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Chris Pitcher

@cpitcher.bsky.social
94 followers 91 following 80 posts

Data Engineer at Chelsea and Westminster hospital. Interested in building things, data, coding, and public policy. Previously an apprenticeship coach, school data manager and teacher.

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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Sooner media, governments and public realise that the AI labs are not real companies selling products, but are instead massive marketing exercises with the sole purpose of making tech bros very rich at our expense, the better.
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Emily Andrews @emilyishness.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Was great to speak at this today - sharing findings from our report “Building an AI-ready workforce”. learningandwork.org.uk/building-an-... Some choice quotes I picked from the report included the words “grift” “panic” & “scared”. If that doesn’t tempt you to read it, I don’t know what will..
learningandwork.org.uk
Building an AI-ready workforce: Creating a skills system that prepares UK knowledge workers for the AI transition - Learning and Work Institute
AI has transformative potential for the UK economy and could present a net uplift to productivity of up to £80 billion by 2035. Yet the UK workforce does not – yet – have the skills to successfully ad...
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Emily Andrews @emilyishness.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
🚨THINK TANK JOB KLAXON 🚨 V excited to be hiring to this new role @learnworkuk.bsky.social - adding another brain to lead work on skills and better work. Loads of scope to make it your own, friendly people, urgent topics. learningandwork.org.uk/about-us/joi... Please spread far and wide!
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Doubt the press corp were too thrilled about being left as sitting ducks on Air Force One apparently under active threat as the dear leader was whisked away... and who could blame them!
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
FT reporting we are now officially in Funky Financial Instruments phase of the AI bubble. We've all seen this movie before (literally)
FT article describing use of "so-called residual value guarantees " to fund data centres off the books
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thrilled that the Guardian have just figured out how cloud computing works, good for them. Maybe now they can have a crack at making the ads not appear over the article text on their website
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Re #2 guess is just playing with the English language. Last quarter, I had a garage, with capacity for one Ferrari. This quarter, I built another garage, now I have two Ferraris of capacity. Do I have two Ferraris? Of course not.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If Hugo continues to grow at this rate, by 2030 he will no longer fit in the barn. By 2050 he will have grown to the size of Godzilla and could crush humanity. But if we let the Chinese grow their own Hugo first that would be bad. This is why we must invest 100 trillion dollars in Hugo immediately.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Sure it is not going to be pretty for the global economy when this bubble pops. But the sooner it does the better for humanity and our planet.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Completely unsustainable. Scale up these numbers across the whole web and this is literal "break the internet" territory. Not to mention the environmental impact.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Who do I lobby to get my feed have this much Dolly every day?
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
*contract
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I've actually tried to find my (admin, non-clerical) contact to see what language is contained around this and.... I cannot find one. It is possible I have simply mislaid it in my messy digital life, but I really dug around. Perhaps trusts getting HR basics right might be the place to start!!
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David Durant @bowsy.co.uk · 31/07/2026
If every LA decides to procure 5 new API-less monstrosities it will be catastrophic. Potentially even more so if they decide to vibe-code them up themselves or get taken in by Shiny AI Shysters.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
This was the NHS (in England) when each local Trust was directed to buy an electronic patient record system for their hospitals with little to no support from the centre. Ask anyone who works in a hospital about their EPR to learn how this went (maybe don't if one is sensitive to swearing)
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Thank you! Was starting to go mad at no-one mentioning the NHS. Devolution of power away from Whitehall was the whole idea in 2012. All of it - *all* of it - is being put in the bin as we speak. Lessons must be learnt, but they won't be.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The problem is data protection. One trust cannot legally transfer personal data over to another trust without the individual's consent. Not sure if the changes proposed in the Health Bill will fix this or if they only apply to patient records and not staff
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 28/07/2026
The website still says 14. One of the service members not being counted is Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad from Queens. She was married to a woman she met in the Army, and one of our podcast listeners pointed out that fact was not acknowledged at a recent memorial service. So I am acknowledging it here.
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Dean Vipond @deanvipond.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Any incoming minister for AI should be tasked with replacing a load-bearing spreadsheet from a critical service, to give them the insights into why no one has done it yet. The ministerial equivalent of breaking a horse.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
US system is actually as good as it gets IMHO. Senate confirmation of the President's judge pick should be a major guardrail against this problem. But they confirmed an alleged sex offender. Congress could impeach the justices who are patently corrupt, but no. There's only so much you can do.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Genuinely think part of the problem is what do people have in mind when they think of an "NHS manager". Is it a ward manager, or the chief exec, or any of the huge number of layers in between? And that's just in a hospital trust. What does it mean in primary care? Or do they mean NHS England??
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Next up: Blanche / Woodward file for appearance, BBC objects to former Trump personal lawyers getting involved.
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Alan White @aljwhite.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
These heatwaves show leadership cannot mean stepping back from climate action - important piece from @alistrathern.bsky.social www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...
politicshome.com
These heatwaves show leadership cannot mean stepping back from climate action
The UK is in the throes of our second significant heatwave of the year. It is still early summer. That fact alone ought to give us pause.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Genuinely depressed at reading so many "What Labour Need To Do Now" thinkpieces and since Thursday where 'ensuring we all have a planet left to live on' has not got a look in
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
"It looks like you're trying to send an attachment but haven't attached" is super helpful. Please please please can we also have "It looks like you're booking in a catch up with Alice but you haven't add her to the invite" I'm begging
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Stuart Hoddinott @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Love this as a prevention case study: - Low cost, even revenue raising in the short term - Improves health outcomes and reduces costly hospital admissions Shows political leadership is key: - Politically costly for Khan to implement - Did it despite cost savings landing outside GLA
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this conundrum and, about a decade ago, ran a small cross-party programme on tech literacy for MPs. A quick 🧵 about why MPs know so little about tech.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Another write up of the Microsoft press release with no mention of whether use of personal data will be allowed. Without this, these licenses are pretty useless.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Unless the governance has been changed to allow patient data to be used in Copilot (it wasn't in the trial) then this ain't going to be delivering what most people might think reading the Microsoft press release.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
for jobs, I don't know. But LLMs as we know them today are not much longer for this world because the money will run out, they won't be able to pay their bills to the data centres, and that will be that. What comes out of the rubble is entirely unclear.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
money through a heady mix of relentless marketing by these companies, hype, vibes and FOMO. Both companies are desperately racing towards an IPO before they get found out and the bubble bursts. Altman and Amodei will get very rich and disappear, along with their models. What exactly this means...
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
I'd like to reassure you both are hot air. The key factor re AI is these models are *insanely* costly to produce and run. OpenAi & Anthropic are going broke before our eyes but no-one will point out these emperors have no clothes; instead there's a steady supply of idiots being relieved of their...
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Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 11/05/2026
It's not good for the country if we're constantly junking PMs (of any political stripe) because of the vibes. So much reporting is now vibes, not properly looking at policy, how that's delivered etc. That does everyone a disservice.
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Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
it's also, unlike a lot of the other issues that are being pored over, very relevant to local government. It's unclear what levers hackney council has to pull on gaza, but there's a hell of a lot of ways they can make life easier or harder for trans people in the borough
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 28/04/2026
What's different now is the blast radius. A botched microservices migration costs you a re-architecture project. A botched agent deployment can apparently delete your business in 9 seconds. 4/4
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Politicians just seem to have given up trying to explain the world as it is to people. It's a huge problem.
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Rob Bowley @robbowley.net · 14/04/2026
The first independent review of Mythos cyber capabilities I've seen. The UK's AI Security Institute - an independent government body - appears to have got their hands on Mythos and published their findings. 1/7 🧵
aisi.gov.uk
Our evaluation of Claude Mythos Preview’s cyber capabilities | AISI Work
We conducted cyber evaluations of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview and found continued improvement in capture-the-flag (CTF) challenges and significant improvement on multi-step cyber-attack simulati...
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Jason Gorman @jasongorman.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Claude Mythos is that guy down the pub who is so good at karate that if he used it on you, you'd die instantly, and that's why you'll never see him using karate.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
There's a computer science term for what OpenAI are doing here, we call it "lying"
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 08/04/2026
Putting aside Sam Altman just continuing to emit huge lies constantly, this is an amazing example of what I mean when I talk about how GenAI is replacing *extremely low energy* digital tasks with *WAY WAY HIGHER ENERGY* replacements that *do not even work* Why TF is anyone using ChatGPT as a timer!
gizmodo.com
Sam Altman Says It'll Take Another Year Before ChatGPT Can Start a Timer
An $852 billion company, ladies and gentlemen.
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 30/03/2026
BREAKING: After ProPublica published letters written by children at the Dilley concentration camp, ICE officers raided the dormitories and confiscated the children's letters. I'm suing ICE to get them back. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/breaking-i...
muellershewrote.com
NEW: ICE Raided Children's Dorms at Dilley and Confiscated Their Letters. I'm Suing to Get Them Back.
In our latest lawsuit, MSW Media is demanding children's letters confiscated by ICE agents, and the Office of General Counsel memo authorizing warrantless home entry.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
1. LLMs do not reason 2. LLMs do not understand anything, they have no concepts: "pressure", "morals", you name it 3. It's a great headline but to "threaten" to use nuclear weapons is one thing (and actually key to MAD) but article also says LLMs going "full-scale nuclear war was rare."
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
It would be a very very very good thing for Starmer to show some principled leadership around now. And perhaps it might also focus the mind a bit, away from playground disputes.
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
... reducing marking burden will be part of it, as marking is a horrible activity. Plus something about gamification? Plus most people don't do "written work" (by hand) in adult world but lack of evidence around this (which is another thing, schools are terrible at engaging with research)
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Ahhh now see the train of thought! Re "other learning materials" that will be budgets, if parents are buying the laptops cash strapped schools are just not going to spend money they don't have on 20+ quid a pop textbooks students may never open. "Replacing written work" more complex...
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
It's... just a bad headline? Article doesn't actually mention textbooks once nor does it say "textbooks bad, computers good".
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Jeni Tennison @jenitennison.com · 20/02/2026
I'm astonished this statement could be reported so uncritically. Let's be real: *IF* AGI is ever developed, all its efforts will be spent making OpenAI profitable and sending Musk to Mars. From www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
Stuart Russell, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, who closely follows India’s progress, said: “If we get to AGI [artificial general intelligence], AI is going to be producing 80% of the global economy. All manufacturing, most agriculture, all services will be just done; managed by AI, produced by AI.”Imagine, he said, an Indian village priced out of having a health centre. In the future, AI could design the hospital and “along comes a bunch of giant quad copters carrying the materials, and a bunch of robots come and assemble everything. Two weeks later, you’ve got a hospital.”
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Jason Gorman @jasongorman.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
That over-reliance on a heavily-subsidised technology isn't seen as a strategic risk by engineering leaders is baffling.
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Emily Andrews @emilyishness.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Before you start attributing this to AI, note that the biggest drops in employees has been in retail and hospitality - sectors with 122,000 fewer workers than this time last year. (we are kicking off a project on AI workforce impacts though, so watch this space...)
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Chris Pitcher @cpitcher.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
"[The] report reveals three-quarters of CIOs admit to not having full real-time visibility into AI agents running in production systems, even though they have the ability to implement actions." Only a matter of time til agent goes wrong and there will be panic. www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/n...
theregister.com
CIOs told: Prove your AI pays off – or pay the price
: Boards demand measurable ROI as budgets, bonuses, and jobs hang in the balance
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