This is going to be a fun, engaging showcase, happening in Manchester
in June!
It's a great excuse to plan a trip to Manchester this summer!
Read about the first queer data showcase held last year in Edinburgh: www.gender.ed.ac.uk/blog/2025/qu...
📣 Postdoc opportunity with Dr Nayha Sethi, CTMF Affiliate 📣
The Medicine without Doctors Project is recruiting a postdoc fellow with a background in law/regulation/socio-legal studies to work on a case-study exploring socio-legal elements of AI.
Closing date: 8 May
Info & apply 👇
edin.ac/3Qf8VQX
"The questions we are litigating now are less ‘is this AI product good or bad’ and more ‘we have seen what it can do, and do we want AI to exist in this space at all?’" writes @bcmerchant.bsky.social on the shift from rejection to refusal of AI that he documents across different domains.
"all AI will do is require that we work more, harder, and on the parts of our job that shouldn’t even be our job"
This is why I increasingly believe that librarians should use our limited time and resources to lobby for proper regulation and governance and not on developing 'literacy' or 'ethical use' policies after adoption, when it's far too late. It's like teaching victims of crime to be more 'ethical'.
My em-dash is the ‘rather than x, y’ sentence which I should probably kick to the curb because it def raises suspicion
Yeah it’s only a matter of time before the half finished sentence or dodgy typo becomes a point of pride 😅 works for me, one always seems to get through
Good news: not just one open job, but two! Both are postdocs in philosophy of science/ML working with my @technomoralfutures.bsky.social co-Director Dr Emily Sullivan on issues in ML scientific understanding and explanation. Ads for a 3 year post and 2 year post are linked below, apply by 20 April
My university claims (despite operating at a surplus) that we need to cut jobs by £90M, but somehow has money for a contract with OpenAI, directly entangled with the US government, military, & ICE, for large language models to make the students less capable of thinking for themselves. Let's not.
Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social
✨really looking forward to Ben’s online talk next Wednesday!
A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. www.404media.co/this-app-war...
If you want to defeat the far right, you need a real alternative, not a more moderate version that panders & parrots but offers nothing to address real issues.
Congratulations @greenparty.org.uk, Hannah Spencer, @zackpolanski.bsky.social & the people of Gorton & Denton
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp...
Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records.
Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'.
Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract.
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...
📣our next event “Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Academia: An ECR-led dialogue”, is happening in Edinburgh Feb 18th - a panel discussion featuring @karengregory.bsky.social, Nelson Oppong and Adam Badger, and chaired by @srravya.bsky.social
👀 sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/navigating...
Reminder that years ago it was found out that the FBI straight up made up a whole bunch of fake forensic sciences, plural. People have gone to jail and been executed due to literally pseudoscience.
Hair forensics, for instance, is totally nonsense.
They admitted it.
slate.com/news-and-pol...
When I led local 'EA' groups, I used to half-jokingly say that effective altruism is a cult. I still like many of the well-intentioned people there. But I've left. Over time, I've come to understand how it's actually a cult.
My forum bio now says this:
I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...
“This was the system that let Epstein in and kept him in. It is also the system now steering the most consequential technologies of the coming century. The convergence of Silicon Valley’s elite, the techno-authoritarian right and the labs coding AI and crypto, has only intensified since his death.”
“As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
Thankyou! Will email them, this looks great
❔Does anyone know of groups where disabled people/people w chronic conditions and working in Critical Data Studies/AI can meet up? Like a Queer in AI but for disabled folks? I constantly think about how helpful it might be to talk to other people navigating disability, who are doing similar work
In newly leaked audio, Peter Thiel admits he urged JD Vance to ignore Pope Leo XIV on moral questions — including the ethical development of AI.
He goes even further, branding Leo “the woke American pope” and suggesting he’s a tool of the Antichrist.
Two people standing side by side face the camera smiling. On the right is Eddie, he/they, a white trans person with pink hair and a dark moustache. He is wearing a floral suit, a graduation gown, and is draped in the trans and Palestine flags. They are holding flowers. On the left is Bjoern, he/him, a white man, wearing a smart suit.
I'm officially a Doctor. I'm very proud of the work I did on the harms of language technologies, my thesis here: lnkd.in/eh6FqZkZ
It is a privilege to graduate, when not a single university still stands in Gaza.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me, in particular @bjoernross.bsky.social.
📣 Last few tickets left now!!
Anti-Colonial Science? The Politics of Indigenous Knowledge Inclusion in Science-Based Policy Arlene Lo An aspect of the Indigenous struggle against colonial oppression is the struggle for the inclusion of their knowledge in policymaking. Perceived as epistemically inferior to science, Indigenous knowledge and subsequently interests are systematically excluded in science-based policy. This article advances an anti-colonial political philosophy of science. As Indigenous knowledge feeds into the necessary political value judgements in policy-relevant science, Indigenous knowledge inclusion, I contend, should be treated as a political, not solely epistemic, matter. I further argue that Indigenous peoples, not just scientists, should have the power to make such political value judgements given the politics of representation under coloniality.
My student Arlene Lo has a paper on the philosophical underpinnings of Canada's attempts to integrate Indigenous groups into its environmental impact assessments. It's now out in (appropriately enough!) the Canadian journal of philosophy. It's good, check it out!
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world
And by design LLMs destroy shared context
This is the kind of news I want from BlueSky!! Congrats!! And also commiserations on the socks and shoes you might lose 😅
