James Heydon

Congratulations George! Wonderful news! 🎉

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Burning on England’s deep peat banned New rules come into force from 30 September in order to restore habitats and reduce flooding

Burning ban on deep peat comes into force at the end of the month.

Piece by Helena Horton.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Tracing sources of funds used to lobby the US government about carbon capture, use, and storage Analysis of U.S. federal lobbying disclosures from 2005 through 2024 identifies the fossil fuel sector as the primary force behind a multipronged $954…

Yep.

"…clear that fossil-fuel companies, and their adjacent organizations, are the primary lobbyists for CCUS subsidies and that these subsidies benefit fossil-fuel companies at the expense of both taxpayers and the future health of our planet"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How did the ‘Island of Strangers’ speech impact Labour support? Negatively, especially among 2024 Labour voters.

M365 Copilot fails to up productivity in UK government trial : AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don't bother with anything more complex

"UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost"
www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m...

Important information for anyone attending the European Society of Criminology in Athens and for members of ESC. Petition outlines serious concerns. Consider what you can do to support 👇👇 👇#eurocrim

Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area Although half of Earth’s population resides in the wildland-urban interface, human exposure to wildland fires remains unquantified. We show that the population directly exposed to wildland fires incre...

The population directly exposed to wildland fires increased by 40% globally from 2002 to 2021, according to a new study in Science. https://scim.ag/4oUL1Y1

Croydon incinerator broke pollution limits 916 times in two years The Environment Agency are currently considering enforcement action against the operator, Viridor.

Top story: #Beddington Incinerator broke #AirPollution limits 916 times www.bbc.com/news/article...

Perceptions have real effects

www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-insti...

More likely smoke, if taken in winter, given those chimneys & prevalence of house coal at the time.

Artificial Intelligence | Shell Global Find out how Shell works with Artificial Intelligence: from machine learning to computer vision, from deep learning and virtual assistants to robotics.

Many measurements of AI's carbon footprint just focus on data centers. But this narrow approach obscures other emissions that AI facilitates.

If Shell is using AI to support fossil fuel extraction and burning, then why not include that in AI's carbon footprint?

www.shell.com/what-we-do/d...

The UK’s year of climate U-turns exposes a deeper failure Breaking free of the dangerous pretence that current efforts suffice demands a fundamental rethink of the UK’s climate policy consensus.

New piece on Carbon Colonialism, net-zero nonsense, and how the UK Government's climate advisors (and many experts) shy away from speaking truth to power. We need a fundamental reboot of climate policy; - physics doesn't care about political sensibilities. theconversation.com/the-uks-year...

Let's be clear: all the AI in edtech stuff (Canvas, Blackboard, Grammarly, Duolingo, OpenAI, the rest) is all about the "lock-in" - locking in students as subscribers or institutions via long-term license agreements for value generation. Is there good pedagogic evidence for it? No.

Scientists call for action to address air pollution from space launches Satellite mega-constellation missions behind threefold increase in emissions of climate-altering soot and CO2

“More pollutants are being released ... from rockets and satellites than ever before.

We’re in uncharted territory, as humans have never added this much pollution to the upper layers of the atmosphere."

- Prof Eloise Marais @ucl.ac.uk

Piece by me

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Paradox of Saving Fish by Eating them: Food Crime at the Intersection of Green Criminology and Political Ecology - European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research Aquaculture is framed as a key contributor to global food security and sustainable food production. Yet, in its industrial form, it involves several harmful practices that negatively impact food secur...

"The Paradox of Saving Fish by Eating Them: Food Crime at the Intersection of Green Criminology and Political Ecology" is out!

I’m thrilled I got to work with the lovely @guillemrubio.bsky.social—I genuinely enjoyed and had fun working on the manuscript together 🧡
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Really important article examining #harms from @monicapons.bsky.social & @guillemrubio.bsky.social comparing #AtlanticSalmon & #EuropeanEel in #Aquaculture. The narrative of ecological sustainability & reduced pressure on ‘wild’ fish needs a fundamental rethink #PoliticalEcology #GreenCriminology ⬇️

Geneva offers free public transport to address ozone levels This week the Mayor of London issued an alert for high ozone levels and similar alerts are being issued across Europe, but different countries are taking different approaches to dealing with the situa...

Geneva offers free public transport to address ozone levels

airqualitynews.com/local-govern...

UK Judge Affirms Legality Of Public-Submitted Road Crime Footage In Landmark Ruling A judge has ruled that motorists and cyclists can legally share videos with police, dismissing a lawsuit from a retired solicitor.

Big news for dashcam/helmetcam users:

Judge Affirms Legality Of Public-Submitted Road Crime Footage In Landmark Ruling

www.forbes.com/sites/carlto...

Good news alert

In 2024, renewables supplied more than half of the UK's electricity for the first time over a year, reaching a record share of 50.4%

Renewables and nuclear combined hit a new high of 64.7%

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6889ec...

Britain has saddled itself - or more accurately, UK govt has saddled Britain's consumers - with paying for the most expensive nuclear plant ever

And I'm bored of saying it, but that means other more cost-effective & faster action on climate change will not happen

www.ft.com/content/e1e1...

The rise of green tech is feeding another environmental crisis The world's race to decarbonise has led to the rise of electric cars - and with it, soaring demand for lithium, which is required for the batteries

A reminder that electifying isn't enough: individual vehicles aren't sustainable, in the literal sense of the word.

No one should feel compelled to give up driving but sustainability means more people need to live in places where the best choice is public transport.

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

Research consistent with findings from five years ago. Headline could be "Air quality scientists repeat similar studies forever in continuing and desperate hope that somebody will listen". #airquality #airpollution #particulatematter #domesticburning

doi.org/10.3390/atmo...

Just Published - Parole Futures. Rationalities, Institutions and Practices. Exploring the future of parole.With fabulous contributions from a world-leading panel of experts who draw upon insights from law, sociology, criminology and political science. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/parole-fu...

2000 years ago: the Romans would let an aqueduct destroy the Gardon Valley. We need clean water, but at what cost?

The solution to the problems of neoliberalism is more neoliberalism, apparently.

Air pollution controls weaker for larger emitters, research finds Diesel generators allowed to emit 48 times more nitrogen oxides than gas boilers producing same amount of energy

Some types of engines, turbines and chimneys are allowed to emit more pollution than others.

This will have significant implications for our #netzero future.

New research by @york.ac.uk. Piece by me.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Press release from Defra: Toxic lead ammunition banned to protect Britain’s countryside Press release from Defra (10 July 2025): TOXIC LEAD AMMUNITION BANNED TO PROTECT BRITAIN’S COUNTRYSIDE New ban on use of lead in ammunition to protect iconic wildlife and clean up the nation’…

Finally! This is an historic win for all those who have spent decades trying to get the govt to act.

Non-compliance is expected to be high so effective monitoring & robust enforcement must follow.

Defra press release + commentary from me ⬇️

raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/07/10/p...

Twelve of England’s regional mayors back plan to create ‘national active travel network’ Exclusive: Unprecedented move to focus initially on helping children to walk, cycle or scoot to school safely

Twelve of England’s regional mayors back plan to create ‘national active travel network’ www.theguardian.com/politics/202... #activetravel

Air quality isn’t just bad in cities – here’s why and how we’re tracking pollution from upland fires How a new monitoring system improves fire detections and captures the air pollution effects of planned peatland burns.

Air quality isn’t just bad in cities – here’s why and how we’re tracking pollution from upland fires
theconversation.com/air-quality-... #airquality #airpollution #moorlandburning #peat #climatechange