Nic Fox

Two federal judges say use of AI led to errors in US court rulings Two federal judges admitted in response to an inquiry by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley that members of their staff used artificial intelligence to help prepare recent court orders that Grassley called "error-ridden."

Federal Judges— or staff, but same-same— used "AI" to summarize & draft rulings, issued them w/o checking the work, leading to basic factual errors, & thus undermining the facticity & validity of the rulings entire.

Gee. Who Could Have Foreseen. *stares directly into the camera like in the office*

A 16-year-old student was aggressively detained at gunpoint outside his high school after an AI detection system alerted police falsely that he had a weapon — which was actually a bag of Doritos foxbaltimore.com/news/local/t...

“In 10 years, who’s going to mentor the next generation? The developers who’ve been using AI since day one won’t have the architectural understanding to teach. The product managers who’ve always relied on AI for decisions won’t have the judgment to pass on.“

“[AI] would generate something, […] I’d correct it, it would make the same mistake again, I’d correct it again. I was working harder than if I’d just written the code myself, but with none of the learning or skill development

…I’d abdicated ownership while telling myself I was being innovative”

Increases In Disadvantage and Instability Are Associated With Rising Violence Abstract. This study explores the relationship between changes in neighbourhood characteristics and changes in violence rates across England and Wales from

Our latest paper(with Ruth Weir, Niels Blom, Oluwole Adeniyi) entitled Increases In Disadvantage and Instability Are Associated With Rising Violence is finally published in the British Journal of Criminology! doi.org/10.1093/bjc/...
LinkedIn post: www.linkedin.com/posts/activi...

New report alert: Young people at risk of violence are too often excluded from mental health support — unless they offend first.

🔗 Read the full report youthendowmentfund.org.uk/reports/acce...

#WMHD25 #WorldMentalHealthDay #EarlyIntervention #ViolencePrevention

Bank of England warns of growing risk that AI bubble could burst Possibility of ‘sharp market correction has increased’, says Bank’s financial policy committee

What's galling is hearing AI leaders/boosters brush off overbuild or bubble risks as if they don’t matter

The BoE warns a burst could dry up finance for households and businesses.

When people with power say ‘don’t worry’, what they really mean is ‘we’ll be fine’

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI Financial Policy Committee warns equity prices are at levels comparable with dotcom bubble

BoE flags risk of ‘sudden correction’ in tech stocks inflated by AI on.ft.com/3WqHK5t

Yet another problem for scholarly communication in criminology: The case of a Spanish journal turned into a paper mill Founded in 1999, RECPC became one of the most influential Spanish-language journals in criminal law and criminology. After a 2024 change of management, articles of dubious authorship and quality linke...

Short note with Fernando Miró Llinares published on @crimrxiv.com: 'Yet another problem for scholarly communication in criminology: The case of a Spanish journal turned into a paper mill'
doi.org/10.21428/cb6...

Whaaaaaaat?! Amazing! Thanks for keeping me up to date and thanks for sharing all the useful R stuff 🙂

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Very cute!

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a cartoon dog is sitting in front of a fire and saying i 'm fine this is fine everything is fine ALT: a cartoon dog is sitting in front of a fire and saying i 'm fine this is fine everything is fine

Current end of PhD and academic career planning feelings

“P8 is […] skewed when children don’t attend well”

“When we label schools as underperforming, we make it harder […] to recruit”

“disadvantaged children can be concentrated in certain schools […], in turn […]these schools find achieving a positive P8 more difficult - and so the cycle repeats”

“multiple factors contributing to disadvantage, many of which schools may not be able to influence. As some of those factors only […]start to bite at secondary school, it’s [common] for a school to be doing everything it can, only to still see little progress -a reality that P8 fails to acknowledge”

headshot of Thiago Oliveira

🥳Congrats to @oliveiratr.bsky.social, winner of the prestigious 2025 ESC Policing WG Early Career Researcher prize!

@jacksojp.bsky.social said "this research on aggressive policing in São Paulo provides crucial insights into how confrontational police tactics undermine public trust and legitimacy"

Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say The company’s lawyers intervened to shape research that might have shed light on risks in virtual reality, four current and former staffers have told Congress. Meta denies the allegations.

A German teen told Meta's child safety researchers his under-10 little brother had been sexually propositioned multiple times on its VR platform.

Meta deleted the evidence.

New internal whistleblower docs indicate that was part of a broader cover-up: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Last year saw more children convicted of committing homicides, rising from 26 in 2013/14 to 46 in 2023/24, an increase of 77%.

🔎 Look #BeyondtheHeadlines to find out what’s happening with children involved in the most serious forms of violence: youthendowmentfund.org.uk/reports/beyo...

Half of children on free school meals were not ready for school Almost half of school pupils currently on free school meals will have started their formal education without the necessary skills to thrive, according to new research.

As children across England settle in to their new school life, research by @childofthenorth.bsky.social shows almost half of those on free school meals weren't 'school ready' - with big impacts for their life and education.
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article... #natoppsummit #childrenfirst

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.

Pages from a mini comic

Pages from a mini comic

Pages from a mini comic

My drawn statement on Ai as standalone from my now finished minicomic as syllabus for new liberal studies class! As promised this is shareable, printable - all from my site, feel free to make use of it, cite me & let me know how it’s received. Share away all here! spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

“Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted […]society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. […]software updates are rolled out […]non-consensually, [MS]Office is bundled with chatbots & we […]have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI”

Cognitive scientists and AI researchers make a forceful call to reject “uncritical adoption" of AI in academia A new paper calls on academia to repel rampant AI in university departments and classrooms.

Cognitive scientists and AI researchers make a forceful call to reject “uncritical adoption" of AI in academia
www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/cognitive-...

One of the ways that LLM-authored code improves productivity is by merely SAYING it does things. It's way faster than the whole time-consuming process of actually doing things. This is real code someone sent to me for review. A screenshot of a code editor. The line numbers are in the lefthand column, running from 121 to 125. There is a comment that says "Verify packages were created and check sizes" Then line 123 says echo Verifying Lambda packages were created... and Line 124 says echo checkmark emoji colon All Lambda packages verified successfully. There is no line in here that actually did anything.

UNLIMITED VELOCITY

Peer reviewers are exhausted. It's common to spend *months* inviting reviewers, getting refusals, inviting more, maybe 12 or more, then 2 agree but 1 doesn't complete, so you go again. That's why your paper is in limbo. I'm very sorry, it's awful, but it's also an untenable academic labour issue.

The AI authorship issue is real. We've caught papers that looked OK but had references to works by the *journal editors* that *do not exist*. Like, don't send us papers citing papers we know we didn't write, right?

Today I learned that my initials are cool in Catalan ⚡️

Amazed to find out that I won the 2025 ESC Policing WG early career researcher prize for my JOEX paper! Thanks so much @davidbuil.bsky.social and @jacksojp.bsky.social for the nomination, and the ESC policing WG for the award 🙌

Congratulations @oliveiratr.bsky.social! 😃🥂🍾