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Dave Palfrey

@01factory.bsky.social

Ex-historian of social and political thought (Cambridge, Birkbeck). Ex-Amazon (Alexa and AGI). Chief scientist at Mind Mage. LRB reader. 2025 side-mission: fighting global bias on Wikidata & Wikipedia. "Only that which has no history can be defined"

1457 Posts835 Follower4013 Folgt
flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · last wk.

It’s astonishing how liberalism in Britain just laid down and died, probably around the time the spooks went to the Guardian office and smashed those hard drives. If this had happened in the 2000s, half of the press and parliament would’ve been up in arms. Now, hoping it all just goes away, at best

Prosecutors are pushing for five Palestine Action activists who vandalised a Barclays branch in Burnley to be sentenced under contentious terrorism laws, in the latest case of the UK's expanding crackdown on protesters. The Crown Prosecution Service has filed a submission arguing for tougher punishment, citing government guidelines that allow an individual judge to determine the length of the sentence based on whether the crime is deemed to have a "terrorist connection". This is despite no formal terrorism charges being brought against the defendants, who were found guilty last month of carrying out criminal damage at a Barclays branch in August 2024 and are due to be sentenced this September. The group caused about 212,000 worth of damage by spraying red paint and smashing windows while a "distressed" security guard remained inside the bank, according to documents seen by the FT. Four of the activists who attacked the bank were in their late twenties and early thirties while the fifth, who served as a getaway driver, is aged 70.
Dave Palfrey@01factory.bsky.social · 2w ago

At #Wikimania 2026 listening to fascinating discussion between Pavan Santhosh Ramya Chandrasekhar @dorialexander.bsky.social and Puthiya Purayil Sneha : tokenizer tax & model transparency, challenges for CC licences, documentation vs. extraction for global majority languages, need for reciprocity

Building Open Datasets for Global Majority Languages Wikimania 2026

The proposed discussion aims to gather a set of best practices related to language documentation and creation of datasets for the development of AI models. Data collection for building AI technologies...

wikimedia.eventyay.com

Andy Scollick@andyscollick.bsky.social · 3w ago

"The consequences of climate collapse are increasingly visible and intrusive ... The space for populist, pro-climate politics will only get bigger – and if Andy Burnham doesn’t occupy it, Zack Polanski certainly will."

If Andy Burnham Ignores the Climate, He’ll Do So at His Peril | Ash Sarkar

The space for populist green politics is only getting bigger – and if the PM-in-waiting doesn’t occupy it, Zack Polanski certainly will, writes Ash Sarkar.

novaramedia.com

Alex Turner@turntrout.bsky.social · 3w ago

I resigned from Google DeepMind bc it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying. For months, I worked to stop this but watched powerful ethicists and institutions choose silence. Here's what happened. 🧵

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Dave Palfrey@01factory.bsky.social · 3w ago

So the UN has launched an AI for Good Global Commission. But it consists of state & industry reps, without any civil society or academic voices. What a depressing missed opportunity. @sonialivingstone.bsky.social, quoted here, is among signatories to an open letter complaining the exclusion.

ecnl.org

Chris Stokel-Walker@stokel.bsky.social · 4w ago

I've spent the last four days running around an airless expo hall in Geneva trying to figure out what the UN thinks it can do to tame AI. Here's what I've learned for @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/can-the-unit...

Zeke Hausfather@zekehausfather.com · 3w ago

With all the July model runs now in, it is very likely that 2026 will see the largest El Niño event since records began in the late 1800s – and potentially by a truly mind-blowing margin. The median estimate is now 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record (2.75C). www.theclimatebrink....

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Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 4w ago

Rounding up some translations of Count Binface that have been appearing in foreign press 🇷🇴 Romanian: Contele Tomberonez 🇫🇷 French: Comte Tête-de-Poubelle (bin-head, more accurate than bin-face) 🇮🇹 Italian: Conte Faccia-da-Bidone 🇪🇸 Spanish: "un hombre con un cubo de basura en la cabeza" (!) Cont...

Ben Ansell@benansell.bsky.social · 4w ago

Again, I beg MPs and the government to actually look at the policy they may or may not be implementing and think through both the human consequences and their willingness to have 1/6 of all care staff be deported.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 4w ago

Many govt ministers, advisers and half the parliamentary party have just not yet clocked that Mahmood's could see 750k people (about three-quarters of those on the 15 year route) lose their legal status by 2029. Mostly black/Asian Commonwealth migrants (eligible to vote!) bsky.app/profile/jame...

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · last mo.

Academics “examined the behaviour of mainstream large language models provided by Elon Musk’s xAI, Meta, Google, China’s Alibaba and France’s Mistral and found the introduction of bias happens even when the AI tool is instructed to preserve the original sense.”

AI altering meaning of users’ drafts on issues from abortion to climate, study finds

Researchers say small changes in drafting could spread rapidly and create long-term shifts in public opinion

theguardian.com

Cailin O’Connor@cailinmeister.bsky.social · last mo.

Philosophers! Craig Callender and I are circulating an open letter calling for better COI disclosure in our journals. If tech companies fund and employ philosophers working on AI, we need to know and to be thinking about the impacts 1 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Open Letter about Industry Funding and Disclosure in Philosophy

*For full list of signatories, updated every few hours, please click here.* In recent years, philosophical writing on areas such as climate change, technology, misinformation, and artificial intellige...

docs.google.com

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last mo.

Elon Musk posted twice as often on UK race and immigration as about SpaceX in IPO run-up

Elon Musk posted twice as often on UK race and immigration as about SpaceX in IPO run-up

Guardian analysis of X feed shows how keen world’s richest person was to air his views and ‘interfere’ in British politics Elon Musk posted about race and immigration in the UK on his social media network X twice as often as he did about SpaceX, which he also owns, in the run-up to the aerospace and AI company’s initial public offering. A Guardian analysis of Musk’s posts, replies and reposts between 31 May and 12 June has shown the extent to which the social media activity of the world’s richest person, who lives primarily in the US, has focused on UK politics. Continue reading...

theguardian.com