Stephen Hill

it's not that i ever doubted that being a barista was a skilled position, but my year-long effort to try to produce a half-decent latte at home has convinced me that a good barista is easily more skilled than virtually every c-suite executive on the planet

AI has come an enormous way since the early days...
Amazing precision and scholarly knowledge.
GoaLPleation for one is just around the corner in neuroscience research 😱
#neuroskyence

Stop overhyping AI, scientists tell von der Leyen Open letter criticises the Commission President for remarks earlier this year – when she anticipated AI would “approach human reasoning” in 2026

Stop overhyping AI, scientists tell von der Leyen

Canada loses its measles elimination status — as it happened | CBC

Misinformation is harmless, they say, it's just a different POV they say ... "Canada has lost its measles elimination status, the Public Health Agency of Canada says. Since the fall of 2024, Canada has recorded more than 5k measles cases in 9 provinces and one territory." www.cbc.ca/news/health/...

PhD student looks at the lie behind the political line: ‘NZ can’t afford it’ University of Otago student Morgan Edwards believes Kiwis need to understand more about our monetary system and push back harder against public service cuts and other government spending decisions.

PhD student looks at the lie behind the political line: ‘NZ can’t afford it’
#nzpol
Link to read 👇

archive.today/D8Uyf

ChatGPT in Education: An Effect in Search of a Cause Background As researchers rush to investigate the potential of AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance learning, well-documented pitfalls threaten the validity of this emerging research. Issues of media co...

With so much news, hype, and 'research' about AI in education, I thought it a good idea to bring this blog and open access article under everyone's attention.

ChatGPT: An effect in search of a cause
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

What a fantastic piece!

Govt's climate strategy: Let it burn Comment: The Government has relentlessly pursued policies that boost climate pollution – even if they cost more or jeopardise NZ's reputation, Marc Daalder writes

"If there is a coherent throughline to the totality of the Government’s climate policies, it can only be a willingness to
increase New Zealand’s contribution to global warming."
newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/07/g...

I'm with you.

We only need to look at how things are going in Australia to realise that, quite apart from the massive problems with digital IDing, it's unlikely to achieve what people hope it will.

Developers still aren't warming up to generative AI Developers do not in fact welcome our new AI overlords.

It seems like the more time game developers spend with generative "AI", the less impressed by it they are. In the most recent Game Developer survey of people working the industry only 13% expect these tools to have a positive impact on the industry, a decline of nearly half from the previous year.

Because everything is shit, I give you ... Puggles. #Platypus #AustralianWildlife

#NZ science cuts

The cost of axing Callaghan Innovation

www.waikatotimes.co.nz/business/360...

I keep on coming back to the irrefutable fact that the people in New Zealand that don't want to address the impact of colonisation and argue "it's in the past, the current generation are not responsible for that" continue to enjoy benefits that flowed directly from that colonisation.

Same. When doing primary school projects I just had to make stuff up or ask my parents.

Heli vid from last night of the fire at Mangatepopo in Tongariro National Park.

Devastating in our premier national park.

Please stay away so firefighters can do their jobs...
#RuapehuNZ #CruisingSH4 #Tongariro

filter_out is great and what I have always thought filter should mean anyway! In my head filtering is always about removing something.

Slide is titled: You don't need to use LLMs. Science is a process of collaborative meaning making, by which we try to understand the world Even if AI were perfect, we rely on it at our peril — it is not science if we (i.e., humanity as a whole) do not understand and cannot recapitulate all parts of it I very, very rarely use LLMs myself. You can give yourself permission not to. Don’t FOMO yourself into it

Conclusion: Don't rely on something you don't understand and can't control If you must use LLMS: 1. Treat them like you would an intern: only use them for things you can easily and thoroughly check 2. Make your process as robust as possible 3. Be aware of your own (human) cognitive biases

Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.

Lost In Space: New Zealand's $30M Participation Trophy "Good, fast and cheap" MethaneSAT tried for all three and got none. MBIE and the New Zealand Space Agency missed red flags in the initial bid. The MethaneSAT project did not keep promises of ope...

Folks, here's my take on the @methanesat.bsky.social project - TLDR: they tried for all three of "good, fast and cheap" and wound up with none...

A frosted glass window onto which the silhouettes of two children and a woman are projected — this is part of a tryptic.

Exposure — the graduate showcase from the university's college of creative arts — is on at the Massey campus in Pōneke. Free entry and, as always, worth the trip. This is a detail from Ana Johnston's beautiful installation, "little bird nestless"

Rosalind Franklin at her microscope

Raising a glass for Rosalind Franklin tonight. James Watson absolutely did her dirty.

But beware...

Well now, would you look at that?

A massive study of NEARLY 300,000 people in the United States found that receiving an updated 2024-2025 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine REDUCED people’s risk of severe disease AND death in ALL age groups, REGARDLESS of immunity from prior infection or vaccination.

Lawyers, think hard before you use AI From Auckland University - Comment: Judges around the world have pulled lawyers up for submitting AI-generated material to the court that’s wrong. To those lawyers who do want to use it – here’s a war...

Excellent from my law colleague up at Auckland.

Legal AI is truth agnostic, often wrong, and time saved is often illusory.

newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/07/l...

Bombshell report exposes how Meta relied on scam ad profits to fund AI Meta goosed its revenue by targeting users likely to click on scam ads, docs show.

This can’t come as a surprise to anyone on FB or Insta, who have been awash with the lowest quality ads for simply ages now.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

AI company owes $70k in unpaid wages after narrowly avoiding liquidation An AI company and one-time NZX contender is refusing to settle unpaid wages owed to a former worker, 18 months after IRD applied for it to be liquidated.

AI company owes $70k in unpaid wages after narrowly avoiding liquidation newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/05/a... Markedly different from other reporting I've seen about Arria.

ah, so = "the environment and attitude with respect to international students, staff and research. It is based on international-to-domestic ratios across staff, students and research collaborations"

Can't see how any of those would really be impacted negatively by Te Tiriti focus.

What does international outlook mean? Curious that it was high during the pandemic when international students couldn't come into the country ...

It doesn't matter how many times I'm made aware that there was a real human woman named "Rhoda Pidgeon" who lived in Christchurch I just ALWAYS find it funny.
That she got married to a William Haglund, and so upgraded from an avian ride to a mechanical one is just "chef's kiss".

AI hallucinates because it’s trained to fake answers it doesn’t know Teaching chatbots to say “I don’t know” could curb hallucinations. It could also break AI’s business model

AI hallucinates because it’s trained to fake answers it doesn’t know. Teaching chatbots to say “I don’t know” could curb hallucinations. It could also break AI’s business model.

The NZ car industry has made no progress towards meeting the 2025 emissions standards. Are they even trying?

Who Benefits: A think tank’s charm offensive and a doubting Thomas

In part two of this instalment in our series on lobbying: The Free Speech Union has been quietly wooing university vice chancellors, with some success