Ewa Luger

Research Associate at The University of Edinburgh An opportunity for an academic position as a Research Associate is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

New research job alert! Come and join the amazing @braiduk.bsky.social team, working with me and @shannonvallor.bsky.social. The post is exploring the social return of AI investments. Feel free to reach out, and apply here - www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPA010/r...

Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be? The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing.

Is also the case that, if the AI bubble comes, it will sting www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch... we've seen highly valued companies that can't make a profit before

Anthropic Agrees to Pay Authors at Least $1.5 Billion in AI Copyright Settlement Anthropic will pay at least $3,000 for each copyrighted work that it pirated. The company downloaded unauthorized copies of books in early efforts to gather training data for its AI tools.

Having admitted that it used pirated works to build its LLM, in "the first class action settlement centered on AI and copyright in the United States", #Anthropic have now agreed to pay compensation to authors. It is unlikely to be the last.

www.wired.com/story/anthro...

Human-like robot at a podium with microphones, delivering a speech against a colourful blue and yellow background.

Will AI support or supplant human participation in politics?

Join the compelling conversation chaired by @maggiechapman.bsky.social MSP with our panellists Robert Moran, @pipt.bsky.social, @profvaccari.bsky.social and @ewaluger.bsky.social

📆 Aug 20, 5:30pm ‐ 7:00pm
🎫 t.co/jOCnetKs19

AI tools used by English councils downplay women’s health issues, study finds Exclusive: LSE research finds risk of gender bias in care decisions made based on AI summaries of case notes

“AI could result in ‘unequal care provision for women’”. Another reminder that, without responsible adoption, AI just amplifies our past bad practice and reintroduces it into our present. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Very excited to be recruiting for a Communication and Impact Officer to work with me, @ewaluger.bsky.social and the whole @braiduk.bsky.social team in Edinburgh through late 2028! Opportunity is Grade 7 and applications close 1st Sept

The @braiduk.bsky.social team is looking for an administrator to join our project family. Working with me and @shannonvallor.bsky.social and a lovely widerteam. Do please circulate to anyone who might be interested. Deadline 5th August!

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Always lovely to catch up with you.

Which jacket was designed by AI? ‘Unbelievably Creative’ asking the BRAID community questions about the role of AI in creativity
@braiduk.bsky.social @shannonvallor.bsky.social

Cracking on with the first panel of the day (AI & Society) at our @braiduk.bsky.social community event. Starting with an overview of the @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social AI public attitudes survey. @shannonvallor.bsky.social

Kicking off our celebration of the first three years of @braiduk.bsky.social in Manchester at the Lowry and it’s going to be a fantastic day! So proud of all the artists and researchers who make up this amazing community

Fancy Edinburgh Uni as a visiting fellow? Global Majority Fellowships in NLP 2025-2026, for early careers researchers. For this 1st year, we welcome applications on “Responsible NLP and Digital Cultural Heritage”, working with me! 2-3 months in duration, Visa fees, stipend &travel. Please share!

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

National Postdoctoral Conference for ECRs The National Postdoctoral Conference is a free event taking place in September 2025, open to ECRs from SHAPE and STEM disciplines.

Join the Early Career Research Network in September for the National Postdoctoral Conference which aims to celebrate, unite, and empower postdoctoral researchers from across the UK. Register here: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/natio...

Fitting for today’s cat fight.

Labour’s AI gold rush gets stuck in the mud Ministers are preparing a string of AI announcements for early June, but voters are skeptical about the technology. That leaves the ruling Labour Party with a huge problem.

The Labour government’s plan for economic growth, public service reform, and thus its electoral hopes, rest on the country adopting AI.

But its strategy of breathlessly bigging up bleeding-edge AI and pursuing massive data center investments is not cutting through to voters, MPs fear.

Electronic Legal Deposit materials are back online in 5 legal deposit reading rooms after the British Library cyberattack! Hurrah. But not in London yet. ICYDK, this encompasses vast swathes of modern digital texts including journal papers & books, & other media. Great to see it back!

Is the before or after the locusts and the floods?

I hard second this one!

ChatGPT Is Everywhere — Why Aren't We Talking About Its Environmental Costs? One estimate found that a single ChatGPT search uses 10 times the energy of a normal Google search.

“We are told repeatedly that AI will eventually help us solve social issues, including climate change...while AI infrastructures are right now burdening communities and undermining climate goals,” D&S’s @tamigraph.bsky.social tells @leximcmenamin.com @teenvogue.com. www.teenvogue.com/story/chatgp...

Really great talk and discussion with @dynarch.bsky.social. The full recording will be available soon.

Infographic of BRAID x IDI seminar with Lydia Farina on 8th May, 4-5pm and her picture at the bottom right.

Join next @braiduk.bsky.social x IDI Hybrid Seminar where @dynarch.bsky.social will provide key insights from her scoping BRAID project ‘Creating a dynamic #archive of Responsible AI Ecosystems in the context of #CreativeAI’

📅 Thu 8 May
⏰ 4 – 5pm
📍@inspacegallery.bsky.social/ Zoom
🎟 edin.ac/3CoJbuZ

New CETaS report 'UK Public Attitudes to National Security Data Processing: Assessing Human and Machine Intrusion' (Powell, Oswald & Janjeva) published today. Based on a nationally representative survey and a citizens panel cetas.turing.ac.uk/publications... 1/3

Excellent research workshop last night at the RSA in London on 'AI and the Novel', led by @clemicollett.bsky.social as part of the work she is doing with us and @mctd.bsky.social, with funding from @braiduk.bsky.social. Rich discussions about risks and opportunities across the field!

But their defense also hinges on the argument that the individual books themselves are, essentially, worthless—one expert witness for Meta describes that the influence of a single book in LLM pretraining “adjusted its performance by less than 0.06% on industry standard benchmarks, a meaningless change no different from noise.” Furthermore, Meta says, that while the company “has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in LLM development,” they see no market in paying authors to license their books because “for there to be a market, there must be something of value to exchange, but none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” (An argument essential to fair use, but that also sounds like a scaled up version of a scenario in which the New York Philharmonic board argues against paying individual members of the orchestra because the organization spent a lot of money on the upkeep of David Geffen Hall, and also, a solo bassoon cannot play every part in “The Rite of Spring.”)

Nasty work. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

Amazing Carole Cadwalladr telling it like it is. A digital coup that we need to find everyday ways to resist.

How Musk and Trump Are Working to Consolidate Government Data About You Databases that Elon Musk’s team is trying to access include more than 300 personal details about members of the U.S. public.

The US government holds a tremendous amount of data about US citizens. Now,
The Trump administration is trying to access that data and link it together.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/u...

PR campaign may have fuelled food study backlash, leaked document shows Eat-Lancet report recommended shift to more plant-based, climate-friendly diet but was extensively attacked online

1. Whenever you see really vicious and widespread "spontaneous" attacks on scientific findings that challenge powerful economic interests, you can be assured that corporate lobbyists have been busy behind the scenes.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025 Last year, HBR published a piece on how people are using gen AI. Much has happened over the past 12 months. We now have Custom GPTs—AI tailored for narrower sets of requirements. New kids are on the b...

In 2025 top 3 uses of GenAI are: therapy/companionship, organising life, and finding purpose. I think something has gone pretty badly wrong here.

hbr.org/2025/04/how-...