James Annan

But did he also think Riley was chancellor of the exchequer?

I suppose we can tell ourselves substack isn't quite as bad...

Thank God for Bluesky Yes, it's eager. Yes, it's censorious. But it has the very considerable advantage of not being fascist.

Thank God for Bluesky: A little love letter to the people who would not compromise with Nazis iandunt.substack.com/p/thank-god-...

I don’t think it’s so much being ready or not, it’s more not wanting things to escalate.

I suspect you have to be quite racist to stand out as "the racist guy" at a boys public school of the 1980s.

yes but they are only saying this is due to the *way* it was done, not *that* it was done.

There’s chatbots and then there’s potentially useful stuff

I’ve also been thinking about this. I think one key distinction is that most useful ML is trained on a body of knowledge and tuned/rewarded for accuracy, LLMs are trained on everything and no one cares about truth.

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI Controversy has erupted after 21% of manuscript reviews for an international AI conference were found to be generated by artificial intelligence.

Leopards, faces, etc.

He was only helping reposition their contact lens

My trick as editor was to specifically ask for recommendations of other possible reviewers, especially when asking someone I knew to be relatively senior (and therefore both (a) too busy and (b) probably widely connected to relevant people). Of course it is still hard work...

Not a great idea to penalise people for moving house. That's already a problem with stamp duty.

Hope is here.

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One could optimistically hope they are pondering out how many people to sack and/or blacklist but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they are finding a weaselly form of words to brush this disgraceful affair under the carpet. The editor, reviewers and all authors are obviously culpable here.

Currently doesn't say retracted, rather:

Change history
28 November 2025Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that the contents of this paper are subject to criticisms that are being considered by editors. A further editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues.

yebbut the editor used a chatbot to do the screening :-)

Big problem is someone develops a cool machine learning tool for weather prediction or data processing and all the punters think “hey chatbots are magic they can do anything”. And then they get a recipe for cyanide or encouraged to commit suicide. Or just random stuff that isn’t true.

There’s lots of AI that is very useful, it’s a broad term that includes powerful algorithms that are constrained by truth. But chatbots…..nope.

Yup that’s exactly what I’m saying. They have no concept of truth or correctness, by design. They are the very epitome of bullshit generators.

UK net migration falls sharply with drop in arrivals for work and study Provisional figures for net migration to the UK show levels dropped to 204,000 in the year to June 2025.

Fewer workers. Fewer international students. More people leaving.

A "step in the right direction" according to the PM.

Impossible to take PM/govt seriously on growth if they are deliberately reducing it (and making the fiscal position worse) *as a matter of policy*.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The only thing chatbots are good at is producing superficially convincing bullshit. By design, that is their sole function. Hoping otherwise is at best naive.

And how can science survive without scientific publishing? What an utterly grim landscape in which knowledge is being systematically destroyed. Glad I’m not at the other end of my career!

What is @nature.com ‘s response to this?

Isn't it better that students pay (in the future) linked to the benefits received, ie a graduate tax? Some people do very well off their university education, others not so much.

...I predict that not one journalist will choose to investigate this important discrepancy between the written record and Vallance's statements to the Inquiry. And not one other scientist involved in this sorry affair had the integrity and guts to correct him either.

....that SAGE referred to a doubling time of 5-6 days as late as the 18th March, and it was not until the 20th March that the figure of 3 days was mentioned by SPI-M (and it was not until 23rd March that the SAGE group considered this evidence)..

...which was that the primary reason for the change in scientific approach was the realisation that the doubling time was only 3 days rather than 5 or more. Vallance claimed that this realisation occurred over the weekend of 14-15 March, but the Inquiry notes ....

So, the COVID inquiry has laundered the big lie of Vallance and other scientists, that they were calling for lockdown a week prior to the Govt action in March 2020. However, it has also flatly contradicted the central plank in Vallance's argument....

Yellow snow warning:

"Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow."