📣🚨 New Briefing Paper Alert ! 📃 We are excited to announce the launch of our briefing paper on TikTok, Politics and Elections, co-produced with @wfd.org ➡️ www.wfd.org/tiktok-polit... 🧵[1/4]

TikTok, politics and power: Implications for democracy

wfd.org

So punctuation loyalty is suspicious now. Fine. The Oxford comma still stays. I already let the em dash go, and that is as far as I am willing to bend.

Last, I was glad/ sad to see my post (from work w @asheeshksi.bsky.social and @rbtownsend.bsky.social) on the humanities as the leading indicator of research infrastructure collapse hit the top ten. 😣 scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/02/t...

The Humanities as Canary: Understanding this Crisis Now - The Scholarly Kitchen

The Humanities have always been the canary in the coal mine of the full knowledge industry. What information can help us understand this crisis and its implications?

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

Like, young people don’t know what file trees are because their tech has trained them to rely on searching instead of organizing. Now that same search function, having attacked organization, is now attacking comprehension while degrading sharply in quality and accuracy. Everything is decaying.

Hot take: kids not knowing what a file system is AND kids misusing LLMs as a search engine are two sides of the same technology incompetence problem this thread is criticizing.

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

The doom and gloom about London is ridiculous and harmful. Team FT is Team London - as.ft.com/r/19d3d36d-e...

Don’t believe the fake gloom about London

[FREE TO READ] The UK capital is subject to more than its fair share of misinformation

as.ft.com

I honestly don’t get the value of this company. They hoover up energy and water. Their product constantly gets things wrong and, in extreme cases, coaches people into suicide. And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft. What does OpenAI offer the world?

Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · 9mo ago

“authors & publishers who filed a lawsuit against the Sam Altman-led firm have secured access to internal Slack messages… discussing the mass deletion of a pirated books dataset… A NY district court ordered OpenAI to hand over the communications regarding data deletion” futurism.com/artificial-i...

In case you’re worried about the synthetic text extruders becoming conscious and farming us Matrix-style: this is an excellent and very accessible piece on why those concerns are probably overblown. 👇

Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Hinton has been talking about “maternal instincts” in AI, but that’s a symptom of a larger issue: he worries about AI’s power to persuade us, even as he believes in what it tells him. mail.cyberneticforests.com/thoughts-on-...

in the 90s I used to be like "the idea of digital drugs is kind of a dumb sci-fi conceit" and now in the 2020s I'm like "everyones high on GPT and its giving tehm severe brain damage"

People have actual problems that need solving, and I would like S. Altman to stop making up new ones, please and thank you.

Solomon@solomonrmissouri.com · 10mo ago

Samuel Please

Definitely nothing can go wrong with OpenAI having a full record of your sexy chatbot interactions.

🌱 Mine and Güneş's new paper calls for DH practices that prioritise environmental accountability, decolonial perspectives, and ethical collaboration. Read here: dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/19/3/000... #DigitalHumanities #Sustainability #EcologicalCare #EnvironmentalJustice

I and @photini.bsky.social have a new publication The article reconceptualises London as ‘A Learnt City’, a dynamic learning ecosystem shaped through digital mediation, affective experience, and embodied practices. Read OA here: www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15... #DigitalUrbanism #urbanpedagogies

ARt-Z: Unlock the Unseen 1–23 May UCL East Zeyu Zhao's exhibition, supported by IAS Octagon fund, presents 10 digitised paintings from the V&A’s Chinese Export Watercolours Collection. By integrating augmented reality it offers new ways to experience historical artworks www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Delighted to be included in UCL’s 2025 Student Choice Awards Roll of Honour—I’m honoured to be listed alongside fantastic colleagues Lucy Brownson, @alisonhicks0.bsky.social , @photini.bsky.social, Ahmad Goheer & Daniel Onah! What a way to end year! 🥳

Women's appearance and behaviour is about to get even more highly policed in the UK, with a few people doubtless being emboldened to "take action". This whole billionaire-funded enterprise dials back gender equity by decades.

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

We are currently recruiting for a Lecturer in Technologies in Digital Humanities to join the Department of Information Studies at UCL. Closing date 12th April: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk

ICYMI: King’s College London is hiring 20 open-ended posts at L/SL level (Asst/Assoc Prof level) in AI + any subject. (Yes, that includes critical studies.) It’s 3 years of 80% “protected” research time, then 2 years to the standard requirements for an open-ended post. www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/ki...

King's AI+ Academic Fellowships (leading to an open-ended academic post)

King’s is making a major strategic investment into driving AI activity across our nine academic Faculties. Our ambition is to accelerate growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data-driven research...

kcl.ac.uk

Kate Devlin@drkatedevlin.bsky.social · last yr.

Applications are now open for 20 interdisciplinary jobs in AI at King’s College London: King’s AI+ Academic Fellowships, advancing AI across *all* disciplines (yes, inc. Arts & Hums — come and work with me!). www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/ki... @kingsdh.bsky.social @kings-dfi.bsky.social

We are currently recruiting for a Lecturer in Technologies in Digital Humanities to join the Department of Information Studies at UCL. Closing date 12th April: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

ucl.ac.uk

"It’s worse than you think because by the time the courts catch up the damage will already have been done. It’s worse than you think because the people running the government seem to have no higher mission than to watch it burn" www.wired.com/story/doge-w...

The DOGE Takeover Is Worse Than You Think

What’s happening to the US government right now is bad. What comes next is worse.

wired.com

When I worked in UK academia I recall hearing of a Japanese man who was baffled at how Britain had decided to run its universities like firms. “Why? Your universities are excellent and your firms are terrible.”

Chris Brooke@chrisbrooke.bsky.social · last yr.

To repeat: "A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for."

Years ago, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I interviewed a former fb employee, and I remember her continually emphasizing that these tech bros weren't evil geniuses, but were, in fact, dangerous because they were utterly clueless, totally reckless, and had too much power.

Cribbed from LinkedIn.

BBC just released damning research on AI assistants' news accuracy. Results: 51% of AI responses had significant issues. 19% introduced errors when citing BBC. 13% misquoted or made up BBC content entirely. 🤐🤐 www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/... via @ezraeeman.bsky.social

While more tech companies race to the bottom to kiss Trump's ass, they manage to finally show the public what us internet scholars have been shouting for years - that technology is never neutral or objective and is motivated by political and mainly capitalistic motives.

Pop Base@popbase.tv · last yr.

Google Calendar has removed key cultural events from their site including: • Pride Month • Black History Month • Holocaust Remembrance Day • Jewish Heritage • Hispanic Heritage • Indigenous People Month

Microsoft's own research confirms something that was already pretty obvious: relying on a text generating machine to come up with answers erodes critical thinking, and is a method favoured by those who never liked doing critical thinking in the first place advait.org/files/lee_20...

“In response to the shocking news predicting up to 10,000 imminent job losses across the UK higher education sector, we write to flag up a fact that the article largely misses: the degree to which arts and humanities subjects are bearing the brunt of these cuts.” ⮛ #academicsky

The deep cultural cost of British university job cuts | Letters

Letters: Arts and humanities are being hit hardest by cuts in higher education, write Prof Thea Pitman and Prof Emma Cayley, and Dr Ronan McLaverty-Head and another letter writer comment on cuts at Ca...

theguardian.com

Heritage Foundation has always worked to influence and control media communications, to favor conservatives. NOW they're starting to do the same with *information resources*, putting Wikipedia editors in the crosshairs for purported left-leaning bias re anti-semitism forward.com/news/686797/...

Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors

The conservative think tank told prospective donors that the project was part of its work to combat antisemitism.

forward.com