Dr. Anuradha Sajjanhar

AI Skills for Life and Work: summary report

There will be lots of detailed analysis of this I'm sure, but a few immediate thoughts

- it's premised on the absolute inevitability of more people using more AI at work, despite also saying that businesses are struggling to find viable use cases

That they chose “Lunch atop a Skyscraper,” a photograph of workers during the Great Depression, and superimposed the images of some of the top figures of the new Gilded Age tells you a lot about the role of labor in AI—it’s the Mechanical Turk all over.

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Anatomy of an AI Coup | TechPolicy.Press DOGE is gutting federal agencies to install AI across the government. Democracy is on the line, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio.

"Anatomy of an AI Coup" examines a shift of power from policy makers and bureaucrats to those with the skill to train and fine-tune large language models - often behind system prompts, which further calibrate the gov. worker's options toward the decisions of those who calibrate the system.

Picture of dozens of people walking through a scene of utter devastation, the only buildings still standing are bombed out, the rest is rubble.

Quite aside from anything else, this is what it looks like in Gaza as people try to return home. (📷: Al-Jazeera)

India’s Digital Infrastructure Is Going Global. What Kind of Power Is It Building? | TechPolicy.Press When governance is exported as infrastructure, it can sidestep political debate and embed new hierarchies, writes Anuradha Sajjanhar.

India’s digital public infrastructure is going global—open-source, low-cost, scalable, writes Anuradha Sajjanhar. But big questions remain, she says: What kind of states are we building? Whose power does it serve? What politics are other nations importing? www.techpolicy.press/indias-digit...

We should have asked these same big questions in regards to US digital infrastructure...

I write about India Stack becoming a key national export and ask a question that goes beyond the region: As digital governance is scaled, exported, and repackaged as a global good, we must ask not just what it can do, but also what it displaces.

They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.

Here is a gift link to @kashhill.bsky.social's must read piece on the dangers of OpenAI's sycophantic LLMs and the parasocial relationships people are creating with them.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...

I don’t know if it’s a masculinity thing or a managerial class thing or what. But you don’t actually have to hand it to AI. It’s okay to look at the equation and conclude it’s not worth it.

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.

Horrible

www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Not only can it not help me with my research or writing, but its surreptitious adoption by students makes teaching significantly harder, as half the job is now working on the assumption that a range of standard assignments no longer teach human beings anything, because they can simply hand them off.

I keep catching strays from "technology is neutral" people, so let's set things straight.

1) Technology is not neutral, especially the subset of technology called "algorithms"
2) The form-factor that makes a technology into a tool is not neutral
3) How tools are productized is not neutral

[rant]

📣UEA UCU members have voted for 9 days of strike action to commence this week from Thurs 1st May.
📣This is in response to management's plans to continue progressing compulsory redundancies.
📣There is still time for the employer to change course. #SaveUEA

Picketing with @uea-ucu.bsky.social with fierce toddler representation

Trump got in power & went straight after a) people & institutions that produce information & knowledge, and b) people & institutions that monitor & prevent fraud.

I know the world is full of glassy-eyed poorly-informed dipshits, but honestly, how can you construct a benign explanation of this?

On AI, where Europe is on course to over-regulate, Starmer is keen to get closer to the US. “The UK needs to move forward and seize the opportunity of not being Europe,” a source familiar with Mandelson’s letter explained. The prize, Downing Street believes, is a big one that could ease Rachel Reeves’s problems in balancing the books. “AI is transformational,” the Starmer aide said. “What you’re talking about is a level of productivity growth that means everybody in the world, in ten years’ time, is going to be more productive than the most productive person in the world today. We have to make sure that we are in a position to quickly take advantage of it.”

"Utterly delusional" does not even come close.

archive.ph/OVHMg

'generative AI is experimental'

So one of the things that I think is lost on AI proponents is what I call the card catalog effect, a thing I shouldn’t call it because a lot of people probably have no experience with a card catalog.

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

I'm reminded of Lucy Suchman's excellent 2023 piece on "The uncontroversial ‘thingness’ of AI". Suchman urges us, in critical work on "AI" not to cede the ground that "AI" is a thing at all.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Winners and Losers at the AI Action Summit – who does the UK stand with? The vision of the Paris AI Action Summit is for an inclusive and sustainable AI. But the current AI champions based in the USA are pushing towards an acceleration of their global dominance. Rachel …

The UK joined the US in not signing the international AI declaration pledging an open, inclusive and ethical approach to Artificial Intelligence. Earlier today @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social argued that this may seem to be in the UK's interest, but in fact it isn't.

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

This segue is doing more work than I could ever imagine.

maybe 250 words describing status

250-ish social justice words

smaller text -- 400 words on social justice and gender?

And another 150 or so on race

The number of people surprised by the long list of words NSF is targeting makes me think many of you all have not seen this: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

A Fork in the Road AI is an excuse that allows those with power to operate at a distance from those whom their power touches.

"The 'doomsday trap' of artificial intelligence is the dehumanization that [it] makes possible. AI is not only a technology, it's...a spectacle designed as pretext to resist empathy and create emotional distance from consequences." @eryk.bsky.social mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...

I was thinking about this too - do we get social/political/ethical 'points' for criticising AI and big tech?

• Rules making it mandatory in due course for every public sector organisation to publish their "application programming interfaces" or APls, which is technology that will make it easier for public sector organisations to exchange data in a secure and controlled way • A Technical Design Council led by Al and data experts will also be set up to tackle the toughest technical challenges faced by different areas of government as it puts technology to work across the public sector • Safeguards and assurance for the use of technology in the public sector, including the creation of a Responsible Al Advisory Panel, including front-line public sector workers, industry experts and civil society

• Rules making it mandatory in due course for every public sector organisation to publish their "application programming interfaces" or APls, which is technology that will make it easier for public sector organisations to exchange data in a secure and controlled way • A Technical Design Council led by Al and data experts will also be set up to tackle the toughest technical challenges faced by different areas of government as it puts technology to work across the public sector • Safeguards and assurance for the use of technology in the public sector, including the creation of a Responsible Al Advisory Panel, including front-line public sector workers, industry experts and civil society

Much more reassuring press release from DSIT on AI in govt today, including some v welcome diligence measures www.gov.uk/government/n...

A picture of Zuckerberg, Bezos, his girlfriend, and Musk standing in the Rotunda

JFC. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg are in the front row at the #inauguration.

They are sat IN FRONT of Trump’s Cabinet.

The era of oligarchy.

(📸: Julia Demaree Nikhinson, AFP)