iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 05/06/2026

“Truth is humanity’s greatest obsession, and Wikipedians are the ones who dedicate themselves to pursuing it” - Anna Mazgal, at @publicspaces.net conference #pubconf2026

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 10/07/2025

„So reform the system if you must, establish grants for creators, tax Big Tech developers up to the gills and give the money to creators; anything but the assumption that the traditional remuneration system has any hope of surviving” - @technollama.bsky.social on the #copyright AI singularity

technollama.co.uk

How AI is breaking traditional remuneration models

It’s been a busy few weeks in the AI and copyright beat, and while I’ve been following all of the developments closely, I haven’t had the time to react to everything in the blog. …

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 25/06/2025

“Europe will need to do more than come up with new wrappings for the same chips” - good piece by @lionellaurent.bsky.social for Bloomberg on European AI sovereignty - and NVIDIA as the main beneficiary of this effort #publicAI www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

bloomberg.com

Nvidia’s ‘Sovereign’ AI Could Win a Prize for Irony

The global scramble for chips risks entrenching new tech dependencies in Europe.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 12/06/2025

New piece from my co-director Zuza Warso. Good overview of EU’s current take on digital sovereignty and public infrastructures

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Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

For the past few years, me, Kris at Naive and Matt at Reddit have been running the Tiny Awards, celebrating the good bits of the web. THEY ARE BACK IN 2025 AND NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN! Please tell your friends and share the link, as a small act of resistence to everything being shit: tinyawards.net

tinyawards.net

Tiny Awards

This is the home of the Tiny Awards, which, since 2023, has celebrated the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 07/06/2025

“Making for the web is easy, but most of us have forgotten how – ceding our digital agency to platforms and corporate landlords.” @kleinkleinklein.bsky.social + @sachajudd.com on building the Good Internet, out of the cozy web bits. Good stuff. zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/good-inter...

zine.kleinkleinklein.com

How to Build the Good Internet

Stepping out of the dark forest and reclaiming a social, handmade and cozy web

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Open Future @openfuture.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

🤖 Join us May 20 for a discussion on Public AI. We will present a new white paper, commissioned by @bertelsmannst.bsky.social, with authors @felice.bsky.social and @alek.bsky.social, as well as industry experts. 📅 15:00 CEST | Free online event openfuture.eu/event/online...

Online event on Public AI - May 20, 15:00 CEST

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 12/04/2025

“Europe Must Build: a Strategic Reset” by @nicolascolin.bsky.social, great piece that has faith in Europe’s tech capacity. Colin proposes “decentralized coordination” as mode of operations suited for EU’s diversity Useful for thinking about #publicAI in Europe. www.driftsignal.com/p/building-i...

driftsignal.com

Europe Must Build: A Strategic Reset

Drift Signal #253

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 11/04/2025

The European Commission published the AI Continent Action Plan, with the aim of building a European approach that is innovative and competitive in the "race for leadership in AI". Here’s my analysis: ttps://openfuture.eu/blog/from-ai-factories-to-public-value/ #ai #publicAI #europe

openfuture.eu

From AI Factories to Public Value – Open Future

The AI Continent Action Plan needs a stronger vision of purposeful AI deployment if it wants to achieve more than just boost commercial AI development.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 02/04/2025

“Algo decision making systems are “leviathans”, harmful not for their arbitrariness or opacity, but systemacity of decisions" - @christinalu.bsky.social on need for plural #AI model ontologies (sounds technical, but has big consequences for human #commons) www.combinationsmag.com/model-plural...

combinationsmag.com

Model Plurality

Current research in “plural alignment” concentrates on making AI models amenable to diverse human values. But plurality is not simply a safeguard against bias or an engine of efficiency: it’s a key in...

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 20/03/2025

Strong piece from @dacemoglumit.bsky.social on the AI opportunity - public interest AI will be built only if societies don't leave it just to the developers and engineers, and also - EU needs to build alternatives to the "Silicon Valley model" www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...

project-syndicate.org

Will We Squander the AI Opportunity? | by Daron Acemoglu - Project Syndicate

Daron Acemoglu worries that the technology is on track to disempower, rather than complement, most of humanity.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 19/03/2025

Good op-ed in NYT about the tech billionaries and companies they own, and how antithetical to democracy they are. good quotes from @himself.bsky.social who does some of the best thinking on this. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | It May Not Be Brainwashing, but It’s Not Democracy, Either (Gift Article)

How the federal government became “an outdated software system that must be replaced.”

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 19/03/2025

A proposal for how the UK National Data Library could function (from Feb, I'm catching up on #publicAI examples). Sounds a lot like #publicdatacommons. And a good example of a data-first pathway to more public AI (and other tech policy goals) takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/tbi-ndl

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

Here's a pitch for what the National Data Library should actually be

Do you want to be a National Data Librarian?

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 18/03/2025

David Braue writes about the National Library of Australia, which began Terms of Use, limiting open access to its resources. Braue describes the context as "voracious genAI training algorithms overstay open government’s welcome". ia.acs.org.au/article/2025...

ia.acs.org.au

National Library cracks down on public data access

Archives are throttling access to data that was supposed to be open.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 18/03/2025

This Guardian piece looks at how Nordic countries, once at the forefront of digital payments, now see cash as a crucial mechanism for resilience. Social campaigns are encouraging people to pay with cash, at least once in a while. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

As cyberwarfare threat looms, cashless Nordic nations go back to banknotes | Miranda Bryant

Nordic countries were early adopters of digital payments. Now, electronic banking is seen as a potential threat to national security

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 18/03/2025

I've been working on a white paper on #publicAI policies and learned in the process that sound proposals are imposible without deep technical dive into the #AI stack. THis is a great NYT explainer on GPUs, data centers, energy and water use for AI. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

What DeepSeek? Big Tech Keeps Its A.I. Building Boom Alive.

An apparent breakthrough in efficiency from the Chinese start-up did not make tech’s biggest companies question their extravagant spending on new data centers.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 06/03/2025

AI is meant to be destroying knowledge jobs, but at the moment, in the #US, it’s the state that’s destroying PhD jobs through funding cuts. The key question is then, how do the two trends intertwine? (And I guess it’s a #publicAI question) www.msn.com/en-ca/money/...

msn.com

MSN

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 25/02/2025

"as we build new social media, we need to keep in mind lessons learned from activist efforts to make corporate social media better" - @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy , at #rightscon panel on new social web. Fixing big platforms + alternatives is two pronged strategy for #digitalpublicspace

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 20/02/2025

Looking forward to #RightsCon, and seeing how ideas about #AI as public infrastructure resonate with people who focus on #digitalrights.

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Open Future @openfuture.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

@alek.bsky.social will present research on #OpenSourceAI by @opensource.org and Open Future—featuring insights from #DataGovernance experts—examining how #OpenAI can prioritize public access over private commodification. 📙 openfuture.eu/publication/...

Data Governance in Open Source AI report cover, with branded Open Future's image background.

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Open Future @openfuture.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

🇪🇺 The #EuroStack report proposes €300B for EU tech sovereignty through chips, AI, and cloud infrastructure. Read @jankrewer.bsky.social's analysis: openfuture.eu/blog/eurosta...

EuroStack graphic with Open Future's branded background.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 17/02/2025

“the future lies in institutional reform – in rebuilding the public institutions that have been “eaten” by the profit-driven platforms” – Mike Pepi talks #publicdigitalinfrastructure in Dazed piece on #platform alternatives (with rare mainstream / pop tone www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture...

dazeddigital.com

Social media is in a death spiral – so what comes next?

It’s clear that X, Instagram and TikTok are broken, but the problem runs deeper than any single platform. Is it possible to build something better?

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

DOGE is accessing vast troves of data, shutting down gov websites, and promising to replace countless jobs with an "AI-first" strategy. There's a reason Musk is aiming to automate the government—it's all about concentrating power and exercising control. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/government...

bloodinthemachine.com

Government by Grok

How and why Elon Musk is trying to automate the federal government

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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Update from WIRED head @katie-drummond.bsky.social. We're hosting a webinar for subscribers w/ our reporters and editors next Thursday, Feb 13 @ 1pm ET.

System Update by Katie Drummond:

Ever since Elon Musk dove headfirst into backing Donald Trump’s presidential bid last year—to the tune of $280 million in contributions—WIRED has been tracking the billionaire’s political exploits and growing sphere of influence within the GOP and the Trump administration more specifically. We’ve been sourcing up, talking to people within and around federal agencies, as well as experts in disciplines including cybersecurity, AI, medicine, and more, about Musk’s potential impact.

What would Musk do, we wanted to understand, once Trump took back the White House on January 20? How would our government—and our country —change with Trump at the steering wheel and Musk riding shotgun?

Now the world, and WIRED, are finding out. The entire WIRED newsroom, from editors and reporters to fact-checkers and photo editors, has been working relentlessly to unearth new information about what exactly Elon Musk and his allies are doing across federal agencies, and to what end. What is changing, how, and what are the consequences? Amid the findings of our reporting, one overarching fact has become extremely clear: Musk is now in the driver’s seat, and he is implementing sweeping, shocking, and largely unchecked changes across the entirety of our country’s federal apparatus.

So what do we know so far? WIRED has in recent days revealed that Elon Musk has taken over swaths of government infrastructure, from installing his lackeys in senior positions within governmental HR to leading the charge on a chaotic “deferred resignation program”—one that closely echoes a similar Musk initiative at Twitter—that could see millions of federal workers leave their posts. Musk has been instrumental in attempting to dismantle USAID, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting off funding for lifesaving work before the State Department put the majority of USAID personnel on administrative leave.

Every day, we’ve revealed new details on who, exactly, Musk has installed inside federal agencies —they include at least six young men, aged 19 to 24, with little or no government experience. We’ve also documented what those and other Musk acolytes are doing, from conducting “sneak attack” meetings to discuss civil servants’ code and projects to accessing the federal systems that handle Social Security payments and tax returns to announcing plans to transform a key federal tech agency into the AI-fueled equivalent of a “startup software company.”

Of course, we’re also keeping close tabs on likely agency heads and members of Trump’s cabinet. His pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, repeatedly claimed at a Senate hearing that he’d never promoted QAnon’s theory. We tracked all the times he did. And though RFK Jr. said he’d support vaccines if he became Health and Human Services Secretary, we outlined his long history of anti-vax positions.

We’re not done. Our reporters are getting hundreds of new tips every day and are publishing their latest reporting on WIRED.com at a breakneck pace. To say this moment is unpredictable would be an understatement, but trust me—we’ll continue to do our jobs with utmost vigor, and we’ll work to bring you the most authoritative, trustworthy coverage of tech’s all-out invasion of the American government. We’ve gained tens of thousands of new subscribers in the past few days. If you’d like to join them, you can support us here.

P.S. We’ll be hosting a webinar with the editors and writers leading this coverage next Thursday, February 13, at 1pm ET. It’s exclusively for subscribers; if you become one today, you will receive an invitation prior to the event.

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 06/02/2025

Every 4 years, a team of libraries & research organizations work together to preserve material from U.S. government websites during the transition of administrations. 🗳️ Get the latest on the 2024/2025 End of Term Web Archive @eotarchive.org ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/02/06/u...

Whitehouse.gov captures from: 2008 Sept. 15; 2013 Mar. 21; 2017 Feb. 3; and 2021 Feb. 25

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Tzu-Sheng Kuo 郭子生 @tskuo.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

@wikipedia.org is vital for #NLP, yet little research contributes back to the Wikimedia community. To bridge this gap, we are organizing #WikiNLP to advance both. w/ Isaac Johnson (@wikimediafoundation.org) @akhilarora.bsky.social @frimelle.bsky.social @tiziano.bsky.social @indiiigo.bsky.social

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 04/02/2025

Jan Krewer takes a sweeping look at #DigitalCommons policies in #Europe, charting two decades and showing steady support for sharing, openness, the commons

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 04/02/2025

Taking into account costs of #AI reasoning models (see linked text), it seems that responsible AI should very quickly determine whether a prompt wouldn't be better suited for a more energy-efficient solution, for example good old search. or #Wikimedia. www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/31/1...

technologyreview.com

DeepSeek might not be such good news for energy after all

New figures show that if the model’s energy-intensive “chain of thought” reasoning gets added to everything, the promise of efficiency gets murky.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 04/02/2025

"If we are going to engage the public meaningfully in the root causes of AI systems, beyond sensationalist distractions, we need to build a public concept of data, as a collective, common good" @staplejames.bsky.social on #datacommons, #AI and narratives needed to build AI for public good #publicAI

jrf.org.uk

What we don’t talk about when we talk about AI

Dan Stanley reflects that current narratives around AI are deeply influencing what is discussed. We need to shed new light on an overlooked truth about data.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 16/01/2025

. @willknight.bsky.social writes about US-China competition in #AI, describes "nightmare scenario" of 193 #sovereign AI limited to one culture / nation What then of a world dominated by a few "sovereign corporate" models, limited to one set of profit-driven values? Sounds like case for #openness

link.wired.com

Why ‘beating China’ in AI brings its own risks

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 10/01/2025

I enjoyed @simonwillison.net take on "last year in #LLM". Good quote at the end, in a part titled "LLMs need better criticism". let's call this hype-less #AI optimism. Although it's not just about guidance by devs, but shared sensemaking by devs and non-devs. simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/...

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 17/12/2024

“We were doing intelligence in 2015…” says an Apple exec interviewed by Stephen Levy. And a key adjective is missing. And in a recent interview, Jensen Huan also talked simply of “manufacturing intelligence”.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 05/12/2024

AGI no longer means self-aware machine - now it’s system that “outperforms humans on economically valuable work”. @shannonvallor.bsky.social analyses this shift, and consequences for how we think about ourselves, in a great piece for Noema. www.noemamag.com/the-danger-o... #publicAI

noemamag.com

The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think | NOEMA

The rhetoric over “superhuman” AI implicitly erases what’s most important about being human.

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Open Future @openfuture.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

💌Did you miss the monthly newsletter we published last Friday? Learn more about #PublicAI and #PublicDomain, follow #DigitalCommons discussions, register for upcoming events, and more. Read the issue and sign up for the next one ⬇️ mailchi.mp/openfuture/e...

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Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 27/11/2024

Musk admitted X throttles links, and Threads is only a little better. But social media's quiet war on links has been going on for years. I wrote about how big tech has been draining the open web's lifeblood and giving us "news influencers" instead of the news. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

washingtonpost.com

Analysis | Musk admits X throttles links as ‘news influencers’ take over

Hard times for the humble hyperlink and those who depend on it.

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Alek Tarkowski @alek.eurosky.social · 27/11/2024

Pens will not save the world from AI, but it’s nice, once in a while, to read about inks and papers rather than tokens. @lopatto.bsky.social has a neat take on this: www.theverge.com/2024/11/25/2...

theverge.com

I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice

Note to self.

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Taliesan @taliesan.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

M*sk's net worth just hit $350B. Some math: US median net worth: ~$100k. Top 0.1% median net worth: $20M Millionaires are 200x richer than middle class Musk is *17,500x* richer than millionaire class Let's break the class solidarity between millionaires and billionaires. They are *not* his peer.

A circle charge showing what a 17,500 times difference looks like in scale. The top 0.1% of Americans circle is a small, imperceptible dot when compared to Musk's wealth.

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Open Future @openfuture.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

🦋 Hello, world! Let's connect.

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