📢 The Gender + Sexuality Data Lab is hiring a Research Assistant to join its project, ‘Box Breakers: Improving Organisational Data Practices for Minoritised Communities’.
James Garforth
@jamesgarforth.bsky.social
Lecturer in Ethics, Society and Professionalism in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Proud associate of the Centre for Technomoral Futures.
In other news, OpenAI's car went rogue after they parked it on a hill and removed the handbrake
Maybe universities could also learn from this?
Joshua Foust 🪖🎮@joshuafoust.com · last mo.Layoffs always hurt employee morale and productivity (and prompt an exodus of high-performing staff), but even just a little bit of consideration can soften the blow. Microsoft’s approach to its developers seems to just be “fuck you, get out,” which is a worst-case approach to take as a company.
Anyway, my theory - FWIW - is that lots of the experienced and senior people who are hooked on LLMs are actually having a midlife crisis, and that spending money on Claude is cheaper than buying a Lambo buttondown.com/justenoughin...
The Sports Car Theory of LLM Adoption
If LLMs make decision makers feel stupid, maybe they'll stop using them?
buttondown.com
“Amazon, Walmart, Cisco, Uber and Meta are among early adopters that have introduced caps, discouraged wasteful use or pushed employees to cheaper models in a bid to keep AI spending under control.”
‘We created a monster’: companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets
Amazon, Walmart and Uber are among early adopters that have introduced caps or discouraged wasteful activity
ft.com
"Cars used to kill children, now we want a shot" (also the cars still kill children)
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2mo ago“.. He said cars were once portrayed as killing children, but the world changed its norms by having sidewalks and crosswalks .. “When I was growing up, I used to play in the streets,” Huang said. “When cars came along, you obviously can’t play in the streets now.” apnews.com/article/nvid...
Corporate needs you to find the difference between AI companies and social media companies...
Elaine Burke@elaineburke.bsky.social · 2mo agoYep, same guy. Mere days apart.
Every staff update in every university right now: 1. We are excited to announce a strategic investment of eleventeen squillion pounds in ACRONYM, a new AI-powered centre for the development of strategic acronyms. 2. Staff have until Friday to apply for enhanced Voluntary Death.
You can either join your union, go to the meeting, and get in the fight, or you can watch them kill higher education in the US. This will not pass. There will not be a natural reset. You fight or die.
On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy
So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...
EXC: Shock at Edinburgh Medical School as more than a dozen courses are to be cut, sparking fears of redundancies. One course that generated £500k in annual profit is being shut down. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2613266...
Fury over 'unacceptable' closures of 'highly-regarded' med school programmes
The closure of the Science Communication and Public Engagement programme has drawn particular ire, with 130 offers rescinded.
heraldscotland.com
Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org
my gf works corporate and is on a training about AI and there's a word cloud for "what do you use AI for." the largest word by far is "Nothing" and the trainer is PISSED
Good piece, brief and to the point from @drjogrady.bsky.social Gen Sec of UCU: “We are calling for direct government intervention before the crisis spirals further.” Intervention is cheaper than most think, and pound for pound excellent investment in our future economic prosperity.
The government must intervene before the universities crisis worsens
During moments of political crisis it’s often said there are weeks when decades happen. This has been one such week.
politicshome.com
"People everywhere are picking up the mantle of collective resistance....Educators and students are pressuring their institutions. Victims and their families are suing. Tech employees themselves are campaigning. Group chats for more organizing abound. People are marching." - @karenhao.bsky.social
The Elon Musk v Sam Altman battle is a distraction | Karen Hao
Fixating on questions of whether Altman is untrustworthy, or whether Musk is even less so distracts from a far deeper problem with AI
theguardian.com
folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI" the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
Only one week until the first virtual assembly of our Critical AI Network “How do we break something that is already broken?”. Three days of quick-fire presentations + keynotes on AI in/as Education, AI in/as Law, Governance & Politics, The Ecology of AI/AI & the Environment cpct.uk/2026/05/09/p...
Labour MPs calling for an orderly transition but unfortunately their government needs to be at least 18 years old with four doctors to sign off first
having the opportunity to feign surprise and drop this line would give me a kind of high no drug could reproduce
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo agoTRUMP: I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody O'DONNELL: Oh, you think he was referring to you?
In their defense, there's a lot of duplication of effort when every other government team is _also_ ignoring all of the evidence
Shortbreadfairy©️@shortbreadfairy.bsky.social · 3mo agoLeaving this here. This is sickening. No one should be above the Law. Individuals or Governments. Accountability & Right are the bedrock of a decent & Humanitarian Society. That includes on an International level too. This Labour Government isn't for me. I want better for my children's future
The silver lining here is that this government is so broadly awful and unpopular that hopefully AI will suffer by association
Elke Schwarz@elkeschwarz.bsky.social · 3mo agoExhibit A: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
We're delighted to share that we've extended the application deadline for our next Cambridge Data School, Teaching and Learning Critically in an Age of Generative AI. Get your application in by 1 May 2026 to be in with a chance of joining our next cohort 💡 Apply: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/events/41023/
if you are wondering "but what is it good for then and why are companies pushing it so hard" the answers are "it is good for centralizing power and rationalizing harm" and "because it is good for centralizing power and rationalizing harm"
Chuck Wendig@chuckwendig.bsky.social · 4mo agoI'm new to the @alexfalcone.bsky.social train, but I am delighted by his informational and also hilarious videos, such as this glittering precious gem on AI -- "Is AI a scam yep?"
The ceasefire was supposed to include Lebanon, but instead, Israel attacked Lebanon 100 times in 10 minutes and massacred hundreds of people under the tired and unsubstantiated guise of a war on terror. apnews.com/article/iran...
Ceasefire is threatened as Israel expands Lebanon strikes and Iran closes strait again
A ceasefire deal to pause the war in Iran appears to be hanging by a thread after the Islamic Republic closed the Strait of Hormuz again in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon.
apnews.com