Ian Graham

Annie and Lakeesha struggle in school. AI teacher assistants treated them very differently. A Common Sense Media study found that prominent teacher assistants that use AI generated recommendations that appeared to be rooted in racial stereotypes based on students’ names. About a third of tea...

"Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white" www.chalkbeat.org/2025/08/06/a...

If AI is being used extensively in office jobs, then should we be letting students use AI in the classroom?

No - here's why.

With reference to 3 papers that show what you do in a job isn't the template for what you do in the classroom.

substack.nomoremarking.com/p/education-...

And yeah, I think that the DOGE folks at agencies kind of had unilateral decision making authority in a way that's kind of scary because they both had the we should come into government and do common sense things mindset without realizing that the most common sense things are actually the hardest to accomplish for very specific reasons.

Coding interviews from people who left government earlier this year, and this is a fantastic quote in response to a question about what DOGE tech folk don't understand.

It’s time to retire the word ‘technology’ The word spans too much and clarifies too little

on.ft.com/45cJxz9 It’s time to retire the word ‘technology’

Axon’s Draft One is Designed to Defy Transparency Axon Enterprise’s Draft One — a generative artificial intelligence product that writes police reports based on audio from officers’ body-worn cameras — seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that...

BIG NEWS: After a long investigation we have uncovered that Axon's Draft One--a program that uses genAI to write police reports based on body-worn camera audio--is *designed* not to retain the data on which parts were written by an officer and which parts were written by AI. A looming disaster.

Kathleen Jamie | At the Canongate Wall The stone suits the poetry. Or perhaps it’s the other way round. I think poetry suits stone, more than it suits paper...

‘Stone suits the poetry. Or perhaps it’s the other way round. I think poetry suits stone, more than it suits paper, certainly more than it suits a screen. The poetry releases something latent in the stone.’

Kathleen Jamie visits the Canongate Wall in Edinburgh: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

I'm not sure that we want to encourage people to write on books.

My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com

Passed by the rickshaw near Currie yesterday. Great contraption and good to see your Aunty Pat having such a great time.

The thread about the Salisbury Arms and the famous literary association that never was My eye was caught by a claim in local news that the author Arthur Conan Doyle once frequented the Salisbury Arms. In the best spirit of Sherlock Holmes, this thread sets out to thoroughly and factu…

This article from @threadinburgh.scot is a jolly read. But when you get to the end, you realise that it is making a point that should worry all of us, even if we are not interested in the history of large suburban villas in #Edinburgh .

threadinburgh.scot/2025/06/27/t...

Can we have a link to the paper? This is very interesting as a example of how AI subtly shapes human practice.

Robodebt: When automation fails Lessons from Australia's use of algorithms to detect welfare fraud become more relevant in the age of AI

New, from me: how might automation fail in public services?
The Australian Robodebt case provides a compelling set of insights that governments lurching toward AI or algorithms need to pay attention to. 🧵
substack.com/home/post/p-...

I don't believe he drinks instant coffee,

Has Waiting for Godot been on again?

It's the Tilda Swinton as his love interest that raises this to another level.

‘A Billion Streams and No Fans’: Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case A chart-topping jazz album! Loads of Spotify and Apple Music plays! Just one problem: The success might not be real.

“He had a billion streams and no fans.”

The week after a jazz album hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart, it disappeared from the ranking altogether. Its success might never have been real in the first place.

This is very good on the slow adoption of AI in organisations as ideas are generated and trials carried out. Many potential users lag because of lack of knowledge and it takes time for senior managers to commit. This is the area that is most interesting for business school academics.

Stuff like this is why they are trying to ban AI regulation or legislation on AI by the states for the next decade. Tech CEOs know that if they can get the tentacles of these techs hooked into everything there will be no way to stop them once they’re entrenched, even if people to not like them.

Er... I suspect you didn't explicitly say you wanted fictional characters in real books and films? Try "Can you list fictional characters in real world books and films based on Elon Musk".. for me it gives ten OK answers. What you list are fictional characters!

Atonement isn't made up. Some of the rest I would read if I could.

The 'invisible' five-time Booker nominee who doesn't want to be famous Sophie Hughes explains why her job is misunderstood - and why she's changed her mind about the threat of AI

Always admired these people and what they do. Fascinating to hear her describe the process.

I am sure they have thought of this and keep a look out for foot passengers on the Northlink ferry carrying shovels.

There is something ironic about such an advanced educational establishment with so much expertise on training using such awful online training packages.

She already has a cider named after her.

The Story of Globalization, as Told Through One Big Barge

In his new book "Empty Vessel," the historian Ian Kumekawa landed on an ingenious way to make the abstractions of globalization feel more concrete: Tell the story of neoliberalism from the perspective of a barge. (The pic is from its stint as a "floating jail" in the East River in 1992.)

For academics that are skeptical about AI's ability to provide perceptive & useful results, a fast way to test your assumptions is to give one of your papers as a PDF to o3 (or Gemini 2.5 but it lacks some tools), with the prompt:

"critique this paper"

I have found very good accuracy & insight...

YouTube video by NationalMuseumsScotland A Jacquard loom in action

Jacquard looms still exist, but not so many using cards. This is a good video on a card controlled Jacquard loom in Paisley. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlJn... I use it in lectures.. it's digital, it's programmed and it's very old.

What kind of chatbot do you want? One that tells you the truth – or that you’re always right? | Chris Stokel-Walker ChatGPT’s embarrassing rollback of a user update was a warning about the dangers of humans placing emotional trust in AI, says author Chris Stokel-Walker

ChatGPT's rolling back of its 4o update highlights a concern around indoctrination. My latest for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Absolutely love this FT letter. "Thought experiment: what if no one buys a new car?"