Dr Christine Cuskley

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

Incandescent. One of the best pieces I've read about what university means to people and their communities - and what will happen to a city and people after one closes. The *Labour* government and Jaqui Smith in particular should be ashamed of themselves and shamed into doing something. Deplorable.

I found the key to be referencing activities and examples we actually covered in class or seminars (the latter were not recorded). A lot of "well written" drivel immediately revealed itself

Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.

Well now I know what's on for movie night

A pie chart from a survey where the possible responses are red, green, turquoise, blue, pink, and yellow - and google has made red responses blue, green responses red, turquoise responses orange, blue responses, green, pink responses purlple, and yellow responses ALSO blue.

There's a lot of bad shit going on right now, but god help me, this automatically generated pie chart from google forms might be the proverbial straw for me

I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!

Qui i veri criminali stanno in divisa

Agnes Varda saying the world's in bad shape and I'm overwhelmed.

📽️

It’s a tremendous honour, really tremendous - to be presented with a ‘World No.1 University’ ranking from Oxford. Very smart people. The best. Everyone knows it. Nobody thought it could happen, but here we are. Absolutely incredible.

About the PhD: Audits and evaluation of AI systems — and the broader context that AI systems operate in — have become central to conceptualising, quantifying, measuring and understanding the operations, failures, limitations, underlying assumptions, and downstream societal implications of AI systems. Existing AI audit and evaluation efforts are fractured, done in a siloed and ad-hoc manner, and with little deliberation and reflection around conceptual rigour and methodological validity. This PhD is for a candidate that is passionate about exploring what a conceptually cogent, methodologically sound, and well-founded AI evaluation and safety research might look like. This requires grappling with questions such as: What does it mean to represent “ground truth” in proxies, synthetic data, or computational simulation? How do we reliably measure abstract and complex phenomena? What are the epistemological or methodological implications of quantification and measurement approaches we choose to employ? Particularly, what underlying presuppositions, values, or perspectives do they entail? How do we ensure the lived experiences of impacted communities play a critical role in the development and justification of measurement metrics and proxies? Through exploration of these questions, the candidate is expected to engage with core concepts in the philosophy of science, history of science, Black feminist epistemologies, and similar schools of thought to develop an in-depth understanding of existing practices with the aim of applying it to advance shared standards and best practice in AI evaluation. The candidate is expected to integrate empirical (for example, through analysis or evaluation of existing benchmarks) or practical (for example, by executing evaluation of AI systems) components into the overall work.

are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me

apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...

pls repost

a close up of a man wearing a plaid shirt and a sherpa jacket making a funny face . ALT: a close up of a man wearing a plaid shirt and a sherpa jacket making a funny face .

this and "help us to evaluate whether you think AI is useful or not" were a lot

This was a cowardly subtweet of this mess, dissected at length here: bsky.app/profile/mehr...

Corporation For Public Broadcasting Is Dissolved After 58 Years Of Service

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been dissolved, ending its 58 years as the primary funder for PBS, NPR and local TV and radio stations

I keep coming across this idea that AI can be used to generate research ideas..where did this come from? I know a lot of people who are burnt out and have trouble moving forward with or engaging with new ideas, but I have never met anyone who's like "welp I got to the end of ideas I guess"

Let's talk about generative AI, contaminated information, and rhubarb.

Once upon a time, Europe was at war.

Food was scarce, and the government of the quote-unquote United Kingdom looked for alternatives. 1/

Why is Trump always doing interviews on Air Force one looking like he just got caught by reporters wiggling out of the bathroom on an easyJet flight

New Leather-Bound Notebook To Really Unleash Area Woman's Creativity

New Leather-Bound Notebook To Really Unleash Area Woman's Creativity https://theonion.com/new-leather-bound-notebook-to-really-unleash-area-woman-1819576030/

I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

30 Rock "What a week" meme: "What a year, huh?" "Lemon, it's January 3rd."

I hate these charts so much because they imply chatgpt is comparable to the internet or phones

You could create the same graphic for full screen pop-up advertising on websites and make them look like ultra-rapid technology adoption when really they were just baked unavoidably into the internet

I think it’s really important we do *not* attribute this failure to “fossilized thinking” on the part of academics, but on the part of business studies-led management teams who value “internal markets” over education.

A student's paper just described the interaction between Homo sapiens and Neandertals as "a situationship rather than a relationship" and I'm still laughing ten minutes later 💀🏺

Deep breath
Ok I'm going to try and stay calm
But I'll point out that AI translation is literally causing translators to be fired (see the whole Harlequin line in France)
(1/?)

All research is exploratory if you’re confused enough

in the pit

This entire weekend

A huge phenetic tree visualising our global string figure dataset.

I am delighted to share our latest piece of research:

‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’.

This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date.

A thread:

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

“ragebait” is Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year @academic.oup.com

I wonder if this makes “ragebait” autological…

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/a...

An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.

What a great headline