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Daragh Ó Briain

@daraghobrien.bsky.social
1.5K followers 172 following 2.3K posts

Flumping along in the world of data since Long Ago. Posts as @castlebridge-chief here & on Mastodon at mastodon.ie/@CastlebridgeChief CEO @ Castlebridge.ie. Doctoral candidate at UL looking at #DataGovernance. Author of several books on data stuff.

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Reposted by Daragh Ó Briain
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1h
New from @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and me: "It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender
The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals
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AI Now Institute @ainowinstitute.bsky.social · 1h
AI companies are calling for regulation in ways that let them set the rules, not independent parties who can hold them to account. “If you read between the lines, everything [Amodei] advocates [for] is something that would help companies like Anthropic,” says AI Now's Boyan Milanov bit.ly/3TxmJbq
bit.ly
How the bad science of AI doomerism is good for big business
There is no clear path showing that today’s AI systems will lead to superintelligence, much less a basis for calculating the probability of doom.
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ᚃᚓᚏᚌᚐᚂ ᚋᚐᚉᚉᚒ ᚌᚐᚇᚆᚏᚐ @storzundbickel.eurosky.social · 1h
#Ireland #Spéirghorm #Education
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 4h
Yeah, we’ve only been warning about this *forever*. #Cassandra
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Victoria McIntosh @vmcntosh.bsky.social · 11h
Either a human said “do this”, or buried in the code there’s “when access to WXY do Z”. An AI cannot consciously think “you know what, I feel like hacking Canada today.”
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Pé 🍺🧿 @forevernever.bsky.social · 18h
It's weird how the federal government is constantly being hacked after DOGE gutted the government's cybersecurity agencies.
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Dylan Schwilk @schwilk.org · 16h
My car went rogue when i forgot to set the parking brake, left in drive, and exited it.
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John Breslin @cloud.eurosky.social · 17h
Arya Satheesh, an 18-year-old student from Letterkenny in County Donegal, Invented a Plant-Based Plastic That Removes Microplastics From the Environment as It Biodegrades www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/t...
smithsonianmag.com
This High Schooler Invented a Plant-Based Plastic That Removes Microplastics From the Environment as It Biodegrades
Eighteen-year-old Arya Satheesh created her award-winning Eco Purge to help address the global problem of plastic pollution
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Zack Whittaker @zackwhittaker.com · 19h
The Pentagon is notifying millions of current and former U.S. military servicemembers and staff that hackers stole their *unencrypted* personal information during a months-long data breach. The agency that had the breach also handles ID and login/credential access to U.S. military systems and bases.
techcrunch.com
Hackers stole millions of US military personnel records during months-long data breach | TechCrunch
The Department of Defense notified millions of current and former U.S. military personnel that their personal information had been stolen in a months-long breach.
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Richard Cantwell @manaboutcouch.bsky.social · 17h
Some discussion of the UK rejoining the EU on #newsnight this evening. 15 minutes of talking and the UK's only land border was completely ignored.
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 30/09/2026
The AI bubble is even more precarious than you knew.
nytimes.com
How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes (Gift Article)
Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula
static.klipy.com
Sesame Street The Count
ALT: Sesame Street The Count
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A third of young men surveyed admit to being utter gobshites. www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...
irishexaminer.com
Over a third of young men say a rape should not be believed without a conviction
Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's has published its second annual national study of attitudes towards, and experiences of, rape and sexual violence
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The White House accord on AI that was signed by all the big tech oligarchs today misspells United States as “Unites States.”
Document signed by Trump, Sundar Pichai
Google
Dario Amodei
Anthropic
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta

Greg Brockman
OpenAl

Elon Musk
XAI

Jensen Huang
nvidia “Unites States”
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Now there’s a name from the data protection past… www.independent.ie/business/ex-...
independent.ie
Ex-PwC worker fails in court bid against decision to award him €34,000 for unfair dismissal
Peter Nowak has fought battle with former employer for more than a decade
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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Asking for Ireland. Also, apply to any service where the customer is doing work to save the management the hassle of employing actual staff?
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 29/09/2026
it would be cool if U.S. journalism could clearly inform readers that the trump administration dismantled what was left of our already shaky regulators and replaced them with perfomative vibes
"It's almost like a constitution, in a way," Mr. Trump said while flanked by SpaceX's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Google's Sundar Pichai and a throng of other tech executives."It's not clear exactly how the accord will work. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters the AI firms agreed to "multiple layers of auditing and controls," including internal evaluations and external audits. The findings of auditors would be independently reviewed by each company's board of directors, Zuckerberg added.
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Unions, Labor Relations and Class Struggle…As Seen On TV @solongdentalplan.com · 28/09/2026
Solidarity with @seiu1199nw.bsky.social
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 29/09/2026
A key component of the Cambridge Analytica outrage was your friends subjecting you to data theft without your consent or knowledge. Facebook is running the same playbook on your text messages. Even if you’re not on Meta properties, they’re ingesting your interactions.
Aten installed Muse on both his iPhone and a Mac mini that he uses to test out various Al agents and tech. It took Meta a single day to begin "helpfully" pitching article ideas based on texts he'd sent to a podcast co-host.
When he asked Muse how it got the information, it said that it read banners from incoming texts. But that's not true, either.
After doing a little digging, Aten says Muse synced 187,000 lines from his Messages database, despite Full Disk Access being Off.Unless Aten is the most popular person on the face of the planet, I sincerely doubt he'd gotten 187,000 lines of text in roughly 24 hours. What happened is that, without permission, Muse went into the app and downloaded the information.
He had not given Muse permission to access Messages, and full disk access was not enabled. It just went ahead and uploaded those texts anyway.
Muse can take "unexpected actions" indeed.
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Paul Nemitz @paulnemitz.eupolicy.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026
My take on the #Omnibus and changes to #GDPR as proposed by the Irish #Presidency: lnkd.in/p/eJ_ypdXy
linkedin.com
#presidency #germany #commission #personaldata #ai #gdpr #charter #treaty #artificial #gdpr #eu #omnibus #dsgvo #ki #dataprotection #privacy #datenschutz | Paul Nemitz
The plans of the Irish #Presidency, supported by #Germany and the European #Commission, to in practice exempt the collection and processing of #personaldata for #AI related purposes largely from the discipline of #GDPR are not in line with the #Charter of Fundamental Rights nor the #Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In a time where #Artificial Intelligence is already as ambient as electricity, the changes on the table in the Council amount to an illegal change of primary law, namely of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European and of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, both of which guarantee the protection of personal data, through an act of secondary law in the form of amendments to GDPR. It is likely that thus the Court of Justice would annul such secondary law #GDPR amendments, as they factually exempt AI from the guarantees provided in Treaties and render them largely meaningless in a world in which AI is already all over the place. At a time when California has strengthened it's law on AI and privacy, and even in Washington the discussion on third party controls and protections against AI risks and overrrach are taking off, the path pushed by the Irish Presidency and some others is anachronistic. Emptying GDPR from it's relevance for AI would add further damage to the cardinal sinn of the AI Act, which does not forsee any new ex ante third party controls on AI and thus provides a lower level of protection of public interests and individuals than is provided through legal requirements such as ex ante building permits in construction or ex ante type appproval for new Car designs. The future of AI in Europe is not secured by continued exceptionalism for AI but on the contrary by starting to apply normal principles of law and protection of public interest to AI as they have been applied to other technologies, from atomic power to pharmaceuticals and chemicals, for ages. Rather than the weakening of the rules, the age of AI and it's hyperpersonalised agents of the future require stronger personal data protection rules, as Tim Cook of Apple said, and the risks of AI as we see them unfolding require ex ante controlls. The Commission and the Council should now see the signs of the times and turn around to pursue a course of strengthening rather than weakening protections.#EU #Omnibus #DSGVO #KI #Dataprotection #Privacy #Datenschutz
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TJ McIntyre @tjmcintyre.com · 28/09/2026
Irish plans to exempt processing of your data for AI from the GDPR are "not in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights"; they amount to an "illegal change of primary law"; they "exempt AI from the guarantees in the Treaties and render them largely meaningless". Damning, from the leading expert.
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Pat Walshe - Privacy Matters 🇮🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺 @privacymatters.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Good to see. I hope Apple is reading the judgement.
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Shovel factory announces availability of anti-blister glove technology.
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Simon McGarr @tupped.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Britain paying the price, in cash money, for indulging anti-immigration rhetoric and action.
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Lizard @lizardky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
No matter how bad you think AI is, it’s worse. This technology is not fit for purpose, and the nature of LLMs means it likely never will be.
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This indicates that companies are relying more heavily on personal data to develop models instead of pursuing other AI incentives.
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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Utterly mad how most of society just bumbles along, ignoring the monstrous future realities being locked in place, day in day out.
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R Del @delexical.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
And why no fuel protestors at Doonbeg? Why indeed.
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026
Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The rapporteurs appointed by the Ducth Legislative note that one of the key changes in the Irish compromise text concerns how pseudonymized data is treated and the circumstances under which it may fall outside the scope of the GDPR for a specific actor. noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-mem...
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tante @tante.cc · 27/09/2026
Slapping an LLM In front of specialized machine learning systems that actually can solve specific tasks does not mean that the "stochastic parrot" metaphor has failed.
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Aidan O’Brien @aidanobrien.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The Irish government wants to allow AI companies to scrap EU citizen's private data. - An industry which business models is based on a unprecedented theft of intellectual property. - Consistently fail to prevent their product from causing serious harms, and hide the evidence when they do.
OpenAl halts training of latest models as reports mount of Al agents going rogue
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAl agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected waysMicrosoft and OpenAl raised concerns over Al training data in newly unsealed courtChatGPT Helped Tumbler Ridge Shooter Focus on Guns, Tactics, and Terror
OpenAI's chatbot fed the school shooter's violent fantasies and planning up to the massacre, our investigation reveals.
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Feminize a band name Pink Floella.
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Gary Gannon TD @garygannontd.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The FAI repeatedly told us players would be protected. Yet when a 24 year old acted on his conscience, they left him to stand alone & used a vote among his teammates to validate their own cowardice. This isn’t protecting a young player, it’s protecting themselves at his expense. #StopTheGame
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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
do actors in movies actually die? they at least behave as if they do
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Meta is the Torment Nexus @priva.cat · 27/09/2026
It's only this way because it's a race to the bottom. I think AI can be designed fairly and responsibly, while doing better re: privacy. It doesn't have to be het another example of surveillance capitalism, but it will be so long as there are no real forces holding the leadership to account
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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The problem isn't rogue #AI models, it's *negligent companies*. If a biomedical firm put their product in public water supply because they wanted to test it 'in the real world', they'd be treated as criminal at corporate & individual level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
So, I should cancel Thursday afternoon’s meetings. Grand.
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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
‘The work, which has not been peer reviewed.’ Tech journalists are really embarrassng themselves these days. How about you don’t broadcast an outlandish claim until you’ve actually done some homework?
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Joe Noonan @joenoonan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
After Sheeran, use of a threat like this cannot be ruled this out.
Daniel Lambert @dlLambo
...
Hearing from several sources around Ireland hotel that agents are telling players you must play our you'll never play for a US owned team the UK.
in
How grim and predictable from faceless agents profit in the background.
who
15:00. 26/09/2026 from Earth . 196K Views
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I think there are two key lessons from Linguistics as we deal with LLMs/chatbots being imposed on us everywhere. Grateful for Undark Magazine giving space for me to lay these out: undark.org/2026/09/25/i...
undark.org
Interview: What Does the 'I' in AI Really Mean?
Five scientific experts discuss whether artificial intelligence is — or might one day become — truly intelligent.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Looking around and saying, "Gee no one is talking about this" is aiding and abetting the erasure and it is not okay. /fin
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Serge Egelman @v0max.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
It’s probably a good reminder that Robert Morris was convicted of a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for authoring a worm that broke into other systems.
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Andrew Sharpe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿|🇪🇺 @andrew.sharpe.scot · 26/09/2026
The BBC is part of the problem...
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Scuzzy Mortspider 🕷️ 🎃 @jussienorthside.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Janice Turner has no background or training in medicine, neuroscience, psychology or psychiatry.
Janice Turner: Is your ADHD diagnosis really helping you?
A huge increase in those claiming the condition as well as receiving Pip to cope with it risks creating a lost generation
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Brian Honan @brianhonan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Stop saying the agents are “acting improperly” or that the agents “went rogue”. AI agents are software. The agents just follow the instructions given to them. It was OpenAI who failed in ensuring their agents were controlled properly
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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The literacy crisis is not just referring to people's ability to literally read and write. It's also people's inability to read for context. I've been a public educator for over 20 years and I have never, ever seen it this bad.
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Lamhfada @lamhfada.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
All power to any members of the Ireland team who will refuse to play the match against the genocidal and apartheid state of Israel, and itchy bleeding haemorrhoids to the FAI and Irish cabinet ministers and TDs who did nothing to support the team and forced them into this situation.
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Daragh Ó Briain @daraghobrien.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Doing slides for a half day tutorial on “Responsible AI governance” for a data/tech audience. Just ripped out some content to make room for a section on Rylands v Fletcher and how it is not a matter of if the principle applies but *when* someone makes legal history by being the modern Fletcher.
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Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 26/09/2026
Tech companies suddenly decide they can, in fact, moderate content on their platforms after all
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