"Of course, we’re also hoping to eventually offset risk by diversifying into galoots, simpletons, and outright morons. But the important thing now is to get many, many more idiots confused enough to believe they have any chance in hell of making money off this grift”

just watched a brilliant talk by Paul Keller @openfuture.bsky.social. it includes a case for *conditional openness*, building on OF's longstanding argument that the open movement must better account for concentrations of power www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROig...

a job posting for 'Public Sector Data Markets Lead' for the National Data Library. responsible for "interventions to test the potential commercial market for public sector data. They will identify promising opportunities for data commercialisation" www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

"Today, OpenAI is co-founding the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, alongside Anthropic and Block, and with the support of Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare" openai.com/index/agenti...

I've written up some thoughts on large AI models’ evolving relationship with data (with my new @openmined.bsky.social hat on): openmined.org/blog/ai-hasn...

"Data spaces as meta-organisations" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“This commoditization will start to bifurcate the market into a spectrum with extremes at either end: a smaller premium market at one end, and a larger commodity market at the other. A classic barbell effect where the middle disappears" radicallyinformed.substack.com/p/beyond-the...

"Conditional openness means that datasets are freely accessible for non-commercial, public-interest uses, while commercial access may be subject to additional conditions— such as registration, purpose declaration, and payment where appropriate" openfuture.eu/wp-content/u...

I've written up a briefing note for @creativecommons.bsky.social on pay-to-crawl: new systems being used by websites to automate compensation for when their content is accessed by AI bots and other machines

'The Most Boring Dataset in the World' foresight.org/resource/gre...

Wikimedia's paid-for APIs now generating £8m+ revenues, presumably fuelled by AI users diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/24/w...

"It’s incoherent to claim that data is extremely valuable and that it should somehow also be free. This doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to subsidize data access to make it available at no cost, but it means we need to acknowledge the costs" radiant.earth/blog/2025/11...

"The question isn’t whether we can add integrity to AI but whether the architecture permits integrity at all. Today’s AI agents observe the Internet, orient via statistics, decide probabilistically, and act without verification" (via @peterkwells.com) www.schneier.com/blog/archive...

'How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time' www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1...

the Smart Data Group has published a proposal for what the 'Future Entity' for Open Banking + all Smart Data Schemes should look like. Special Purpose Vehicles for each Scheme.. www.linkedin.com/posts/smart-...

'Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era' www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-p...

"The open movement must likewise evolve from the libertarian ethos of the early internet toward a civic ethos fit for the age of AI. We must design infrastructures.. that preserve the spirit of accessibility while protecting against its weaponisation" sverhulst.medium.com/the-weaponis...

new UK Gov study on the value of public sector data. apparently the public sector invests £30bn in data assets per year, which have an 'expected potential value' to the economy of £15bn-200bn www.gov.uk/government/p...

"Requiring copyright licenses for training data would.. (1) create new barriers to market entry and competition in new technologies.. while (2) entrenching large copyright holders and (3) not significantly benefiting creators." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/worr...

"AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content - and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy" www.reuters.com/world/reddit...

"It’s already clear that the Internet’s discovery system for the next 15 years will be something different: Answer Engines.. Whether you like it or not, the future will increasingly be answers not searches" blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2...

This remains the funniest way to hear about an internet outage, though.

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

"Humanity AI, a $500 million five-year initiative.. will drive new investments toward establishing a people-driven future where AI delivers for humanity, strengthens communities, and enhances human creativity" www.macfound.org/press/press-...

I see this in the same family of data sharing as financial reporting, Smart Data, researcher access to platform data, retailers sharing their plastic bag sales, etc etc: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

'Cooperative data utilities' www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B8Z...

"For the same reason that a dog can go to church but a dog cannot be Catholic, an LLM can have a conversation but cannot participate in the conversation" mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...

'Realising the potential of a National Data Library' - @wellcometrust.bsky.social + ESRC wellcomeopenresearch.org/documents/10...

"China’s recently-created National Data Administration has a mandate to turn data into a new 'factor of production', alongside the traditional factors of land, labor, capital and technology" mattsheehan.substack.com/p/chinas-big...

"TL;DR What's the point of an 'ethical' AI that burns through resources, or a 'green' AI that amplifies bias? Ethics and sustainability have to evolve together, starting with how we measure and disclose AI's real costs" huggingface.co/blog/sasha/e...

OH: "the holy grail of AI now seems to be circularity rather than singularity” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"Rewilding the web means recovering what Otlet, Nelson, Hall, and Richardson all glimpsed: a civic, literary, interconnected, and collaborative commons that resists enclosure and keeps the web alive" mamund.substack.com/p/the-hyperm...

"A global advertising infrastructure built and governed to operate in the public interest.. would be able to capture funds that currently fuel our broligarchic dystopia.. [and] reshape privacy norms and incentive structures across the entire internet" www.techpolicy.press/how-wikipedi...

writing music: open.spotify.com/track/1YGxSg...

"Loyal agents: - Enabling AI agents to securely transact on behalf of consumers - Defining duties of AI agents to consumers - Ensuring agents are effective and aligned with consumers' preferences" loyalagents.org#focus-areas

'AI-as-mom'

"Microsoft is in talks with select UD publishers about.. a two-sided marketplace that would compensate publishers for their content used by AI products, starting with its Copilot assistant" www.axios.com/2025/09/23/m...

'AI as normal technology' has really gotten under my skin over the past few months: AI not as speculative 'intelligence', laden with hype or doom, but instead as a powerful, but controllable, tool with gradual diffusion similar to technologies like electricity www.normaltech.ai/p/a-guide-to...

reading this OKF report imo it's right to question the impact and role of openness + open licences.. ..and take an interest in other "modes of governance and ways of sharing value".. ..but I don't think it's useful to bend the definition of open to encompass those modes okfn.org/en/projects/...

"While this appears to be positive for transparency, it's actually more problematic than it seems.. These numbers cannot be used to meaningfully compare systems because each company employs different methodologies and assumptions" huggingface.co/blog/sasha/e...

"more than 18,000 Spotify users have joined Unwrapped, a collective.. that allows them to pool and monetize their data.. each Spotify user only earned about $5 in cryptocurrency tokens" (via @ldodds.bsky.social) arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

there's a £650k tender out for the National Data Library. it's looking for a supplier with "robust knowledge of federated data architecture", to be based out of Manchester www.stotles.com/explore/noti...

late to it, but v good: "We are the world's first AI alignment alignment center, working to subsume the countless other AI centers, institutes, labs, initiatives and forums into one final AI center singularity" alignmentalignment.ai/caaac

good article on the battle to define AI that's taking place within the IETF AI Preferences Working Group: www.businessinsider.com/google-micro...

"Introducing a new model for data stewardship.. TRANSFER Data Trust is a member-owned copperative. Our governance model facilitates distributive justice in contemporary art" transfer.art/trust/vision

“Oracle’s new market cap, near a trillion dollars, up nearly 50% [has been] driven largely by this one apparently non-binding deal with a party that doesn’t have the money to pay for the services” open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...

"Senseye uses AI to analyze ocular metrics such as pupil dynamics and eye movement.. translated into validated digital biomarkers to support diagnosis and monitoring of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder" topconhealthcare.com/article/topc...

"We’re watching the construction of a fundamentally different internet.. in the name of stopping AI companies, even though the real result will be to concentrate even more power in the hands of large tech companies while making the internet less useful for everyone" www.techdirt.com/2025/09/08/w...

"The open revolution that did not happen" paradox.openfuture.eu

"the Alan Turing Institute positioned itself as 'the police officer, not the innovator'... reflected by the institute’s output from 2018 onwards, which skewed heavily towards a specific ideological interpretation of responsibility and ethics" www.chalmermagne.com/p/how-not-to...