“After decades of marginalisation and perceived irrelevance, academics may not notice that they are being co-opted by a sophisticated PR machine.” www.ft.com/content/bdb3...
Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic
The AI industry is courting the humanities — but it is asking the wrong questions
ft.com
Great story in the @financialtimes.com last week on data centre development in London featuring @foxglovelegal.bsky.social's @dncampbell.bsky.social. www.ft.com/content/67db...
ICYMI - great read in the FT feat. @dncampbell.bsky.social and @foxglovelegal.bsky.social's work on data centres. The big question: how can we shape this market so new compute doesn't suck up so much of the power and water we need to live? With the homes we must build? www.ft.com/content/67db...
Data centres vs housing: how London became a central battleground
The city has become the largest hub for AI power centres across Europe, competing with homes for energy, space and water. Its priorities are being called into question
ft.com
" @foxglovelegal.bsky.social highlights that the annual electricity usage of just one hyperscale data centre in Southall, west London, which was given planning permission last November, is equivalent to that of 530,000 homes." www.ft.com/content/67db...
Data centres vs housing: how London became a central battleground
The city has become the largest hub for AI power centres across Europe, competing with homes for energy, space and water. Its priorities are being called into question
ft.com
"should we be developing buildings for people or computers?" www.ft.com/content/67db...
Data centres vs housing: how London became a central battleground
The city has become the largest hub for AI power centres across Europe, competing with homes for energy, space and water. Its priorities are being called into question
ft.com
Incredibly bad piece in the NYT. At no point does the author even bother to look at total climate emissions from data centres as a whole, or even a single example. Which really isn't hard to find.
Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...
Not clear what's behind this, but the Home Office did roll out two generative AI tools to the asylum system this year - despite an evaluation finding they produced serious errors in 1 in 10 cases: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests
Upper tribunal unable to find document cited in case and claims it is ‘analogous to relying on bogus evidence’
theguardian.com
Authorising this horrifically insulting response to a case like this is imo a resignation matter.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · last wk.Home Office used ‘AI hallucinated’ information to refuse asylum claim, judge suggests
Important reporting. Totally inadequate response from the company: "Hugging Face did not respond to numerous questions from WIRED about its content moderation mechanisms and safety practices...Some pages promoting nudifying services were removed after WIRED contacted the company..."
Matt Burgess (WIRED)@mattburgess1.bsky.social · last wk.NEW: A glimpse at how AI image generators are used. Researchers set up a fake image editor on Hugging Face and within a week received 1,000 prompts. 73% of them were sexual and 83% of those were asking for people (women) to be “undressed”. Around 6% of the sexual requests also targeted minors
Yet another hammering for the claims that Palantir tools are helping the NHS: 'There was also “no meaningful difference” in discharge delays at NHS trusts that had adopted the tool and those that had not' www.ft.com/content/cbd1...
Palantir tool has not cut hospital discharge delays, says study
Think-tank’s findings likely to add to calls for audit of NHS England claims around Federated Data Platform
ft.com
From this weekend's London Centric: details of the messy Mayor vs Met Police vs Palantir case. www.londoncentric.media/p/thames-wat...
A company trains a system to run exploits, does an exploit "test" without guardrails, and monitoring, and markets their unsafe practices as “model capabilities” when their models RUN EXPLOITS and the politicians supposed to hold them into account parrot their marketing. Make it make sense.
"Campaign group Foxglove called on health officials and ministers to correct the record with Parliament and the media on data used to illustrate the FDP's success." #Palantir
The Register@theregister.com · 2w agoStats watchdog prescribes stronger caveats for NHS Palantir claims
osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/nhs-eng... Worth a read. It is a sad testament to the culture at NHS England that they would deliberately mislead the public and the profession by claiming causal relationships between FDP and 'benefits' that may not exist.
'Tech campaign group Foxglove said the “damning report” made it clear that the government and Palantir needed to “withdraw these dodgy marketing claims and correct the record”.' www.ft.com/content/5aa0...
NHS England adds caveat to Palantir claims after watchdog investigation
Regulator urges health service to ensure communications about software’s benefits are ‘clearly and appropriately labelled’
ft.com
NEW: Stats watchdog criticises UK government over Palantir claims - ministers must now correct the record: www.foxglove.org.uk/2026/07/22/m...
Ministers must correct record on NHS Palantir claims after stats watchdog criticism - Foxglove
The UK’s statistics watchdog has announced today that changes must be made to the Government’s public claims about Palantir’s NHS platform to …
foxglove.org.uk
The UK's stats watchdog has just published a damning review on the dubious claims made by ministers and Palantir to defend the Federated Data Platform. The OSR's investigation followed complaints made by @foxglovelegal.bsky.social & others. Will the new Govt correct the record?
Good piece on the harm Google is causing to publishers through use of AI in search - stealing others' work and repackaging it as their own. @foxglovelegal.bsky.social has submitted complaints to regulators in EU, Brazil, UK - and we're now seeing action : www.foxglove.org.uk/2026/06/03/p...
kate conger@kateconger.com · 2w agoI wrote about what's happening to the web now that everything is A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/t...
🧵 2/2 The Government's promised to look into the bots, and we're clear: they shouldn't be allowed. Well done to @livingstreets.bsky.social for highlighting the effect they have. Find more info on their site buff.ly/TnVjncV
Pavement Overload | Britain's Pavements Are Not For Sale
Delivery robots are operating on Britain's pavements with no law to permit them. The Living Streets Pavement Overload campaign is demanding Government action to protect pedestrians and public space.
buff.ly
A side point, but disappointing that outgoing ministers are uniformly turning to a hostile, abusive platform to share their messages:
I suppose you shouldn't expect a piece written by a friend & collaborator of Sam Bankman-Fried to be particularly serious or reliable, but come on...
Unusual: X/Twitter has suspended @UKinJerusalem, an official UK Government account operated by the British Consulate General in Jerusalem, after it posted a thread criticising treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons x.com/UKinJerusalem
42% of UK garden space has been paved over & that's building urban heat, robbing wildlife of homes + surging runoff into drains, increasing flood risk + sewage discharge. De-pave Your Garden says even just using planting strips on your drive can make a huge difference. share.google/Dkb3FOi35hqp...
How the trend for turning front gardens into driveways is adding to night-time heat
There’s a growing trend to pave over front gardens.
share.google
Striking that the main voices of concern here are venture capitalists like Matt Clifford. Given DSIT has very much followed their line, it's perhaps not a surprise they want to keep it as-is. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
UK tech advocates alarmed by Burnham plan to scrap technology department
MPs and industry experts say potential reorganisation will waste time at critical moment for AI and economic growth
theguardian.com
Unfettered access to chatbots can harm educational outcomes Using AI while solving problems improves performance by 48% (GPT base). When access to AI was taken away, students actually performed worse than those who never had access (17% reduction in grades) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Peter Thiel: I no longer believe democracy and freedom are compatible. Axel Springer: here's an award for supporting the resilience of democracies. www.welt.de/wirtschaft/a...
As others have pointed out, "forward-deployed engineer" is a term v much associated with Palantir. Why are ministers using this embarrassing pseudo-military language?
Darren Jones MP@darrenpjones.bsky.social · 3w agoWe sent a forward-deployed AI engineer to prison. He’s not a criminal - he’s been creating tools that are massively saving staff time and are now being rolled out across the Prison Service. The No10 Innovation Fellows were set up to do exactly this - helping us to move fast and fix things.
Important letter from NHS tech experts on concerns over Palantir's Federated Data Platform (FDP): "we believe the FDP in its current form represents a risk to patient trust, staff wellbeing, data quality, national sovereignty and the long term integrity of NHS data infrastructure."
Over 100 digital, data and tech staff working in the NHS ask senior leadership to end Palantir technology partnership, as the Health Select Committee recommends the government cancel the contract
Today we have sent our open letter, along with over 100 signatures from digital, data and tech staff working in the NHS, to senior leadership at NHS England and DHSC. The letter is signed by experienc...
nhsdataanalyststogether.substack.com
This is astonishing: contacted for comment about a discredited figure on Palantir's benefit to the NHS, a Govt spokesperson just repeats the figure: www.hsj.co.uk/technology-a...
MPs say: "There is serious mistrust of the Palantir created Federated Data Platform amongst both the general public and the medical profession." "The evidence of the benefits of the current Federated Data Platform is contested"
Donald Campbell@dncampbell.bsky.social · 4w agoCommons Health Select Committee joins the Tech Committee in calling for an end to Palantir's NHS contract: committees.parliament.uk/publications...