I wrote a whole article about how you probably won’t read it, and I don’t blame you. www.oreilly.com/radar/you-pr...
You Probably Won't Read This Article...and That's OK
“Help! There are too many [LLM bug reports, blog posts about LLM bug reports, books, treatises, codices, scrolls, papyri, cuneiform tablets]! How do I choose
oreilly.com
“The people who promise that their frontier AI systems will be safe and aligned are, inside their own companies, stripping out the alignment mechanisms that three centuries of conflict produced,” writes Tim O’Reilly
Elon Musk is building a form of capitalism that Adam Smith would hate
The merchants are becoming princes, writes Tim O’Reilly
bit.ly
Apparently, I think AI is more aware than most people do... Learn how you think about #consciousness compared to the crowd on awareometer.com
I’ve been building a side project called Aware-o-meter. It’s a simple comparison site that asks people to choose which of two things seem more aware. Check it out here if you are interested: awareometer.com - I’ve already got 2300 responses somehow!
awareometer.com
Watching the fallout from Anthropic’s latest model (Opus 4.7) release has been fascinating
@simonpoulton.com thinks that there is a "possibility that shopping agents empower consumers so they aren’t forced onto a platform to transact.” I think this exemplifies exactly why LLMs might only get worse from here asimovaddendum.substack.com/p/are-llms-t...
Are LLMs the Best That They Will Ever Be?
Without careful disclosure architectures, AI products may only get worse, even as the technology gets better.
asimovaddendum.substack.com
Provocative title here from @rufusrock.bsky.social but it's hard to disagree on this point 1/ phttps://asimovaddendum.substack.com/p/are-llms-the-best-that-they-will?r=3f5ape&triedRedirect=true
I helped write a thing (just in case you are not tired of reading about AI) open.substack.com/pub/asimovad...
Are LLMs the Best That They Will Ever Be?
Without careful disclosure architectures, AI products may only get worse, even as the technology gets better.
open.substack.com
Are LLM's the best that they will ever be? A guest post on Asimov Addendum by @rufusrock.bsky.social "The technology might continue to get better, but that doesn’t mean that the user experience will. Why? Primarily because no one knows how to make LLMs profitable." Read more below👇
UK government simultaneously replaced expert advice on technology with tech company “consultants” and displaced their civil servants’ experience and expertise into AI models… It’s a disaster & an absolute gift to the tech vendors…
Public Sector Capabilities Index ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/res... Council on Urban Initiatives ➡️ www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/res... 3/3
Public Sector Capabilities Index
IIPP, with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, has launched an initiative to establish a Public Sector Capabilities Index – the first global measure of city governments’ capacity to solve problems.
ucl.ac.uk
Another classic case of “let’s automate everything don’t worry it’ll be fine” www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis...
Wimbledon 2025: Play stopped in Sonay Kartal's match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova after electronic line calling fails
Play is stopped in Sonay Kartal's last-16 match at Wimbledon as the electronic line calling system fails to call a ball out.
bbc.co.uk
Great thoughts on information over abundance from @hankgreen.bsky.social — though calling a lot of the AI slop on TikTok “information” feels generous. youtu.be/9euKCrTyMEc
You’re Not Addicted to Content, You’re Starving for Information
YouTube video by vlogbrothers
youtu.be
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 · 2y agoTo repeat: "A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for."
Europe’s dependence on US tech is a critical weakness | Opinion https://www.ft.com/content/30d6f79f-d1ee-49dc-bff5-719f18c1a9e5
Europe’s dependence on US tech is a critical weakness | Opinion
In order to protect their sovereignty, the continent’s leaders must invest in a digital ecosystem independent of America
ft.com
Signature tally now closing in on 3000. Please keep discussing, sharing and signing to put as much pressure on the Royal Society to respond as possible. forms.gle/AuYvuWqytx8K...
Open letter to the President of the Royal Society – time to stand up for your values
If you wish to show your support for the letter below regarding apparent inaction by the Royal Society in the face of breaches of its code of conduct by Elon Musk FRS, please sign below. I invite anyo...
forms.gle
I just wrote a piece on why I think the chatter about AI putting programmers out of work is wrong. Every time it gets easier to tell computers what we want them to do, it brings more people into the fold and unleashes a wave of creativity and creative destruction. That reads like opportunity to me.
The End of Programming as We Know It
oreilly.com
'Scaling laws' are not laws. They are an industrial strategy. Like Moore's Law. Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman et al's airport books lay it out - Blitzscaling as a way to crush competition and earn monopoly rents. So the story has to be that bigger is better.
Timnit Gebru@timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 2y agoAt Google, I asked why they were fixated on building THE LARGEST model. Why are you going for size? What function are you trying to achieve? Why is the thing you were upset about that you didn't have THE LARGEST model? They responded by firing me 🤷🏼
Genuinely wild how much the internet 15 years ago felt like a frontier and now feels like those terminals you get in video games with a couple of pages to give you the illusion of an explorable internet, like in cyberpunk 77. Just fully fucked the whole thing up
how hard can it possibly be to understand that LLMs are not good for information retrieval
Not enough to complain about tech bros. Must look at their feudalistic renter practices. In 2019 I wrote on “digital feudalism” www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/p... (based on theory in my book The Value of Everything). In 2023 ran a project on “Algorithmic Rents” www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub....
Preventing Digital Feudalism | by Mariana Mazzucato - Project Syndicate
Mariana Mazzucato calls reform of the platform-dominated market for personal data the main economic challenge of our time.
project-syndicate.org
Just published: my new paper on how Big Tech profits from our attention. Ever wondered how platforms turn clicks into cash? Find out here: doi.org/10.1016/j.in...
Very exciting to be featured in this great journal!
Ulrich Kaiser@ulrichkaiser.bsky.social · 2y agoJust accepted in Information Economics and Policy: "Behind the Clicks: Can #Amazon allocate user attention as it pleases?" Can it? Yes it can, and that has really important regulatory implications as the authors @rufusrock.bsky.social, Ilan Strauss, @timoreilly.bsky.social
