Liam Hogan

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

One curious thing on this site about speaking out against the encroachment of LLMs is that inevitably you get accused of being anti-tech. I don’t hate technology. I’ve used machine learning in my own code before. But I also recognize that oligarchs are so hellbent on pushing this tech for a reason.

Far-right Facebook groups are engine of radicalisation in UK, data investigation suggests Rioters were influenced by network that exposes hundreds of thousands of Britons to racist disinformation, Guardian research indicates

Guardian investigation into Facebook groups with 600k members in which the kind of extreme dehumanising language that socialises racist violence is rife. Facebook has become more permissive towards extreme content in the last year.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

It is, far and away, the most challenging thing I’ve encountered since entering the academy. And that is saying a lot. I might be working on this but I keep putting it aside because I’m not medicated enough to describe how demoralizing it all is.

Alice Walker said, “When we find our place, we know. Everything else can seem a distraction. We settle in to enjoy the beauty of Life itself.”

The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers WIRED spoke with more than 200 federal workers in dozens of agencies to learn what happened as the Department of Government Efficiency tore through their offices.

NEW

WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened.

This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it

www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

The AI powered Library Search That Refused to Search From Clarivate's Summon to Primo Research Assistant, content‑moderation layers meant mostly for chatbots are "quietly" blocking controversial topics from being searched

More on the failures/erasures that ai chatbots introduce into library search tools aarontay.substack.com/p/the-ai-pow...

I really hope there's a correction on it saying why they edited the story. It was the right thing to do, obviously, but accountability for harmful writings is the right thing too.

I cannot tell you how grim the AI in higher ed situation is. Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this? Truly, what the hell do we do, beyond what grading can address, which isn't a solution?

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

This is it. Overwhelming anti-intellectualism. Everywhere, all the time

I have now been a journalist for 40 years. The forces ranged against my profession have never been so powerful | George Monbiot Once, I believed that humanity’s problem was an information deficit. Now, I know you can’t speak truth to power if power controls your words, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Power is the rock on which truth founders. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, is a single-issue lobby group, whose purpose is to assert the rights of capital.
Here's what I've learnt about the industry in 40 years in journalism.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A college English class where they’re told to use AI to complete assignments. Why bother teaching at all? Especially the languages/literature. I’m sorry but I will judge any professor who does this, especially in fields like English and history

Screenshot. King's College London page. Examples of effective practice The following scenarios follow the above guidelines and offer insights into ways that academic staff can use AI transparently and in an assistive capacity, always ensuring human oversight and judgment remain central. Scenario A – Scaling feedback while maintaining quality Lecturer A is responsible for marking over 100 essays within a two-week window. Conscious of the limitations this workload places on the depth of individual feedback, they adopt a hybrid approach using their university’s approved or supported LLM tool, Copilot. Without ever uploading student work directly, Lecturer A composes an anonymised summary for each student, noting which marking criteria were met and the approximate percentage achieved for each. They input this summary alongside the official rubric into Copilot, prompting it to generate supportive, criterion-referenced feedback. This feedback is then carefully reviewed, adapted, and personalised before being uploaded to the marking platform. Students are made aware of this process in advance and shown a demonstration, reinforcing transparency and trust.

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

How to use ChatGPT at university without cheating: ‘Now it’s more like a study partner’ The ubiquitous AI tool has a divisive effect on educators with some seeing it a boon and others a menace. So what should you know about where to draw the line between check and cheat?

Vacuous, generic and scattershot advice for incoming 1st years on the use of AI at university. Especially liking 'Chin recommends giving it class notes and asking it to generate practice exam questions.' Surely we can't be the only programme that supplies students with past & practice exams?

"On the last episode of his show before he was killed," Kirk told "his audience, falsely, that “one in 22 Black men will be a murderer in their lifetime” and that “by age of 23, half of all Black males have been arrested and not enough of them have been arrested.”

Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning The white Christian nationalist provocateur wasn't a promoter of civil discourse. He preached hate, bigotry, and division

I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Google AI search result for “was 2010 fifteen years ago?” returning: “No, 2010 was 14 years ago, not 15 years ago. The current year is 2025, and to find the number of years ago 2010 was, you subtract 2010 from 2025, which equals 14. Current Year: 2025 Past Year: 2010 Years Ago: 2025 - 2010 = 14 years”

Good news about the cutting-edge AI tools from the $3-trillion-dollar company.

AI's best use case will always be scams. It's scamtech, top to bottom. Everything about it is crooked. Its bedrock is theft and its legacy is the destruction of the environment, both physical and virtual.

Even most of its 'legitimate' uses are a form of lying.
"I wrote this."
"I created this."

Blackwater fish kill: EPA finds creamery co-op wastewater exceeded permitted discharge limits Separate investigation launched after white discharge spotted in water on north bank of Blackwater

Blackwater fish kill: EPA finds creamery co-op wastewater exceeded permitted discharge limits

Microsoft copilot for Excel has a warning not to use it for “business critical” calculations because the answer may not be accurate.

Would someone explain why I might *ever* want to use a spreadsheet where results are unreliable?

When the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.

I've been thinking a lot about how I really hate the implication that AI skeptics are luddites because most of the AI skeptics I know are relatively tech savvy while the biggest AI champions I know can barely use email

"[If there be no distress], why are the people in a state of disturbance and insubordination within a short distance of the very seat of Government? Is there no cause for this, and is the calumny to be pronounced upon the people of England, that they break out into acts of violence without the pretence of suffering? Nothing is said about the alleviation of distress, and, above all, nothing is said about the alleviation of the distress of Ireland."

Excerpt of Daniel O'Connell's reply to the King's Speech and refusal to acknowledge the Food Riots in Limerick (November 1830)

My article about this is here > limerick1914.medium.com/objects-of-a...

The fears of the American abolitionists had become excited, had, indeed, began to run high, that American slaveholders would prove themselves able to gag even Daniel O'Connell. But your late speech, which has blistered these tyrants from head to foot, and filled this land with their howlings and execrations, has put an end to all those fears. You perhaps, wonder why so little money is sent to you by American abolitionists. Be assured that it is not from the want of a lively interest in your efforts to obtain, by peaceable means, for Ireland, the right of making, and being governed by, her own laws. Be assured, too, that it is not because they think that they have not the right to express this interest. The sympathy of unsophisticated man for his brother man naturally, necessarily, and therefore rightfully, travels across national as well as city or village boundaries, and wherever that sympathy proceeds, its appropriate expressions and proofs have, of course, the right to follow. If I have the right to feel pity for a hungry and naked family in France, then I have also the right to follow up the pity, by sending a barrel of flour or a roll of cloth to that destitute family. The doctrine, that the conventional lines, which men have drawn upon the earth's surface, decide the question for whom we may and for whom we may not feel, is utterly repugnant to an unselfish and unspoiled heart. To tell me that I may not love him who dwells on the north side of the St. Lawrence, as well as him who dwells on the south side of that river; and that because a man is a Canadian, I may feel less pity for his woes than if he were an American, is to tell me what my nature and the God of my nature flatly contradict. I sympathise with your countrymen under their oppressions, for I hold that a people are grievously oppressed, who, not to speak of other wrongs they may be suffering, are denied entire freedom of religious conscience. But, were the Irish suffering no oppression, I should sti…

Having said what are not the reasons, I will now say what are the reasons why the American abolitionists send you so little money. In the first place, we are generally poor. It is proverbial, as you know, that the rich feel not the need of revolutions. They are content with the present order of things. Especially are they unwilling to embark in a revolution so odious as that which American abolitionists, at the certain expense of having their names cast out as evil,' are laboring to achieve. In the second place, we cannot connect ourselves with the Repeal Associations of this country; for, being principled and impartial lovers of liberty, we cannot consent to associate, for the advancement of her cause, with those who we know hate her, and who will never even seem to be her friends, save when some selfish calculation suggests the expediency, or when passion or prejudice impels them in that direction. I need not say to you that our Repeal Associations are generally pro-slavery, and that whilst they talk against the oppression of the Irish-an oppression which, however sore, still leaves to its victims their manhood they do, nevertheless, both talk and act for the infinitely greater oppression which turns millions of their own countrymen from immortal, God-like beings, into cattle and merchandise. That this is the general character of these associations, must be evident to you from the fact that many of the communications which they made to you abound in pro-slavery sentiments, and that none of them give their sanction to anti-slavery truth. Your speech, to which I alluded at the beginning of my letter, having called from these associations expressions of great bitterness toward yourself and the abolitionists in general, has done much to develop the atrocious and horrible pro-slavery character of those associations.

It may be, that the abolitionists of this country will form Repeal Associations. But whether they shall contribute as Associations or as individuals, I have no doubt that the little sums which they shall send you out of their deep poverty,' will, accompanied by the power of their consistent example and the blessing of God, be worth far more to the great and good cause, which you are leading on to a bloodless and sublime victory, than the far greater sums which the oppressors of God's poor in this land have the audaciousness to send to the oppressed in yours. I should love to send you a donation of one thousand dollars; but, I am sharing so largely in American embarrassments and losses, that I must content myself with sending you one hundred; and even this is from the income of my wife's estate. She parts with it, however, willingly-gladly; for her heart is no less true than my own, to the cause of American liberty; and if she cannot say that her, as well as my maternal grandmother, was born in Cork, nevertheless such a link between her heart and Ireland is not necessary to make that heart faithful to the cause of Irish liberty also. I leave this letter open, and request my esteemed friend Lewis Tappan, Esq. of the city of New-York, to forward it to you, after he shall have enclosed in it a bill of exchange worth one hundred dollars. If you knew the immeasurable influence of your example on our endeavors to terminate American oppression, you would pardon me for closing my letter with the earnest prayer, that Daniel O'Connell may have grace given him from God to stand firm in the cause of liberty-of American as well as Irish liberty! I remain, Dear Sir, with great regard, Your friend and admirer, GERRIT SMITH.

A letter sent from Gerrit Smith to Daniel O'Connell (The Liberator newspaper, 25/8/1843)

"As human, as accountable beings, why should we suffer this any longer?"

- Daniel O'Connell re: the abolition of chattel slavery (Exeter Hall, 23/4/1831)

This. My main memory of that time is that house prices were insane and it was impossible to be a first-time buyer and *not* enter a lifetime of debt.

Hearing of people heading to New York to do their Xmas shopping like it was nothing special.