Matt Davies

This is fantastic, and it's something that we've been saying for years.

When companies say that are using "AI for climate change", they are referring to much smaller models used for doing things like climate modeling.

Massive generative AI models are NOT USEFUL for mitigating climate change.

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream.

I agree with this and I think one problem is that the two are often presented as mutually exclusive options. IMV for any ban to have a hope of achieving its aims (which are themselves too fuzzily defined) it would need to be accompanied by a broader suite of things, including more robust regulation

India’s ‘AI Impact Summit’ Promises Little More Than Spectacle The fourth in a series of convenings that kicked off in Bletchley Park in 2023, the summit is the first held in the Global South, writes Apar Gupta.

"Any claims of AI solving for population scale problems must be matched against the reality of the Global South, in which young boys were applying enamel paint on the railings... with their bare hands to prepare for the arrival of Silicon Valley CEOs." www.techpolicy.press/indias-ai-im...

My point isn't that we should be rushing into a ban; it's rather that debates about our technological environment cannot be resolved by appeals to "the evidence" alone.

These are—partly!—questions about values and politics, and it's good that we are beginning to recognise them as such.

/end

I also wonder if insisting on watertight evidence ahead of regulatory intervention risks baking a status quo bias into the way we do technology policy.

It's not as if the expansion of corporate social media platforms into every area of our lives was preceded by gold-plated empirical research...

3/

Intuitions are no basis for policy, but they aren't irrelevant; we shouldn't dismiss them out-of-hand.

It seems at least possible to me that existing studies might sometimes miss what is at stake in public unease with social media platforms; and that we should take this unease seriously.

2/

Seeing more chatter about the proposed U16 social media ban today. There's clearly a gap between the evidence — which suggests a ban would be likely to have limited efficacy — and the intuitions of those who regularly use these platforms and see their impact on adults and young people alike.

1/

India’s Global AI Pitch Masks A Troubling Reality At Home Without regulatory oversight and guardrails, AI in India will continue to function less as a public good and more as a tool of oppression, writes Tavishi.

Next week’s India AI Impact Summit is framed around “democratizing AI.” But as India expands AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing, and welfare automation, minorities and marginalized communities are bearing the costs, writes Tavishi.

for clarity: I like Block's picture of the state-capital relationship as a call and response cycle of provocation-discipline over an organized conspiracy idea (one version of "vulgar Marxism") or even a tight interest convergence story (e.g. elite class solidarity)

fredblock.org/wp-content/u...

Scribe and prejudice? Exploring the use of AI transcription tools in social care

Some Friday reading for anyone with an interest in AI and public services — a new (and terrifically-named) report on transcription tools in social care by my brilliant @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social colleagues @laragroves.bsky.social and Oliver Bruff:

www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/scrib...

Huw Lemmey in a blistering piece written last year: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Banning Palestine Action risks feeding radicalisation and distrust in democracy | LSE British Politics Proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is part of a broader authoritarian turn and an unwillingness to tolerate protest and dissent.

The High Court has ruled that the banning of Palestine Action was unlawful.

Bart Cammaerts of @lsemedia.bsky.social previously argued that the ban risked feeding radicalisation and distrust in democracy.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

Palestine Action have WON their judicial review in the High Court!
A massive victory for free speech, freedom of association and the right to protest.
A massive defeat for the draconian attempts by Keir Starmer's government to curtail our fundamental rights.

Breaking: on two counts, the High Court has ruled that the Labour government's proscription of the campaign group Palestine Action was unlawful – a win for its co-founder Huda Ammori, who sought a judicial review of the ban

So disappointed with the New Yorker Anthropic piece. No critical probing or context, just gullible parroting of a self-serving corporate marketing pitch. This needed a hard Chotinering

Anthropomorphizing the user interface of a sociotechnical apparatus?
Sounds like a marketing project.

This sickens me so deeply because anyone who knew young people and their families within the trans community knew this was true. Could viscerally feel the damage that has been done to a whole generation. And the instinct from Labour was not to address the harm – it was to cover it up. Unforgivable.

ICYMI

The deadline for this call is 28 February.

I trust you, but your AI agent is a snitch: Why we need a new social contract.

We’re chatting on Signal, enjoying encryption, right? But your DIY productivity agent is piping the whole thing back to Anthropic.

Friend, you just created a permanent subpoena-able record of my private thoughts...1/

Risky Business: Advanced AI Companies’ Race for Revenue Companies developing advanced AI find themselves at a critical juncture. Some have transformed from research labs to product companies, others from social media platforms and internet giants to compet...

For deeper analysis on AI advertising and other business models, check out @cdt.org’s recent report Risky Business: Advanced AI Companies’ Race for Revenue cdt.org/insights/ris...

We’re dropping the first 4 essays in Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026, our new series with Aapti Institute and @themaybe.org that takes a clear-eyed look at the narratives shaping the India AI Impact Summit and insists we collectively build the conversations that are missing 🧵

Utopia Abstract. Ideal societies, better worlds, more just and peaceful ways of living: these have long been the stuff of human beings’ social dreaming. In this c

NEW BOOK!

I'm very happy to say that my new book, Utopia, co-written with Douglas Mao, has been published on-line

academic.oup.com/book/62279

AI Agents, Moltbook, and the Fragility of our AI Infrastructure I’m writing this on the heels of what could be described as a kind of social engineering attack on the AI discourse.

"The lesson to take from [Moltbook] is actually not primarily about the technology. It’s about the collective sense many of us feel that we lack the power as individuals to stop a runaway train."

Superb primer from @smw.bsky.social on what's really at stake in recent reporting about AI agents:

100% agree, and potentially also a positive step-change in the ability of governments to bring the tech companies to heel — the history of regulation shows us that powerful actors don't tend to come to the table unless they're faced with the threat of a big stick

Barnsley rebranded UK’s first ‘tech town’ as US giants join AI push Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses

"In the latest move in Labour’s drive to inject AI into Britain’s bloodstream, the government has announced three US tech companies ... have agreed to help as the council pushes to apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses in Barnsley" www.theguardian.com/business/202...

If they haven’t already someone should write about the expanded UTAX universe of new Open Phil-adjacent think tanks springing up, the post-Bostrom wave of alt-ac including Cosmos Institute, Roots of Progress, etc. Elevated art deco slop and statue avis and their textual equivalents.

Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE 404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

New from 404 Media: here is the user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE. A map shows people on a map; ICE clicks them, brings up their dossier. ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target. We obtained it, you can now read the document for yourself: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

From our paper (w/ @smw.bsky.social and @meredithmeredith.bsky.social) in 2024: