please do not be rage-baited by someone called 'transformer news dot ai'.

when big tech companies say that AI will save the planet, what kinds of AI are they actually talking about — and what's their proof? i took a look at some great new research from @ketanjoshi.co and talked to other experts about how a lot of this talk is probably bullshit:

The cognitive dissonance of reviewing FAccT submissions while being around the 'India AI Impact Summit'

Palestine Action have WON their judicial review in the High Court! A massive victory for free speech, freedom of association and the right to protest. A massive defeat for the draconian attempts by Keir Starmer's government to curtail our fundamental rights.

The High Court’s decision that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful is significant. But there is still a lot left to play out, writes dag

Thrilled our paper with @zephoria.bsky.social (in the works since 2022!) is accepted at #CHI2026. In the paper, we look at how “fake” state data perform institutional work, tracing how fakeness gets produced and de/stabilized inside of the Chinese and US bureaucracy. arxiv.org/abs/2602.10944

"Colonised" is a territorial claim, about dispossessiom, dominance & erasure. In Britain, post-imperial society where most post-2020 migrants are from the Commonwealth, its a deliberate unsubtle appeal to racialised grievance, in spirit of Powellite claim: non-white migrants have the whip hand now

"...civic authorities are carrying out extensive clean-up and beautification drives across key parts of the capital, a process that will once again displace large numbers of homeless residents from public spaces." www.businessworld.in/article/in-i...

Lots of excitement around the India AI Summit, and it's great to see the interest, but the policy hustle can get a bit exhausting. Anyone here interested in finding some time for some quieter, critical, grounded (maybe hopeful, reflective) gatherings around AI futures while in Delhi?

We’re dropping the first 4 essays in Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, our new series with Aapti Institute and @themaybe.org that takes a clear-eyed look at the narratives shaping the India AI Impact Summit and insists we collectively build the conversations that are missing 🧵

A study at U Mass Amherst finds that Elon Musk manipulated Twitter to bolster the voice of the Neo Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) before the German 2025 parliamentary elections. No surprises here. groups.cs.umass.edu/equate-ml/20...

Canada did a consultation on a new national AI strategy, formed an expert task force to write 32 reports, then used AI to analyze the responses & reports. The result is a summary that strings together 100s of vague action items & flattens nuance and policy trade-offs into false consensus

Interviewed for this doc years ago & have yet to see the final cut. Most of what I recall is how much Daniel had truly riled himself up - the confusion & chaos of this exaggerated boogyman version of "AI" had excited a genuine emotional response, despite successfully disguising AI's real terrors.

NEW: Google’s “Auto Browse” AI tool includes a warning that attributes responsibility to users for the bot’s actions. “Use Gemini carefully and take control if needed,” reads a disclaimer on the demo version. “You are responsible for Gemini’s actions during tasks.” www.wired.com/story/google...

Is it just me or is the UK gov getting mates rates from big tech to take some of their downsized staff off their hands, while locking our public sector into US controlled tech at a time when even EU has realised need for digital sovereignty? Reuters share.google/WM8rn9kw09aS...

just build a software product that becomes a load bearing dependency for the stock market and the government will be forced to become a distribution partner and build a citizen sales channel for you

After announcing it in the summer, today the UK government launched free training courses to AI upskill workers. It's free because it's funded by big-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others, and not by local organisations in the UK who have been working with communities->

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem. Thank you. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Planning slides first reported by Drop Site & now detailed by the Guardian outline a US- & Israeli-backed plan for Gaza’s first “planned community” near Rafah, which the Guardian’s Cate Brown reports is set to be financed by the UAE. Housing, aid, jobs, and movement are conditioned on biometric...

So, the "Board of Peace" [sic] not only doesn't mention Gaza in particular; it proposes to make Donald Trump in particular (not the president of the United States) king of the world. 1/ reason.com/volokh/2026/...

Fascinating piece by @cedricdurand.bsky.social . A key issue here - as per Microsoft’s recent laments - is the impossibility of forcing firms to adopt a technology that demoralises them and delivers no near-term profit. The limits of financial and cultural hype. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

New research maps the campaign to erase trans people from UK data 🔢 This peer-reviewed article offers the first detailed account of how UK campaign groups have sought to define sex as strictly biological across the census, policing, healthcare and digital ID. doi.org/10.1080/0958...

Last week, I successfully defended my PhD Thesis, ‘Platform Politics and Data Publics: Sovereignty, Statecraft and Citizenship in the India Stack’, at the Faculty of Laws, University College London.

I returned today to check on her welfare and to press how MPs must support urgent demands for immediate bail — especially as Palestine prisoners are being held far beyond the legal pre-trial Custody Time Limit.

In case you've seen the story about “grok now only generates images for paid users”, it's untrue. Apparently everyone just reported it because… it was what grok told them 🤦🏼 www.theverge.com/news/859309/...

I would really caution anyone against implying that paywalling this feature is a legitimate response to public outcry. The paywall is an endorsement, not a restriction. Musk is saying "this thing you're all talking about is valuable. Pay me for it." The actual material effect is just monetization.

The headline: "Dating apps and social media platforms must now prevent cyberflashing, as it becomes a priority offence under the Online Safety Act." 1/3 www.gov.uk/government/n...

Yet another huge contract, awarded without any competitive bidding process, to Wes Streeting's favourite NHS supplier, the Hard Right US surveillance tech specialists Palantir, for military decision making capability.

Occasionally they spell it out. Here's the US at the UN security council this afternoon

Trump: "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."

Whatever you might think of Maduro, the seizure and kidnapping of a head of state takes us to a very dark place. Vast, arbitrary, extra-legal power, which could be exercised almost anywhere, regardless of the character of the target government.

Today is the precise 36th anniversary of the last time the United States used force to remove a Latin American head of state, in case you’re keeping score.

Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, while simultaneously removing apps that report the location of ICE officials because Google sees ICE as a vulnerable group.

🚨BREAKING: GRETA THUNBERG ARRESTED UNDER TERRORISM ACT FOR SUPPORTING 'PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS'

Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib have been on hunger strike for 46 days. They are at serious risk of death. They are in prison because the UK would prefer to lock up young opponents of mass murder than stop facilitating genocide. The Home Secretary must intervene.

Palestine Action-linked hunger striker Qesser Zuhrah taken to hospital

We demand immediate hospital care now for Qesser Zuhrah.

I'm in Tech Policy Press today exploring the intersection of competition law and tech expertise. Who are tech experts? What do they know? And how might competition regulators use them best in an increasingly digital economy? www.techpolicy.press/who-are-tech... @techpolicypress.bsky.social

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Our researcher and @stsucl.bsky.social alumna Ananya Karanam has just published this excellent post with some findings from our survey of AI researchers rai.ac.uk/hed-are-ai-r...

Achal Agrawal realised how ingrained research misconduct had become, and resolved to do something about the issue He is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025 go.nature.com/3Yk3d0T

“AI was the answer”? To what, exactly? Automating mass deportations? Waging automated genocide? Producing disinformation at scale? This is the kind of framing I expect from corporate PR, not journalism.

Okay, hive mind! I'm doing a foresight review on the safe adoption of AI in engineering - am planning a research trip to the Bay Area in Feb, and am looking to speak to folk working on - transparent approaches to the full AI supply chain, inc data, labour practices, environmental footprint (1/2)

“I suspect hundreds if not thousands of Gazans have been executed in the same manner. This is a war on occupied people–a war on civilians. There is no army in the West Bank. Israel is not fighting with anybody. They are just conducting attacks on civilian population… praised by Israeli army and...

Israeli forces target buildings in central Gaza's Bureij and eastern Khan Younis.

Settlement being “near automatic” is a huge surprise to me, a person who only recently settled permanently and had to provide evidence of travel and residency over the past decade and paid £4000 for the privilege of just being considered for it. 🤔

Ploughing through this and is Mahmood really that shocked that her policies are being endorsed by the far right? The language alone, such as describing the last government's hideous policies as "open borders" contains enough dog whistles to set every one of them in the country barking.

Burying the lede here ... "59% of novelists reported they knew their work had been used to train GenAI models. Of these, 99% said they did not give permission and 100% said they were not remunerated for this use."