UK government simultaneously replaced expert advice on technology with tech company “consultants” and displaced their civil servants’ experience and expertise into AI models… It’s a disaster & an absolute gift to the tech vendors…

Sometimes I forget what Google was like before it was enshittified, and then I use Google Scholar with its pristine search engine - a relic of a bygone internet era when the product was the point.

Can anyone think of a more egregious case of policy shooting a breakthrough technology in the foot?

Public Sector Capabilities Index ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/res... Council on Urban Initiatives ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/res... 3/3

Another classic case of “let’s automate everything don’t worry it’ll be fine” www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis...

Great thoughts on information over abundance from @hankgreen.bsky.social — though calling a lot of the AI slop on TikTok “information” feels generous. youtu.be/9euKCrTyMEc

When I worked in UK academia I recall hearing of a Japanese man who was baffled at how Britain had decided to run its universities like firms. “Why? Your universities are excellent and your firms are terrible.”

Europe’s dependence on US tech is a critical weakness | Opinion https://www.ft.com/content/30d6f79f-d1ee-49dc-bff5-719f18c1a9e5

Signature tally now closing in on 3000. Please keep discussing, sharing and signing to put as much pressure on the Royal Society to respond as possible. forms.gle/AuYvuWqytx8K...

I just wrote a piece on why I think the chatter about AI putting programmers out of work is wrong. Every time it gets easier to tell computers what we want them to do, it brings more people into the fold and unleashes a wave of creativity and creative destruction. That reads like opportunity to me.

'Scaling laws' are not laws. They are an industrial strategy. Like Moore's Law. Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman et al's airport books lay it out - Blitzscaling as a way to crush competition and earn monopoly rents. So the story has to be that bigger is better.

Genuinely wild how much the internet 15 years ago felt like a frontier and now feels like those terminals you get in video games with a couple of pages to give you the illusion of an explorable internet, like in cyberpunk 77. Just fully fucked the whole thing up

how hard can it possibly be to understand that LLMs are not good for information retrieval

Not enough to complain about tech bros. Must look at their feudalistic renter practices. In 2019 I wrote on “digital feudalism” www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/p... (based on theory in my book The Value of Everything). In 2023 ran a project on “Algorithmic Rents” www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub....

Brilliant analysis from one of our @stsucl.bsky.social alumni

Just published: my new paper on how Big Tech profits from our attention. Ever wondered how platforms turn clicks into cash? Find out here: doi.org/10.1016/j.in...

Why does #bluesky take so long to open?

The Economist’s graphs remain undefeated

Very exciting to be featured in this great journal!