Use of AI shaping up to be a culture war issue? www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Well this by @eric-reinhart.com is excellent. I was struck by the way he describes patients coming for consultations having rehearsed and refined their stories using ChatGPT. And how he describes the meaning in silences that don't make it into transcriptions. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

"Lib Dem peer Tim Clement–Jones has asked the government in a written parliamentary question to explain why it had “not published the business case and data protection impact assessments”. Malevolent idiocy affecting 23,500 families, 100,000 people #Robodebt www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

EXCL: Home Office travel records used in controversial anti-fraud crackdown were so flawed that almost half of families initially flagged as emigrated still lived in UK - Luke Butterly & @lisaocarroll.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

What's this? @audreyt.org and @caroline-green1.bsky.social bringing together care ethics and AI alignment? Sounds right up my street. 6pack.care

“Though [CFO] Friar later walked back her suggestion, saying that she was advocating for structural support for AI in general, not just her company, it is likely true that some kind of huge subsidy or another is probably the only way that OpenAI’s preposterous business model […] can be sustained.”

Are we approaching a Turing Test for Teaching? A deep dive into the evidence on AI tutoring. carlhendrick.substack.com/p/the-algori...

Tiny bit of the story, but I'd love to know more about the software failure this piece mentions. If it's this Calculate Release Dates Service, it was winning prizes in June. (Once again I long, hopelessly, for a culture of learning, not blame.) www.version1.com/blog/calcula...

I have five tickets for Starlight Express TODAY at 14:30 (theatre is near Wembley). If you can use all / any please shout - would love them not to go to waste. 🚂💫

Yet more #openaddresses for UK housing stock: Wiltshire Council has released its Council Tax address list for re-use as #opendata under the Open Government Licence www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-ad... Thanks @wiltscouncil.bsky.social! Geocoded in CSV and GeoJson formats #FOI #localgov #proptech

An interesting point at the Data and AI CSO Network this week was the distinction between "digital inclusion by getting everyone to adopt digital" and "digital inclusion by providing non-digital alternatives". The first is impossible, the second shows the limits of the digitalness of digital ID.

what a brilliant essay. amongst many other things, i’m definitely having “thick” and “thin” construction🧎

Please read this statement by Anne Health. Trans children are being subjected by Sussex NHS to the physical torture of being forcibly detransitioned. This is unnecessary cruelty and in my view constitutes torture, violence and child abuse on the part of NHS Sussex.

This fantastic paper "proposes a vision of AI that embraces local vernaculars, the multiplicity of objectives, the responsibilities that come with producing persons, and the potential of instigating rather than circumventing political contestation." read.dukeupress.edu/public-cultu...

Can anyone recommend a good career coach? (For my partner, thinking about a career change.)

Ooh, I love the way this co-design approach is conceived as embedding engineers within frontline services. (Even while advocating for co-design over user research, I usually think of bringing people into digital teams, which is obviously less powerful.) Super interested to see how it works out!

There's just 1 week to go until we’ll be gathering in Birmingham for UKCharityCamp 2025, and we can't wait to see you there. If you know a colleague that doesn’t yet have their ticket, the very last few are available here tr.ee/QCAnUecTXn

By my reading, it's hard to remember a more scandalous example of a social media company being negligent in their responsibility to users. It's so so bad, and deeper investigation and regulatory action must surely follow.

"Universities are currently paying these SaaS providers and their investors twice, first with large subscription fees and again with access and aggregation power over large troves of data produced by members of their campus communities." Matt maps an alternative pathway for edtech in HE here ⏬️

Looking forward to speaking at this in a couple of weeks, alongside a great panel.

Demos is leading the Waves project, trialling new technology in local democracy to bring people together to tackle contentious local issues and strengthen trust. Rewatch this #TICTeC 2025 session: youtu.be/-WZmFyxw06o?... #localgov #civictech

Chaos at the corner shop as contactless payments fail across all the tills. Commuters abandon lunchtime sandwiches. Harried workers make emergency calls and broadcast apologies. Old farts like me who actually carry cards or even (shock!) cash smugly bypass the queues. Lessons for digital ID?

The 2025 Curriculum and Assessment Review Final Report was meant to “build a world-class curriculum for all.” In reality, it signals something quite different: the closure of curriculum reform in England. 🧵

Interesting reading this with a service designer perspective. Seems like there's obvious lessons about giving confirmations and expectation setting. Does anyone know of research about how long you can leave it without communicating with someone before they start panicking they've been forgotten?

I most recently wrote about Palantir in Challenging Privatization in Governance by AI:

Can you find a mix of methods that give voice to the right people, at the right time? This is your challenge in 'The Good Governance Game'. Recently Tim ran a play test of an adapted version of the game, for procurement processes. Read more connectedbydata.org/blog/2025/1... (1/2)

So excited, I have to share some work of ours @connectedbydata.org (well, mostly @timdavies.org.uk's) that has just gone live. We've developed a "Workshop in a Box" for teachers to use to get student feedback into the AI in Education Summit early next year. connectedbydata.org/ai-in-educa...

This whole thread is incredible:

So excited, I have to share some work of ours @connectedbydata.org (well, mostly @timdavies.org.uk's) that has just gone live. We've developed a "Workshop in a Box" for teachers to use to get student feedback into the AI in Education Summit early next year. connectedbydata.org/ai-in-educa...

When someone (in a social media team) turns books on a bookcase outwards so you can read them, it's because they are setting a tone. On the shelf, the Microsoft Research authored AI for Good... www.wiley.com/en-us/AI+for...

Brilliant to see the Office for Stats Regulation publish a toolkit for involving the public in official statistics, helped by a workshop with @connectedbydata.org osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/guidance/pub... Might lead to some new additions to this :-) connectedbydata.org/resources/bl...

In which Palantir recruits high school students for fellowships by telling them to skip college because its holds little value and then puts them through a cherry-picked curriculum that oddly resembles… college

In England, children are tracked from birth through education databases that record their lives in detail. These systems are vast, permanent, and invisible to most families. privacyinternational.org/long-read/56...

The twist in this story is that the A-level student found it back in 1977 but we have only rediscovered this fact 50 years on www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Radio 3 just played the oompa band version of Thriller, which was quite an experience...

We are excited to announce that on the 4th November at 6:30pm BST, we will be doing a live Q&A on our Discord with @clairestranstalks.bsky.social to talk about the Gender Clinic files to answer your questions.

A couple of weeks ago Jeni Tennison appeared in front of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. In this clip she is responds to a question about whether the Government is currently 'doing the work' to enable to public to embrace technology. 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hO...

AI systems are not being used here “despite their biases,” but because of them. We live in a time where power means the power not to care. I wrote recently on the weaponization of AI & error. www.techpolicy.press/musk-ai-and-...

📢 Closes tomorrow! Call for Abstracts: Participatory AI Development, Governance and Power at PAIRS26, taking place alongside the India AI Impact Summit in Feb 26! 🚀 www.pairs.site/ Open for papers/presentations/poster abstracts for online or in-person (Delhi) sessions.

The story continues. This person didn't even travel, just had a flight booked, but still their child benefit was stopped. So what's the data trail here? Who is getting what data from whom? And why have only a few hundred families had their child benefit reinstated so far?

Calling ALL health data folk: Re UK Health Data Research Service. The UK gov & Wellcome have pledged up to £600 million to create a HDRS. Myself & an ace team have been tasked by Wellcome to assess the existing health data ecosystem & identify what is needed to support the HDRS 👇. Get in touch

The Lib Dems have changed the rules around their federal elections to exclude trans people from gender diversity quotas, despite members refusing to back the measure at the party's conference last month Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde said the move was "gut-wrenching"

📢 Deadline 31st October! Call for Abstracts: Participatory AI Development, Governance and Power at PAIRS26, taking place alongside the India AI Impact Summit in Feb 26! 🚀 www.pairs.site/ Open for papers/presentations/poster abstracts for online or in-person (Delhi) sessions.

"AI" videos being used for misogynoir and "welfare queen" racism? Who could have guessed it?

Interesting reading some feedback that looks to be at least partially AI generated. I don't know how much guidance or review the human author provided, or how much they rewrote it. But the uncertainty makes me discount what it contains: I just don't trust it's what the human actually thinks.

...and we're pleased to have just secured budget this year for some travel support to people with selected papers, presentations or posters at the Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium - helping with our goal of supporting a diversity of voices to shape AI governance discussions.

⏳Call for Abstracts for PAIRS26 - the 'India AI Impact Summit edition', closes in 5 days on Fri 31st Oct. www.pairs.site/PAIRS26-Call... If you've research or practice to share on participatory approaches to AI, or you've been thinking about submitting but not got around yet, please take a look.

EVENT | The government's digital ID plan: why now and what for?💳 @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social, @bigbrotherwatch.bsky.social, @labourtogether.bsky.social, @timdurrant.bsky.social discuss the advantages and challenges of implementing digital IDs. 🎟️ www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/govern...

📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms). It’s also concerning. 1/

Glad to see this piece which rebalances the moral panic about young people and screens. Let’s move the debate on from ‘screening Adolescence in every school’ economist.com/internationa...