We study history to know and understand what happened. We don’t have to justify it by saying we can ‘learn from the past’. We study philosophy to understand the nature of things. Not just to teach ethics to AI. Society should spend some resource on this kind of research. Understanding is an outcome!
I like this piece from @timharford.ft.com but it largely makes the case for ‘blue skies’ type research as it may become useful later.
There is a different argument I think we don’t make enough: it is part of the human endeavour to understand the nature of our world www.ft.com/content/0d60...
Danny Kruger has also framed it very explicitly that way in this interview bsky.app/profile/heta...
Interesting snippet from the Chancellor’s upcoming Mais lecture that there will be an attempt to use public sector procurement to help build markets and drive innovation by UK companies. They talk about it for tech companies but actually applies much more widely
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
An extraordinary career & life and a remarkable contribution not just to our field but to European public culture more generally. I always appreciated his synthetic approach to the big questions. I tried to summarize his contribution recently: theconversation.com/jurgen-haber...
I thought this was a good piece a couple of months ago which brought some of this out
bsky.app/profile/heta...
Jurgen Habermas: Never received an invite to How The Light Gets In
Feel so sorry for ordinary Iranian people who have first been massacred by their own regime and now caught up in a war which gives little hope of their lives improving
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
‘The unprecedented tempo of targeted attacks has been driven in part by AI systems that sift the torrents of intelligence data from drones, satellites and other sensors, generating strike options far faster than traditional human-led planning.’
www.ft.com/content/fedb...
Sorrry to hear of the death of the giant intellectual figure and @britishacademy.bsky.social Fellow Jürgen Habermas. This was a good recent review of two new books about him if you wish to learn more about his thinking
‘The Middle East sits at the centre of global fertiliser and energy supply chains. About a third of global urea exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to CRU. About 45% of global sulphur exports — a key input for phosphate fertilisers — are also shipped through the vital waterway’
It’s not just about energy but fertiliser:
‘The Middle East war is close to triggering a global food shock worse than that unleashed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, experts have said, as fertiliser shortages threaten food production on multiple continents.’
www.ft.com/content/1054...
As @edwardluce.bsky.social recommends you should read the whole of the Trump speech to the Board/Bored of Peace. In this bit the President tells us the cinemas are packed with people watching the Melania movie before moving seamlessly on to Gaza…
www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/tru...
‘Governments investing in AI should consider making equivalent investments in the data collection that AI currently cannot reach.’
In my world that includes means paying more attention to libraries and archives
www.ft.com/content/0c63...
My dog still has an X account that I have given up trying to delete. He has no followers and follows no-one since his human family left. I can confirm that he gets the same toxic content.
Pretty good description of the Twitter ‘For You’ feed from @willdunn.bsky.social
www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...
Pretty good description of the Twitter ‘For You’ feed from @willdunn.bsky.social
www.newstatesman.com/politics/the...
This is fascinating. Brief from Penn and teller in a criminal case
It’s performance art really
As @edwardluce.bsky.social recommends you should read the whole of the Trump speech to the Board/Bored of Peace. In this bit the President tells us the cinemas are packed with people watching the Melania movie before moving seamlessly on to Gaza…
www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/tru...
Exhibit two: the BBC Written Archives are becoming much more difficult for researcher access, as outlined in depth in this response to the Charter Review from @greavesian.bsky.social and many others
drive.google.com/file/d/1n5aX...
Exhibit one: why so little attention to the travails of our national library?
www.cityam.com/the-british-...
‘Governments investing in AI should consider making equivalent investments in the data collection that AI currently cannot reach.’
In my world that includes means paying more attention to libraries and archives
www.ft.com/content/0c63...
Hmm. That’s a dilemma I will think over
Thanks for these helpful practical tips! I’m in the market for these!
The Public Accounts Committee’was deeply troubled to learn that the BBC still does not know how much government would fund the World Service for the coming year.’
committees.parliament.uk/committee/12...
Super decoding from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & @sarahoconnorft.ft.com of That Chart. Sarah sees it as a Rorschach test for how people feel about AI. John says the real value is from Anthropic estimating actual AI usage across tasks, and says we should reason from actual data
www.ft.com/content/2cd7...
Fascinating - will keep an eye on that!
But not a 4 month one, like a colleague did!
The new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford is doing a fun looking open house on Saturday 25th April
www.schwarzmancentre.ox.ac.uk/theme/open-h...
