NEW: on the eve of SpaceX's IPO, i spoke to folks in the memphis area still fighting the company's polluting data centers there, which are now also being leased by Anthropic "We’re the extracted and exploited colony of what is going to be one of the most highly valued entities in the world"

Good, clear coverage: "Those playing a pivotal role in the spread of the footage on Elon Musk’s X included the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, fresh from a meeting this week at a sumptuous Moscow hotel with the billionaire’s father" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Glad to see this from the FT, but many have been raising this for a long time and it's been disregarded as a sort of digital nimbyism or patronised as pearl-clutching panic. Labour needs a decent tech strategy and Blair and Mandelson's influence on policy needs to end with the change in leadership

Yesterday the EU Commission launched its 'tech sovereignty package'. The package is a disaster in disguise: ❌ It fast-tracks the data centre build-out ❌ It postpones sustainability rules for data centres 🤷‍♂️ It only takes baby steps in excluding Big Tech from public procurement 🧵

Wiley buys Emerald. Pretty soon there'll be like three academic publishers left. www.researchinformation.info/news/wiley-a...

SCOOP: An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned.

🚨 Tech Workers Coalition and Collective Action in Tech are excited to announce the date for Circuit Breakers, our national tech labor conference! This year will be in NYC from Oct. 17-18th. Early bird tickets will be available soon, register for updates! techworkerscoalition.org/circuit-brea...

In Wednesday’s Data Center Policy in Practice training session, we shared the strongest local and state policy interventions to protect water, air, and public health from the data center buildout, from diesel generator bans to water moratoriums. Watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTa3...

Join our Data Center Policy in Practice training on energy on May 27 at 1pm ET. We’ll demystify the data center industry’s false promises around energy efficiency and “clean data centers” and discuss policies for actual ratepayer and energy grid protection. bit.ly/policy-in-practice-training-series

businesses: we’re finding all this AI spending isn’t really paying off and we’re thinking it might be time to pull back public: it’s hard to tell what’s real anymore with all this AI slop and some of my friends are acting pretty weird mark carney: WE MUST SPEED UP AI ADOPTION FOR THE ECONOMY

Subhed from the NYT article on CSU adoption of ChatGPT: “California’s public universities spent $16.9 million on A.I. during a financial crisis, and the result has been chaos.” Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/m...

My latest in @techpolicypress.bsky.social on data center policy trends. “While the era of unchecked growth fueled by tax breaks is waning, the new regulatory regime is fragmented, reactive, and heavily contested.” www.techpolicy.press/the-state-of...

So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Researchers from the OII, including @aboxiwu.bsky.social and Zoe Hawkins, in collaboration with Prof. Vili Lehdonvirta and the OECD's AI Policy Observatory, have co-authored a working paper and blog post on how to measure domestic public cloud compute availability for AI: oecd.ai/en/wonk/the-...

and @aboxiwu.bsky.social, visiting fellow investigating the AI global supply chain: ainowinstitute.org/contributor/...

Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org

⏳ Only one week left to send in your abstracts for our special issue of the @policyr.bsky.social on Big Tech in global security governance! We guest editors are really looking forward to reading your proposals. 🔽 CfP and submission guidelines below

Culture Machine CfP: University as Infrastructure - how 'the technologies it chooses to adopt follow a colonial and extractivist model' ~from colleagues at Critical Infrastructures & Image Politics x Critical Media Lab x Centre for the Study of the Networked Image culturemachine.net/vol25-cfp-un...

it's been 3 months since @aboxiwu.bsky.social and I sowed some seeds in our tiny tech futures garden thanks to @daniadmiss.bsky.social, Arts Catalyst, flematu sessay and all the greats we continue to learn from and dream with 🌱 💚

Sobering piece in @nytimes.com compares China's advances in clean energy to the U.S.'s retrenchment in fossil fuels. Hard to read at a moment when the U.S. is giving up on a more affordable, healthier, and more sustainable future. www.nytimes.com/interactive/... 🧪🔌💡☀️💨🔋

novaramedia.com/2025/06/04/k... Data centres will not create the thousands of jobs gov would like us to think they will.

"In Silicon Valley, some investors ask whether the AI infrastructure boom will become what fibre optic cables were to the dotcom era." www.ft.com/content/0e24...

This is just too common: Google hides behind an LLC, asking for tax breaks for a massive data center. There is a short public hearing with a little notice given to residents who will be impacted the most. The mayor insists secrecy is necessary. The deal passes. www.jonesborosun.com/theeveningti...

This is a terrific and extremely important post by @salome.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/the-rig...

Great to have the opportunity to discuss mine and @jaivipra.bsky.social's "Computing Commons" report with brilliant co-panellists @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social, @aboxiwu.bsky.social, Guy Lalanne and Aleks Turobov. Thanks to everyone who joined, and to the @bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk team for hosting!

For my last class of the semester in my AI & climate course, one of the assigned readings was @tamigraph.bsky.social's & Meg Young's article. It's good: hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/fscsqwx4...

For those who think Elon Musk just “turned” bad a few years ago: In 2014, Musk threatened an entire team at Tesla with deportation when their leader asked him to address a brake safety issue with the Model S. She was forced to resign.

The environmental disaster that is GenAI trucks on, heedlessly. Musk is operating 33 illegal methane generators at this data center.

The race for AI dominance hinges on who controls the keys to computing power. Our hidden gem of the week unveils how most resources still cater to elite research communities, not the public. By @halcyene.bsky.social & @jaivipra.bsky.social at @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social https://buff.ly/3X7hMou

Looking forward to hearing from @oii.ox.ac.uk DPhil student @aboxiwu.bsky.social speaking at the upcoming @bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk event ‘The AI Value Chain: Research and policy priorities’. Tuesday 6 & Wednesday 7 May 2025. Full details below. Find out more about her work: bit.ly/42oyQta.

Looking forward to speaking at this event next month with @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social @aboxiwu.bsky.social @alturobov.bsky.social! I'll be talking about my work with @jaivipra.bsky.social on how public compute—state provision of computing resources—can be used to reshape the AI sector. Sign up 👇

The next season of our “Digital Economic Security Seminar” is about to embark - organised by yours truly and Vili Lehdonvirta. Check out our schedule and sign up here: diesl.eu/digital-econ...

“They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything,” the former official said. www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

🎤Digital Sovereignty for people and the planet. IIPP Prof @ceciliarikap.bsky.social will welcome a diverse panel of experts to the upcoming #IIPPInConversation event, addressing key questions on achieving digital sovereignty. 🔗Learn more & register here: buff.ly/S9s7ypx

Proud (& surprised) to receive the OII's @oii.ox.ac.uk 2024 Thesis Prize for my research 📚 "Frictions in the Cloud: An Ethnographic Case Study of Local Data Centre Contestation in the UK". www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

This is the literal destruction of knowledge. Mississippi libraries are being ordered to remove academic research on race and gender from library databases. mississippitoday.org/2025/04/08/m...

Some light morning reading on the BBC

ai is a political project to centralize power

Would say “these systems don’t work” but the actual work of these systems is to more fully embed and perpetuate the racism of carceral systems, and thus they work exactly as intended.

I compiled a list of all the current OII people on Bluesky, please send me the handles of those I couldn't find!

Thrilled to be joining this! Congrats @digitalgoodnet.bsky.social for putting together such a timely symposium.

If you're around KCL on 9 April, join us for a timely panel on 'AI & DATA ECOLOGIES'. We will have amazing speakers: Mike Duggan, @jwyg.bsky.social , @lboungr.bsky.social , @tavmos.bsky.social, Gavin Williams and Maud Borie. You can register here: lnkd.in/eQSTNGBp

AI alignment papers be like…. learning from human preferences is important for language models to match human needs and to align with human and social values. in this paper, we *generate synthetic data and use fancy simulations* to align LLMs with human values

really a lot of gender happening these days, huh

On 4/10 & 4/11, we're hosting our symposium "AI and Democratic Freedoms." Thrilled to have @ghadfield.bsky.social, @lujain.bsky.social, @sydneylevine.bsky.social, and Hoda Heidari and moderator @hlntnr.bsky.social for our third panel RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/artificial...

Have never pre-ordered so fast (and requested at the local library!)

Finally moving off X (reluctantly on Linkedin but the severed energy scares me) its bleak out there...