A total inversion of the old 'human in the loop' defense: "Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets human input. But the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving task" cybernews.com/news/waymo-o...

Please, my magic bean, it is very sick

Please consider applying for the 10th edition of CNIL-Inria Privacy Award. The CNIL-Inria Privacy Award is intended to promote research in Computer Science and Privacy and to raise awareness among citizens and decision-makers on privacy and data protection issues. 1/2

If only computers had built in clocks in order to tell time using some sort of deterministic machine-readable format. But alas, the only way to know whether it's daytime is to pay nearly a dollar every 30 minutes to ask a fancy autocomplete bot.

For ICML 2026 (top tier AI research venue), authors can choose between two policies for the use of LLMs in reviewing: Policy A: LLMs prohibited (authors who chose this are bound by it when reviewing) Policy B: "Use of LLMs to help understand the paper and related works, and polish reviews" allowed

🎯 Getting Gig Work on Scotland's Political Agenda Food delivery workers joined the Workers' Observatory workshop this week to build political momentum towards fair and safe gig work in Scotland. You can read the workers' principles and policy demands here: workersobservatory.org/documents/WO...

Matt Goodwin's lies about his background have hopelessly confused Google AI 😉

To celebrate the publication of @d-j-frost.bsky.social and mine’s book ‘In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left from 1956’, I am giving away a copy to one randomly chosen person who reposts this post by 11.59pm ACST Sunday 1 Feb. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526179593/

I’m looking for my right-hand person to come help me run the @aial.ie - Job Title: Lab Coordinator, AI Accountability Lab (0.8 FTE) - Pay Scale: (€58,999 - €69,325 per annum pro-rata) - Closing Date: 11-Feb-2026 12:00 Apply here: my.corehr.com/pls/trrecrui... Main Responsibilities👇🏾

Back to GDP: There is no productivity miracle in the US. The growth of productivity (= GDP per hour worked) has slowed down markedly. From 1.9% in the period 1980-2010 to 1.1% in 2010-2025 If you think the rise of tech has made people more productive, think again

This is being pitched as a 'plan to increase ‘education exports’', but fees from international students at UK institutions are already considered exports (under WTO definitions, "Mode 2: Consumption Abroad"). www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Profits go down: We regret to announce that we have to destroy the world. Profits go up: We're delighted to announce that we have to destroy the world.

Ever wonder what proportion of high profile social media research is tied to the tech industry? New from me, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social and @carlbergstrom.com. Thread tomorrow. arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

Last year, we made the decision to step away from X. The Royal Irish Academy is committed to creating, convening, and sharing knowledge for the public good and as an organisation we value Independence; Integrity; Curiosity; Openness and Rigour. In our view, X no longer aligns with these values

Aarhus University are advertising for an assistant professor position in Human-Centered Cybersecurity - application deadline 19th January: international.au.dk/about/profil....

Spotify is worth over $100b but its algorithms can't seem to distinguish between UK garage and garage rock, which have nothing in common except their name.

The Society for Hopeful Technologists listened to our community. We know many folks feel tech has gone in the wrong direction and don't know what to do about it. We're going to start by building a solidarity network that makes it easier for Hopeful Technologists to act hopeful.technology

Thanks to AI, it's easy for anyone to vibe code a web scraper! Thanks to AI, all web scrapers are blocked!

If you've been caught with AI hallucinated citations attributed to me, then for the right price, I'll write and publish a real paper to match the fake one 😀

This, for the record, is what goes into a footnote. It’s the key part of the research process where I examine the practical, methodological, ethical implications of my sources before I join the stream of interpretation. It cannot be outsourced to an LLM.

Professional societies keep beclowning themselves buying into a lie about what an LLM "summary" is. They are inherently counterfeit: not an epistemic product of the ideas in the source, but summary-shaped text linguistically based on *other* works (in the training corpus) that use related language.

The new law is also a huge opportunity for unions to modernise. It includes new rights of workplace access, including digitally, and makes online balloting legal for the first time too. Unions should hear it as a strong signal to improve their digital member experience and sort out their data.

On the first night of Hanukkah, we hold close the memory of movement ancestor Marek Edelman (1919-2009) Z’’L, a lifelong anti-Zionist who fought in and survived the Warsaw Ghetto, resisted Nazism, and maintained his identity as a Polish Jew, refusing to immigrate to occupied Palestine.

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

apparently there's 'falling growth' in the 'scientific research' sector, and yes, that is what will happen if you slash jobs in universities

Uber, Lyft, and other app-based corporations can take up to 70% of a ride’s cost for their own profit, leaving drivers with next to nothing. They’re ripping off employees and price-gouging consumers — all while raking in billions. I’m introducing a bill to fix this broken system.

The divergence between what the Master of the Rolls thinks AI can do for litigation (left) and the reality of it (right) is stark. I wish he spent more time dealing with cases infected by it. (The 2nd quote is from Re: D [2025] EWCA Civ 1570, handed down yesterday).

NEW: Our experts, along with @consumerreports.org and @moreperfectunion.bsky.social looked into how Instacart was deciding prices on grocery items across the country. What we found will shock you.

When my two year old does this I know he needs to go wee wee

NEW: Elon Musk's Grok chatbot will, with minimal prompting, provide residential addresses of everyday Americans. Prompts as simple as "[name] address" immediately returned accurate home addresses of private citizens — alongside other personal info we didn't ask for. futurism.com/future-socie...

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu

New from @jpquintais.bsky.social & me: a critical and wide analysis of the Obligations of all General-Purpose AI Model providers under the EU AI Act. We give a deep ~50 page, 300 footnote treatment and find so many tensions, loopholes, inconsistencies and more. Link: files.michae.lv/papers/Veale...

Another Dieselgate - hopeful but not optimistic that the eventual settlement money will get spent better! www.theguardian.com/business/202...

That is, there is no broad "AI jobs apocalypse," as AI is too unreliable and limited to do jobs that demand accuracy or empathy. But plenty of managers will use it to try to replace human art with cheaper "good enough" AI art. So it does appear that bosses embracing AI are hitting creatives hard.

I have some news - I'm very happy to be joining as a co-director at the Responsible Technology Institute (rti.ox.ac.uk). Please get in touch if interested in collaborating!

The Information Commissioner's Office fined 23andMe ... £2.3m for GDPR infringements in ... '23

I've noticed the opposing team's fans only cheer when the opponents score on us. To win those fans over, I recommend we score on ourselves repeatedly; that will surely make them so happy they'll start supporting us. And I'm sure all our fans will keep cheering for us—who else is there to cheer for?

Trying to grow the UK AI sector by building data centers is like trying to grow the university sector by building paper factories.

I remember being told that it would take 193 years to reach legal limits for nitrogen dioxide. I decided this was unacceptable. Thanks to the bold policies we put in place, we've managed to do it in nine years - 184 years earlier than expected.

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Google just wiped EU data from its political ad library. Meta’s ban on political ads in the EU starts soon and we're worried they might do the same. We need a backup of the EU Meta Ad Library now. If you have data (2018–present) or skills to help, let us know: ir96l7a6vsf.typeform.com/to/fIk9XMZT

"Lend me ten pounds, and I'll buy you a drink" The Pogues, Boys from the County Hell

For any colleagues who are, like me, concerned about the threats Gen AI poses to the integrity of academic research, learning, and stewardship of knowledge, a counterpoint: "AGAINST THE UNCRITICAL ADOPTION OF ‘AI’ TECHNOLOGIES IN ACADEMIA" - @olivia.science et al philarchive.org/archive/GUEATU

We're hiring! 2x Associate Prof / Prof with Tutorial Fellowship 5x AssProf/Prof with non-Tutorial Fellowship at @kelloggoxford.bsky.social For the latter 5 posts, we're looking for 3 doing research in AI, 1x software engineering, 1x cybersecurity. www.cs.ox.ac.uk/aboutus/vaca...

🙋‍♀️Our Society for Hopeful Technologists newsletter #2 is out! 📩Make sure you have subscribed to it to get all the news📨 It's such a pleasure to be part of this group and strategise towards a more Hopeful tech future 🌅 We will be organising events and come together to decide how it will work ✨️

As someone with 'human centered' in my job title, I'd like to point out that it originally described a movement of workers who wanted to take over technology production and switch it from capitalist and military ends, towards socially useful technologies (cf Mike Cooley and the Lucas Plan)

I've seen a lot of papers evaluate LLM performance with another LLM, which has always felt dodgy. Here's an example of why that might go wrong:

With news of a reported settlement with Anthropic I went back to check the class action form and it now allows authors outside the US to input their address, so it may be worth adding your known pirated titles (from the LibGen pirate database) www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...