For many, the end of the year is an opportunity to catch up on reading or to purchase books as gifts. In 2025, a number of authors joined the Tech Policy Press podcast, providing fresh insights into how technology interacts with people, politics, and power. Check out the list:

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.

Automatised metapolitics, coming soon to a uni near you. 'Texas universities deploy AI tools to review and rewrite how some courses discuss race and gender' www.texastribune.org/2025/12/15/t...

We need a Russell Tribunal to investigate universities' complicity in AI-led crimes against education (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell...)

#OtD 18 Dec 1974 the radical Danish Solvognen theatre group, dressed as Santas, provoked a near-riot in the Magasin department store when they gave out free toys from the shelves to children. When they were arrested by police, the children began to cry www.tiktok.com/@workingclas...

Cables of Resistance - movement conference against Big Tech, Berlin 10-12 April 2026 programm.infraunited.org/cableresist26/

New archetype for the struggle - 'the Disability Luddite'. Armed with a disability justice perspective, the Disability Luddite aims for the destruction of technologies that amplify the social construction of disability 🔨👨‍🦼🏴

A quick glance at the Home Office Instagram gives you a sense of how far the far right mainstreaming has gone in the UK. (Surprised not to see a Trump-style ASMR of a migrant in chains, but I'm sure that's coming...)

Amazon Prime pulls AI-powered recaps after errors www.theverge.com/news/842978/... but the NHS continues to pilot an AI discharge summary tool based on Palantir's system (referred to in these minutes as the FDP - Federated Data Platform) www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/fe... 😷💻☠️

Today, 12 EST/5 GMT.

One of the lessons the Luddites learned the hard way, and the critical AI movement could avoid relearning, is that when it comes to the harmful social impacts of tech the state is NOT a neutral arbiter between private capital and the common people. 💻🔨 Recommended text 👇'Writings of the Luddites'

It is very concerning. If you're interested in the details behind our comments on both 404 pieces, we wrote a report that breaks down these arguments (as two nuclear safety experts who work on AI): ainowinstitute.org/publications...

"we’re developing advanced software systems capable of accelerating nuclear reactor deployments by enabling AI to... generate 3D models, [and] conduct rigorous failure mode analyzes with minimal human intervention” #ChernobylAI 🍄☁️☢️ www.404media.co/nuclear-rian...

"Our conversation with Dan McQuillan will examine the political stakes of AI, asking what can and should be done". Livestreamed Friday 12 EST/5 GMT on YouTube with audience Q&A. www.youtube.com/live/wi0u3Hs...

"a course that's eliminated AI will appeal as an alternative pathway to universities concluding that, thanks to AI, they don't really need most lecturers, and students concluding that, for similar reasons, they don't really need universities." danmcquillan.org/cpct_seminar...

Palantir CEO Says Making War Crimes Constitutional Would Be Good for Business gizmodo.com/palantir-ceo...

I wonder if the European Commission's insistence on calling data centres 'AI factories' is a deliberate attempt to encourage Luddism and machine breaking? 🔨 (Think of the alternative social benefits that could be delivered with €2.6 billion...).

This isn't a public utility it's a protection racket.

The concept of system prompts as natural language instructions seems to be confusing the idea of LLMs as content-addressable (not true) and simulcra-addressable (more accurate imho).

In conversation with Andrés Saenz de Sicilia of The Philosopher journal as part of their 'AI and the Digital' series, covering reform, resistance, fascist resonances, (dis)passionate applications, system contamination and path dependency. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEA...

If you think generative AI should be integrated into the classroom then you also think management consultancies should determine the future for higher education. Both are ethics-free forms of machinic optimisation based on reductive abstractions that strip out important context and relationships.

Who could have seen this coming except literally everyone share.google/GFaMy3K2Jjlo...

Leopards, faces, etc.

"Yet 60 per cent of respondents also view AI as the single biggest threat to research integrity". Instead of reflecting on the fact that maybe they're right, JISC's recommendation is to assimilate generative AI more deeply at the core of the process 🤦

'Health minister says UK should cash in on NHS patient data - Zubir Ahmed says new central service for medical datasets should be leveraged for ‘benefit of Treasury coffers'' www.ft.com/content/0531... - the State emulating social media's surveillance-to-monetisation pipeline.

Full video of panel and discussion now up on PeerTube tubedu.org/w/teHCy6pkiK...

Live now: Haunting Futures: Big Tech and Resistance w/ Syed Mustafa Ali www.youtube.com/live/GEZQXb8...

My speaker notes & slides from today's panel on 'Resisting GenAI & Big Tech in Higher Education', co-organised with the Climate Justice Universities Union (CJUU). The full recording, slides and resources will be available soon via the CJUU site. danmcquillan.org/resisting_ge...

My speaker notes & slides from today's panel on 'Resisting GenAI & Big Tech in Higher Education', co-organised with the Climate Justice Universities Union (CJUU). The full recording, slides and resources will be available soon via the CJUU site. danmcquillan.org/resisting_ge...

Weird experience to go from being an isolated voice talking about the need to resist AI, to immersion in a vast movement of critical AI commentary, back to feeling isolated because most people's idea of challenging AI doesn't tend towards destituent power.

4pm today UK time

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥 We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes. rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

What does a leaderboard of AI metrics really represent? -degradation of the information environment -continued ramping of climate consequences -a history of eugenics -stripping critical capacities from young people just as they most need it to combat the return of the far right

Feeling queasy now I've learned that Google is not only now offering Gemini ambassador certificates to teachers but also awarding students and *children* to be corporate AI mascots. Coercive normalization of commercialized digital education. blog.google/outreach-ini...

What does a leaderboard of AI metrics really represent? -degradation of the information environment -continued ramping of climate consequences -a history of eugenics -stripping critical capacities from young people just as they most need it to combat the return of the far right

The calls to action from the parents: 1. Ban AI tools into the classroom, protect students and teachers from de-skilling 2. Resist not only direct financial relationships or contracts with AI providers, but any training they might offer. neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/d... ✊

Resisting GenAI and Big Tech in Higher Education - Tuesday 25th Nov, free registration, great panel, big focus on climate justice. Register here: lmula.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

So jarring to witness the AI industry's daily crowing about new models and improved metrics ("SOTA benchmarks across the board!", "1M-token context window") knowing that they'll still be crap in real life settings (and that most of the metrics still trace back to eugenics).

"Dr Dan McQuillan said the dangers of relying on education to counter the malign use of AI were obvious in the problems being encountered by the education sector [due to AI]" www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

TFW your publisher sends you an email encouraging you to opt-in to licensing your work to AI developers, and when the book in question is titled 'Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence'🤦‍♂️

This is one of my favs...

My talk for yesterday's AI Policy Lab event: 'From AI Policy To Decomputing' www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDOU...

🧵What’s the biggest lie the surveillance industry tells? That they only sell to legal clients. That there are red lines. But what do these companies say when they think nobody is watching? We went undercover to find out

Really, all I want is to become Theo Jansen and build wiggling wind robots on a beach for the rest of my life www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANhA...

The only solution to AI harms offered by the Irish Electoral Commission and Coimisiún na Meán (media regulator) yesterday was 'education' to which my response was "It's education that's under attack from AI right now!" www.oireachtas.ie/en/oireachta... (2:15:15 ff)

My opening remarks danmcquillan.org/irish_parlia... were described by committee members as 'blunt' and 'sceptical about AI, to say the least'

My opening remarks danmcquillan.org/irish_parlia... were described by committee members as 'blunt' and 'sceptical about AI, to say the least'

In a short piece for @techpolicypress.bsky.social, @abeba.bsky.social and I write #AIHype Is Steering EU Policy Off Course. Stop peddling in unscientific discourse about “AGI” and “superintelligence.” Serve citizens. Don't cater to the whims of tech CEOs. www.techpolicy.press/ai-hype-is-s...

Off tomorrow to give evidence at the Irish Parliament's joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence www.oireachtas.ie/en/committee... for a hearing on the topic of 'AI, Truth and Democracy'. I won't be saying 'Céad Míle Fáilte, AI!'