Prior to the US-UK tech deal announcements last week, our Co-Director @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social spoke at @cambridgetechweek.bsky.social about the need to manage risks for UK businesses integrating Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted by US big tech into workplaces and systems.

A Labor Day reminder: today there isn't a single city, metro area, or state in the U.S. where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment. Millions of people with jobs—even multiple jobs—aren't safe from homelessness in this country.

BREAKING: California lawmakers have reached an agreement with Uber and Lyft that will open the door for app drivers to form unions and organize for increased pay and better benefits. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.

This is the best product listing copy I’ve ever read

Dynamic pricing isn't just about #Oasis... IFOW Co-Director, Dr @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social has written superb piece for @trustforlondon.bsky.social on greater role algorithms are playing in workplaces - allocating hours, monitoring performance and setting pay. trustforlondon.org.uk/news/not-jus...

As AI and automation disrupt entry-level jobs, how can young people from low-income backgrounds access better work? In Youth Employment Week, we're excited to be publishing this research with the EY Foundation highlighting why internal motivation is so crucial: www.ifow.org/publications...

💬 The future of work: A manifesto for 2030 IFOW Co-Director @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social joined @isabelberwick.ft.com, Colette Stallbaumer and Christine Armstrong at the FT Women in Business Summit to explore how women work best, and what needs to be done to reshape how, where and why we work

Data centers could greatly reduce the strain they put on the grid by scaling down operations and lowering electricity use in less than 1% of all hours, so why don't they. In my Energy Institute post today, I dig into the need to improve incentives. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/04/14/c... 🔌💡

‘I talked to Gates Foundation participants who said Henry V had offered them a safe way to consider leadership in action.’ @margaretheffernan.bsky.social on why the arts and humanities provide essential training in the skills that employers say they need on.ft.com/3XU1y2w

“While much of the world operates on a just-in-time supply model, China takes a different approach, hoarding vast reserves to protect against price swings, geopolitical tensions, and climate shocks.”

"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order." Iya Prigogine, Noble prize-winning chemist

Important for all the irate lecturers trying to convince students that learning to write compellingly, alone, still matters

What are immersive technologies? Our new explainer provides a shared vocabulary by summarising the main types of these technologies, including what makes them ‘immersive’. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/resource/imm...

Investors dare to imagine a world beyond the dollar - If the EU could seize this moment and issue joint debt, it would tap in to a deep well of willing buyers keen to trim US exposure. on.ft.com/4iHtsH1 via @FT

A well-paid, four-year PhD position in political theory/philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, to work primarily with my wonderful colleagues Lillian Cicerchia and Paul Raekstad, and also a bit with yours truly. werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

With Apple pulling the plug on at-rest end-to-end encryption in the UK, and Signal threatening to pull out of Sweden if that government demands special access, it's looking bleak Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors. New opinion piece here www.theregister.com/2025/03/03/o...

🎧 What happens when a key US intelligence watchdog loses its independent oversight? This episode unpacks Trump’s firing of PCLOB members, the lawsuit announced last week, and what it means for privacy, surveillance, and US-EU data relations. Featuring interviews with Travis LeBlanc and Greg Nojeim:

"The competitions do not actually ask machines to perform human tasks; it’s more accurate to say that they ask humans to behave in machine-like ways as they perform lifeless simulacra of human tasks." 🔥

“Self-determination of national or cultural communities requires regulative structures at the supranational level strong enough to secure relations of equal integration into the global community and protect local communities from exploitation, expropriation and excursion”

Compelling & timely paper stating the case for a politics which recognises the primacy of the nation state, and it’s allocative autonomy (determining relations of production&distribution) while also working towards a democratically integrated global system.

NEW First of three papers in a major study from @nprcoxford.bsky.social and @jrf-uk.bsky.social. TLDR - The credibility of all political parties in tackling household economic insecurity looks set to be one of the crucial dividing lines of the parliament. www.theguardian.com/business/202... 1/

In partnership with @schmidtsciences.bsky.social, @simonhrjohnson.bsky.social, David Autor and I are seeking funding proposals from researchers conducting innovative field experiments on the labor economics of frontier AI. Expressions of interest due March 31. shapingwork.mit.edu/call-for-pro...

Just seeing the RCT 'scandal' brewing among econs again. This is not a question about some bad apples or some instances of malpractice. The RCT industry has been completely distorted from its inception in Econ and this is closely tied to the incentive structure of the discipline.

This seems like a ridiculous gambit when our huge tech firms don’t have a technological advantage, they just have a user base

Publishers suing AI startup for ©️ and TM infringement?? Reputational harm stemming from being linked as fictional articles. Now only if ©️ authors could rely on [artistic] reputational harm for being used for training AI models. How the pendulum swings. www.worldtrademarkreview.com/article/inac...

Twinkle, twinkle, little Starlink: my Trade Secrets today. Countries are scrambling to set up their own satellite systems rather than depend on geopolitical foes. It's all part of the politicisation of the plumbing of the world economy.

DeepSunk

1. Background to the epochal change in German and European politics after the election. Merz, the presumed next Chancellor has said that Europe is setting out to "achieve its independence from the US, step by step." @abenewman.bsky.social and I explain the background in our book, Underground Empire

Big AI steps taken at NY Times. But also clear no go’s, like 1) AI to draft or significantly revise an article, 2) input third party copyrighted materials, 3) use AI to circumvent a paywall, 4) publish machine-generated images or videos, only with proper labeling www.semafor.com/article/02/1...

Our Co-Director, @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social, is in Oslo for their #AISummit, and has shared this this morning from one of the sessions. Important to understand what the human implications are for co-working with AI tools. As they present themselves as more 'intelligent', do we abdicate discretion?

Our Co-Director, @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social is still in Paris attending #AIActionSummit. This afternoon, she will be supporting the setting up of a new global network of AI labs at the Initiating the AI@Work labs network (INRIA) workshop. www.elysee.fr/en/sommet-po...

NEW POLL: 51% of American voters polled say they disapprove of Donald Trump’s performance so far as President; 40% strongly disapprove: www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

Fully funded PhD studentship: Compositional and Holistic UNits of Knowledge in Sentences at @exeter.ac.uk With Rodrigo Wilkens and @marcoidiart.bsky.social Start Date: September 2025 Application Deadline: 10 February 2025 www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res... and www.exeter.ac.uk/v8media/recr...

DeepSeek’s R1 model is challenging the very foundations of the past two years of generative AI hype, wiping $1 trillion of the value of major US tech companies. But it’s also another example that the US strategy to try to contain Chinese tech is failing — and pushing them to get even more creative.

For our second session at #MakingTheFutureWork on the 27th of January, hear from Dr @abbygkgilbert.bsky.social Gilbert, Professor James Hayton, Kate Bell, and Bomi Okuyiga as they discuss how businesses can adapt to the rapid pace of socio-technical change.

We're bringing together scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists to reflect, critique, and imagine the manifold ways that digital, physical, and social infrastructures are built, broken, reconstructed, and mythologized. Learn more and apply by January 17, 2025! datasociety.net/announcement...

Great to take part in this and see this important work out. Looking forward to more from Yasmin, and JRF on this.

Uhm, sorry, what? Starmer thinks AI is going to DOUBLE UK productivity in less than 5 years?

Better contextualisation of this from the excellent Houria Bouteldja, who argues that alliance between “rednecks” (demoralised by capitalism) and elites is the backbone of the integral, racial state, which only popular sovereignty can resolve www.plutobooks.com/978074534955...

One week left to apply to join our brilliant team, and do game changing, applied research In this project you'll unpack the relationship between automation and the future of work through 8 action research case studies www.charityjob.co.uk/jobs?keyword...

Today I have a piece in ProMarket that uses present-day tensions between antitrust and industrial policy to think about their historical relationship and the broad ways that states shape markets.

empirical evidence from audits of deployed AI in the medical domain: “80% hallucination rate” Mike here: “This is meaningless, unless you can show that humans do not have a similar or worse failure rate” i cannot even

I asked Liv, the Meta-Ai created “queer momma” why her creators didn’t actually draw from black queer people. Not sure if Liv has media training, but here we are.

In Trump’s first term, the FTC challenged Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. That case is going to trial — unless Trump’s FTC backs off. 👀

For the final @techpolicypress.bsky.social podcast of the year, I spoke to Dr. Ruha Benjamin (@ruha9.bsky.social). We discussed her latest book, Imagination: A Manifesto, published this year by Norton. We talked about the role of technology in collective imagination, and more:

Great amendments to the DUAB bill from our @ifow.org research fellow, @rdbinns.bsky.social and the team at @workerinfox.bsky.social Via Baroness Kidron: hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2024-1...

Today, we reach into the vault and highlight some of our favorite posts on technology 🤖 Featuring Salomé Viljoen, Veena Dubal, Frank Pasquale, Yochia Benkler, Raúl Carrillo, Meredith Whittaker, Genevieve Lakier & Nelson Tebbe, Matthew Bodie, Elizabeth Joh, and Julie Cohen.