Jack Hardinges

Smart Data (regulated data portability for UK consumers and businesses) looks like it might get quite expensive to deliver... assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/697b89...

that's it :)

fair point, given the answer to your question is 'quite a lot of it'. it depends on whether the $$$ keeps flowing to support LLM product + diffusal, or whether it follows other branches of research like Gary's. maybe it goes away to find a new hype train altogether and the field 'freezes' again

the importance and relevance of this statement is a function of how AGI-pilled one is. AGI is not my objective, nor (imo) ultimately achievable. despite their inherent incapabilities, LLMs are not a dead end to building things that people want to use - is that not a reasonable objective function?

In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing In the face of technologies that sell us escapism at every turn, we need to build up tolerance for “inconvenience.”

nice. recent and related (if you haven't seen it already): www.thecut.com/article/broo...

Leeway Rules, we tell ourselves, are made to be broken. When strict application of the rule produces a silly outcome, we prefer to bend the rule rather than enforce the silly outcome. A rule which could c…

added this to my moodboard on technology's ongoing erosion of leeway and a closing of all the gaps, workarounds, loopholes that previous generations benefitted from. 'Bureaucracies often have something that computers do not: logical escape valves' www.publicstrategist.com/2015/05/leew...

The Jagged AI Frontier is a Data Frontier - a Hugging Face Space by lvwerra Why AI capabilities are shaped by data availability

"Any organization building state-of-the-art LLMs needs to be a data curation and generation lab first, obsessively identifying and filling the gaps" huggingface.co/spaces/lvwer...

"Of course, we’re also hoping to eventually offset risk by diversifying into galoots, simpletons, and outright morons. But the important thing now is to get many, many more idiots confused enough to believe they have any chance in hell of making money off this grift”

just watched a brilliant talk by Paul Keller @openfuture.bsky.social. it includes a case for *conditional openness*, building on OF's longstanding argument that the open movement must better account for concentrations of power www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROig...

a job posting for 'Public Sector Data Markets Lead' for the National Data Library. responsible for "interventions to test the potential commercial market for public sector data. They will identify promising opportunities for data commercialisation" www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

OpenAI co-founds the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation AAIF aims to advance open-source agentic AI with the donation of standards including OpenAI’s AGENTS.md

"Today, OpenAI is co-founding the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, alongside Anthropic and Block, and with the support of Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare" openai.com/index/agenti...

No, AI Hasn't Run Out of Data... Here's What's Really Happening Elon Musk says AI exhausted all human data. He's wrong. 99.99% of the world's data is private and untapped. Here's how AI's relationship with data is really evolving—and what's at stake.

I've written up some thoughts on large AI models’ evolving relationship with data (with my new @openmined.bsky.social hat on): openmined.org/blog/ai-hasn...

Data spaces as meta-organisations Sharing and reusing data across organisations is central to the European data strategy and its transformation towards creating a data-driven economy. Currently, data sharing, when it occurs, is typ...

"Data spaces as meta-organisations" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Beyond the Artifact: The Brutal Economics of Liquid Content Value is migrating away from content, and creating surprising new opportunities

“This commoditization will start to bifurcate the market into a spectrum with extremes at either end: a smaller premium market at one end, and a larger commodity market at the other. A classic barbell effect where the middle disappears" radicallyinformed.substack.com/p/beyond-the...

"Conditional openness means that datasets are freely accessible for non-commercial, public-interest uses, while commercial access may be subject to additional conditions— such as registration, purpose declaration, and payment where appropriate" openfuture.eu/wp-content/u...

I've written up a briefing note for @creativecommons.bsky.social on pay-to-crawl: new systems being used by websites to automate compensation for when their content is accessed by AI bots and other machines

ah, I see. I didn't realise they hadn't published those specs

what do you mean? info about the users of the non-paid APIs, or something different?

'The Most Boring Dataset in the World' foresight.org/resource/gre...

Wikimedia Enterprise Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2024 – 2025 Summary This is the fourth annual financial report for Wikimedia Enterprise – for the fiscal year 2024-25. We are pleased to share that not only does this report show the first complete year of pro…

Wikimedia's paid-for APIs now generating £8m+ revenues, presumably fuelled by AI users diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/24/w...

Great Data Products The language we use to talk about data is keeping us from realizing its full potential.

"It’s incoherent to claim that data is extremely valuable and that it should somehow also be free. This doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to subsidize data access to make it available at no cost, but it means we need to acknowledge the costs" radiant.earth/blog/2025/11...

"The question isn’t whether we can add integrity to AI but whether the architecture permits integrity at all. Today’s AI agents observe the Internet, orient via statistics, decide probabilistically, and act without verification" (via @peterkwells.com) www.schneier.com/blog/archive...

How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time The idea that machines will be as smart as—or smarter than—humans has hijacked an entire industry. But look closely and you’ll see it’s a myth that persists for many of the same reasons conspiracies d...

'How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time' www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1...

@joshdaddario.bsky.social isn't there a simple ODI guide to publishing good open data? iirc there was a github one?

the Smart Data Group has published a proposal for what the 'Future Entity' for Open Banking + all Smart Data Schemes should look like. Special Purpose Vehicles for each Scheme.. www.linkedin.com/posts/smart-...

VLOM

Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era The grand idealism of the free and open internet might be over for now, but in its place falls a more practical mindset. Just like Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs are entering their “Hard Tech” era, th...

'Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era' www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-p...

The Weaponisation of Openness? Toward a New Social Contract for Data in the AI Era By Stefaan G. Verhulst

"The open movement must likewise evolve from the libertarian ethos of the early internet toward a civic ethos fit for the age of AI. We must design infrastructures.. that preserve the spirit of accessibility while protecting against its weaponisation" sverhulst.medium.com/the-weaponis...

Value of Public Sector Data Estimate

but the study can't distinguish between current realised value and potential realisable value. so it's a weird estimate of both the current value of data that gov makes available, and the potential future value of data that it doesn't. hmm.

Value of Public Sector Data Estimate

new UK Gov study on the value of public sector data. apparently the public sector invests £30bn in data assets per year, which have an 'expected potential value' to the economy of £15bn-200bn www.gov.uk/government/p...