: Advanced AI Companies’ Race for Revenue cdt.org/insights/ris...

We’re dropping the first 4 essays in Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, our new series with Aapti Institute and @themaybe.org that takes a clear-eyed look at the narratives shaping the India AI Impact Summit and insists we collectively build the conversations that are missing 🧵

NEW BOOK! I'm very happy to say that my new book, Utopia, co-written with Douglas Mao, has been published on-line academic.oup.com/book/62279

"The lesson to take from [Moltbook] is actually not primarily about the technology. It’s about the collective sense many of us feel that we lack the power as individuals to stop a runaway train." Superb primer from @smw.bsky.social on what's really at stake in recent reporting about AI agents:

"In the latest move in Labour’s drive to inject AI into Britain’s bloodstream, the government has announced three US tech companies ... have agreed to help as the council pushes to apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses in Barnsley" www.theguardian.com/business/202...

If they haven’t already someone should write about the expanded UTAX universe of new Open Phil-adjacent think tanks springing up, the post-Bostrom wave of alt-ac including Cosmos Institute, Roots of Progress, etc. Elevated art deco slop and statue avis and their textual equivalents.

New from 404 Media: here is the user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE. A map shows people on a map; ICE clicks them, brings up their dossier. ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target. We obtained it, you can now read the document for yourself: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

From our paper (w/ @smw.bsky.social and @meredithmeredith.bsky.social) in 2024:

We cannot aim at Digital Sovereignty or even some degree of digital autonomy if both students and workers are trained to serve the interests of Big Tech. And they are influencing every curricula and capacity building program in private, public and social sector!

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

Could the secret police PLEASE use silencers when they shoot civilians for backtalk all this noise is disturbing my vibe coding

i’d also be super interested in talking to people at these companies about the vibe after your bosses ate popcorn with the president during a political assassination. signal in bio.

If you're in London, last spots available for this event at Newspeak House with Noortje Marres Alex Taylor @tmsqrll.bsky.social Dominique Barron @halcyene.bsky.social Annie Radcliffe Yasmine Boudiaf and Mukul Patel, on AI infra in public spaces luma.com/p4fmir78 (cc @edsaperia.bsky.social)

🚨 New! The US govt is engaging in extraordinary market intervention to bolster the AI sector. In this brief, Policy Director brianjchen.bsky.social analyzes major priorities of the Trump admin’s AI agenda and proposes alternative directions to shape tech innovation. datasociety.net/library/the-...

An epidemic of workforce demoralization? "Intensive AI use is demotivating and deskilling, fuelling boredom and mediocrity. We could even see a reverse ‘productivity J-curve’: short-term productivity gains rapidly overwhelmed by a deterioration in labour quality" newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

"There are lots of AI tools that are potentially very centaurlike, but my thesis is that these tools are created and funded for the express purpose of creating reverse centaurs, which none of us want to be." www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

James Orr believes this makes him/Reform some kind of radical, but this is the same trite communitarianism that every leading politician has recited at some point or another since 2009. The question is about the means - and whether they include an ICE, camps, gunning down small boats or not

how would one parody this?

this is smart, thorough, and excellent

Taiwan's semiconductor industry’s power demand is forecast to grow eightfold by 2028. A rapid expansion of wind energy to power this demand is upending the livelihoods of farmers, fishers and rural communities, reports Hsiuwen Liu for @restofworld.org restofworld.org/2026/taiwan-...

Our new schedule for the Winter Term - now corrected. Thursdays 4pm. All welcome!

"The union also wants limitations on hospitals’ use of artificial intelligence."

I wrote about ICE’s execution of Renee Nicole Good. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

it’s clarifying to know these people would be fine with ICE killing you so long as it was within policy

Looking forward to this! Sign up here to join us: luma.com/p4fmir78

📣 NEW w/@udbhav-tiwari.bsky.social Mapping the technical reality & privacy/security perils of pushing AI agents into our infra We offer palliatives, but the core issues are paradigmatic: 'agency' relies on pervasive data access + ability to act w/o explicit consent www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANE...

This is basically the view of the world that Plato sets out to refute in the Republic. One of the core questions asked therein is: why do powerful people think the mere fact of them exercising dominion makes it good for them to do so? Sure, you *can* get away with stuff if you're powerful - so what?

I'd really like to see some granularity around this claim that "AI and related digital technologies [are] the new productivity frontier" because it could, frankly, mean anything giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I am reminded here to tap the sign encouraging you all to support independent, worker run, billionaire free newsrooms how and where you are able

A lifetime of hearing US politicians solemnly intone about the glories of the constitution and the sacredness of law. Now they don’t even have the post 9/11 fig leaf. The whole vast military machinery is the plaything of a senile old man and his corrupt circle and most of them don’t care

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

Every world leader should be condemning Trump. We’ll see who steps up. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5...

Just like the Tories, Labour's centrist hacks think themselves omniscient and infallible - they cannot fail, they can only be failed. So when they do fail, they blame everyone else. We saw it with the Tories, and it's already started from the Starmerites with this idiotic dreck: archive.ph/rHoXA

"Fear is what this campaign is all about: trying to make people afraid of Abd el-Fattah, and by extension, Muslims and migrants. Like so much in this political moment, in the UK and elsewhere, they are tightening the circle around what is considered a “real” citizen."

As I said recently in The Guardian: "Despite their hopes to the contrary, anti-trans campaigners have not won the hearts and minds they believed the Supreme Court would give them" So they turn to this; desperate, fascistic calls for the destruction of those they hate (framed as ideas, not people).

In our latest Centre for Democratising Work interview, Amelia Horgan spoke to @brunoleipold.com about his book, CITIZEN MARX, and Marx and republicanism. Read here: www.common-wealth.org/centre-for-d...

Levy review 👇

Any MP who was laughing about prisoners who are on hunger strike should use the Christmas break to consider whether this is who they want to be and how they want to spend their time on the Earth.

Only took three months for the US to weaponize the US-UK Tech deal: "British officials on Monday confirmed the US suspended the deal last week, with one saying the Trump administration was pushing for UK concessions in areas of trade outside the tech partnership." www.ft.com/content/afd4...

This is a since-deleted LinkedIn post from the marketing agency that created the since-deleted AI-generated McDonalds Christmas ad, and all I can think of is how the energy consumption must've been about on par with a small suburb or heavy industrial load to produce 30 seconds of slop everyone hated

Super cool (and important) work from Eleanor Shearer @cmmonwealth.bsky.social visualising-extractive-capitalism.common-wealth.org

Stuck on remand for over a year, political prisoners' demands for bail and a fair trial are concessions the government could make today. Yet it's entirely possible this callous government will risk the lives of those who are not convicted of a crime and who – unlike Elbit – pose no threat to anyone

Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature, is among the most clarifying books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Really enjoyed my conversation with @alybatt.bsky.social — we cover nature, value, feminist economics, existentialism, freedom and more live now!