What should the new UK government do to increase public control over AI and its infrastructure for development and deployment? In a new blog post, Matt Davies (@halcyene.bsky.social) outlines the key steps government can take to improve leverage. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/taking-...

Taking back control?

A pragmatic AI agenda for the new UK government

adalovelaceinstitute.org

From Liz Kendall's cabinet departure letter, posted on… you guessed it… X

binface vs farage vs lawrence fox is like el classico for “different ways your mate’s dad could end up taking the divorce”

Nice to get an Ada double header appearance today‘s The AI Shift - thanks @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @sarahoconnorft.ft.com www.ft.com/content/852c...

Can AI make the public sector more efficient?

Productivity gains may be cancelled out by the public’s own use of the technology when interacting with authorities

ft.com

Today we publish 📏𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐔𝐏📏, a new @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social briefing on AI and public sector productivity. We find: ⚖️The link between measurement and real-world outcomes is unclear 📐Workers and citizens are absent from research design ⏲️Industry shapes what gets researched Read more:

Measuring up

Evaluating claims about AI and productivity in the UK public sector

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Two weeks today! Sign up for the latest @transformgovtalks.bsky.social with: @laragroves.bsky.social, @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social on www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/scrib... Owen from the ICO on ico.org.uk/about-the-ic... In person (central London) or online 👇

@transformgovtalks.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Happy Monday! 👋 Our next event! 🚨 6PM, WED 25 March 🚨 At the MoJ or online. Lara Groves, Ada Lovelace Institute, on AI transcription tools in social care ​Owen Prendeville, on the ICO’s campaign to drive improvements for access to care records luma.com/8i84tnwy Please share! Thanks 🙏

'it’s interesting to compare how hard it was to differentiate a web browser with how hard it is today to differentiate a chatbot' Fab piece from @thebenedictevans.bsky.social asking hard Qs of OpenAI when its tech is similar to other labs and has no network effects www.ben-evans.com/benedictevan...

How will OpenAI compete? — Benedict Evans

OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are lever...

ben-evans.com

not to be a massive bore but in these times of A) received inter-gender polarisation and b) AI sloppified media/textual offerings it does feel insane to keep chiding men for... reading books www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The Curious Notoriety of “Performative Reading”

Is the term a new way of calling people pretentious, or does it reflect a deprioritization of the written word?

newyorker.com

🎄All we want for Christmas is for AI regulation to work for people and society. Our new polling shows the UK public are concerned that tech companies’ needs are being prioritised over their own when it comes to AI regulation. Read the full findings ⬇️ www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

academia friends, anyone got experience using Open Review as a Programme Chair? help needed please!

In the intro issue of New Left Review, Stuart Hall noted, “The humanist strengths of socialism—which are the foundations for a genuinely popular socialist movement—must be developed in cultural and social terms, as well as in economic and political.“ Zohran Kwame Mamdani‘s campaign got the point!

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Either real-time bidding data or app SDK data is being bought and used by ICE to seize people from the streets. If you didn’t believe that the adtech stack is a human rights concern, I’m not sure what more evidence you need. www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

404media.co

It would be good if the only political pushback against Nigel Farage's plans to mass deport hundreds of thousands of our neighbours, friends, family and colleagues didn't just come from a handful of backbench MPs and one regional mayor

The headlines — £31bn in investment, new jobs, faster medical treatments — sound almost too good to be true. What are we giving up in return? Me in @theguardian.com on today's US-UK Tech Deal: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The UK’s £31bn tech deal with the US might sound great – but the government has to answer these questions | Matt Davies

The big firms making these pledges are not charities. We know there will be a quid pro quo; we just don’t know what it is yet, says Matt Davies of the Ada Lovelace Institute

theguardian.com

Met Police’s policy on when they use oppressive facial recognition technology is made pretty clear here… ✅ Black community celebration / event ❌ White supremacist rally

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

alignmentalignment.ai

hey im putting something together for my boss for his birthday. yeah can you write a letter or better yet an insane poem or horrifying drawing about the unspeakable crimes you all have committed together

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Please apply for / pass on this vacancy with @tuc.org.uk! You'll be working with the brilliant @adamc-c.bsky.social and with us @connectedbydata.org to ensure workers' voices are an effective countervailing force that shape the adoption of AI. tuc.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/...

1. Incitement to violence is a serious offence, carrying a sentence of up to six months in prison. 2. What's it got to do with the health secretary? 3. I'm sure if I posted that Wes Streeting needed a good kicking, he would be very eager to send the cops round. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Police should focus on ‘streets not tweets’, says Wes Streeting after Graham Linehan arrest

Health secretary criticises Tory policing record after Father Ted co-creator arrested over posts on transgender issues

theguardian.com

Keir Starmer: cut me and I bleed union j

the level of disorder on show in the UK right now in terms of kneejerk conspirational thinking against every possible intervention or source of authority is quite the concern!!

Mollie Goodfellow@hansmollman.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Incredible comment on a story about building a new school

Spending on AI data centers is now so great that it’s crowding out investment in housing and other critical parts of the real economy, through higher energy costs and by propping up interest rates, argues The Economist economist.com/finance-and-...

Far right demagoguery - thanks to crucial, repeated validation from the political mainstream - has painted a target on the back of every man of colour in this country. Everyone knows what is likely to happen next.

Musa Okwonga@okwonga.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters. Exclusive: Olajuwon Ayeni racially abused and falsely labelled a paedophile as far right weaponises clip of family in park www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Interesting work from Turing, adding to the growing evidence that significant performance gains — and possibly real-world utility — can still be gleaned from smaller and previous-generation foundation models www.turing.ac.uk/blog/why-we-...

Why we still need small language models – even in the age of frontier AI

Lean, locally run models can unlock huge benefits for public sector and compute-constrained environments

turing.ac.uk

resonates with what we're finding in forthcoming Ada research on transcription tools in social work. these tools are being rolled out without systematic evaluation, often with a singular theory of change -'productivity gains' - which risks obscuring other important impacts on work & care

Transcribing trust

Evaluating the use of AI in social care

adalovelaceinstitute.org

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 12mo ago

AI tools used by English councils downplay women’s health issues, study finds

Last month, Anas al-Sharif sounded the alarm on starvation in Gaza. Israel accused him of terrorism. "We warned this felt like a precursor to justify assassination," said Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today he was killed in a targeted strike on a tent housing reporters.

Israel murders five Al Jazeera staff in Gaza, including Anas al-Sharif

Al-Sharif was killed along with Mohammed Qreiqeh two cameramen and an assistant in an Israeli attack on Gaza City.

aljazeera.com