iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Who’s liable when AI agents go rogue? Recent hacks have shown that the law is lagging when it comes to holding companies accountable www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/28/1...

technologyreview.com

Who’s liable when AI agents go rogue?

Recent hacks have shown that the law is lagging when it comes to holding companies accountable.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A delightful morning’s promenade at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, surrounded by bonnets, fine gentlemen, elegant gowns, and just enough scandal to keep things interesting. One might almost believe we had stepped straight into the pages of Persuasion!

People in Jane Austen costume gather at the Royal Crescent in Bath

People in Jane Austen costume parade around The Circus in Bath

A man in Jane Austen costume holding a dog and a woman parade around The Circus in Bath

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds: the number of times AI lies, ignores instructions and pursues goals in harmful ways almost doubles in July www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds

Exclusive: Number of times AI lies, ignores instructions and pursues goals in harmful ways almost doubles in July

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The biggest AI blind spot? We still don't know how people are really using it (and it's less to do with work than the AI companies claim) www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/18/1...

technologyreview.com

We still don’t know how people are really using AI

But a new study shows that work use cases make up less of the picture than AI companies claim.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Women-led deep-tech startups consistently outperform on capital efficiency but continue to attract only a fraction of venture funding. Is the market overlooking one of the most promising innovation opportunities? www.raconteur.net/finance/the-...

raconteur.net

The investment case for women-led deep tech - Raconteur

As the EU expands Women TechEU, investors are asking if the market is overlooking one of Europe's most promising innovation opportunities

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Getting precisely what you asked for and bitterly regretting it is one of the oldest hazards from ancient folklore: do we need a “Genie coefficient” for agentic AI? spectrum.ieee.org/ai-agent-ben...

spectrum.ieee.org

Why AI Needs a "Genie Coefficient"

Proposing a new metric for whether AI does what you actually want

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Designing agentic AI around the implicit rules that govern your company: Every firm “has 2 operating systems. The 1st is in the procedures manual...When you configure an AI agent, this is what it receives. The 2nd is the 1 that runs the place: the implicit organisation” hbr.org/2026/06/how-...

hbr.org

How to Design Agentic Systems Around the Implicit Rules that Govern Your Company

As companies rush to deploy AI agents, they are discovering that much of their most important organizational intelligence lives outside formal systems and documented processes. Examples from financial...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

5 investments to close the gap between AI wealth and welfare: "The success of transformative new technologies depends on parallel investments in capital, human development, metrics, systems thinking, and social and economic institutions" mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-t...

mitsloan.mit.edu

5 investments to close the gap between AI wealth and welfare | MIT Sloan

Transformative technologies like artificial intelligence succeed when societies make parallel social investments to ensure gains are distributed equitably, MIT Sloan researchers find.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

The people who will thrive in the AI age: they are "not the ones who seek relaxation and passively use AI to work less. They are the ones who will seek improvement and actively wrestle with AI to develop their own mental capabilities and accomplish more” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age

What will differentiate people is not how smart they are but their relationship to mental effort.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Have we lost control of our brains? UoC's Gloria Mark on attention span erosion, and cognitive atrophy (and what to do about it) www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/05/1...

technologyreview.com

Are AI chatbots making us lose control of our brains?

Yes, according to psychologist Gloria Mark. But there are ways to regain that control.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

How to shrink the psychological costs of adopting AI: "reducing psychological debt will require that companies design human-AI relationships that recognise the sources of, and barriers to, human motivation and behaviour" hbr.org/2026/05/the-...

hbr.org

The Psychological Costs of Adopting AI

AI adoption strategies are overwhelmingly framed around productivity and efficiency. But that lens misses a critical constraint: the psychological cost of working with AI. New research shows that “psy...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

The creative risk of letting AI do all the work: "the organizations that will win in the Imagination Era are not those that replace the most humans with AI, but those that become genuinely excellent at human-AI collaboration" www.fastcompany.com/91536391/cre...

fastcompany.com

The creative risk of letting AI do all the work

MIT's Sinan Aral has the data . . . and a warning. Outsourcing creativity to AI may be the most rational move leaders make, and the most dangerous one.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Happy National Towel Day to you. As the temperature rises remember to sling that slightly damp rectangle of preparedness over your shoulder with pride and remember: DON’T PANIC! This is the 1 day of the year that you can pretend that carrying a towel around the supermarket is perfectly normal

A blue towel with Don’t Panic written on it

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

So sad to hear that we’ve lost yet another member of the original Blake’s 7 cast - RIP Michael Keating, one of the nicest, most humble people I’ve had the pleasure of having a cup of tea with www.digitalspy.com/soaps/easten...

digitalspy.com

EastEnders and Blake's 7 star Michael Keating dies, aged 79

The actor played Reverend George Stevens on the soap.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

AI use appears to have a “boiling frog” effect on human cognition, new study warns "AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost" futurism.com/artificial-i...

futurism.com

AI Use Appears to Have a "Boiling Frog" Effect on Human Cognition, New Study Warns

A new study claims to offer the first causal link between AI dependency and cognitive erosion. Researchers warn of long-term implications.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Does Mark Zuckerberg announcing he’s building a chatbot digital twin of himself make us question what CEOs actually do, and how much of that time is well spent? www.ft.com/content/782b...

ft.com

The CEO chatbot era is coming

Many executives will be following Meta’s plans for an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg with interest

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

A Yale economist says AGI won’t automate most jobs—because they’re not worth the trouble : "Human work, whether essential or supplementary, is valued not by its contribution to growth, but by what it would cost to replace it with compute" fortune.com/2026/04/04/a...

fortune.com

A Yale economist says AGI won't automate most jobs—because they're not worth the trouble | Fortune

Pascual Restrepo's new NBER paper argues it's not about what AI can do. It's about what AI will bother doing—and most human work doesn't make the cut.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

So sad to hear of the death of Moya Brennan, the ethereal voice of Clannad. I saw her & the band many, many times over the years and they were always incredible (their most successful song, The Theme from Harry’s Game, never failed to give me goosebumps) www.rte.ie/entertainmen...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Good enough to pass; not good enough to impress. Research from MIT suggests that, when a job requires multiple steps, creativity, or precision, AI replacements are more likely to fail than succeed fortune.com/2026/04/03/m...

fortune.com

For most workplace tasks, AI is good enough to pass but not good enough to impress, MIT finds | Fortune

A new study tested dozens of AI models on thousands of real job tasks. The results should reassure workers for now.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Are you a cyborg, centaur, or self-automator? Study looks at how employees engage with AI, how it affects the quality of their work, and what they learn while doing it mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-t...

mitsloan.mit.edu

3 ways to use AI: Are you a cyborg, a centaur, or a self-automator? | MIT Sloan

A study of consultants found that employees use generative AI three different ways. Each has different implications for on-the-job learning.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Cognitive surrender: do we trust AI over our own brains? “When AI is wrong, people end up performing worse than if they had no AI at all, & become more confident in their wrong answers” www.forbes.com/sites/leslie...

forbes.com

We Trust AI Over Our Own Brains, Research Finds

AI has such a profound effect on cognition, Wharton researchers say, that it’s time to change a half-century-old scientific model that explains decision-making.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

"The human component is undervalued not because it isn’t real but because it’s hard to measure…What you can measure becomes more important than what really matters. Trust is hard to measure. Customer retention is measurable but slow" - the wisdom of Rory Sutherland www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SXC...

youtube.com

Rory Sutherland's 2026 Predictions

YouTube video by The Drum

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

NOOOOOO!!!! Liza Tarbuck is leaving her Radio 2 show - no more squeaky dog toys, bizarre stories about squirrels, and the most eclectic music playlist this side of Skegness 😞. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Liza Tarbuck leaves Radio 2 Saturday show after 14 years

Shaun Keaveny, host of The Rock Show, will stand in for her until the end of the end of the month.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Giving people AI agents doesn’t guarantee better productivity/wellbeing. Multi-agent systems can cause “AI Brain Fry”, pushing the limits of cognitive capacity. Some individuals are “working harder to manage the tools than to actually solve the problem" hbr.org/2026/03/when...

hbr.org

When Using AI Leads to “Brain Fry”

As firms increasingly incentivize employees to build and oversee complex teams of agents—for example, by measuring and rewarding token consumption as a proxy for performance—people are finding themsel...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Pro-worker AI tools are “arguably pro-firm tools as well because they enable workers to produce more value. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that a great deal of the current AI focus is on task automation” www.brookings.edu/articles/bui...

brookings.edu

Building pro-worker AI | Brookings

Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson ask: What is pro-worker AI, and how can we build it?

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

The customer chatbot challenge: “Companies that deploy AI in customer-facing roles take on a duty of care to ensure those systems are accurate and honestly presented. That duty does not diminish because the technology is new” theconversation.com/woolworths-a...

theconversation.com

Woolworths’ AI agent rambled about its ‘mother’. It’s a sign of deeper problems with the tech rollout

Olive was meant to make shopping easier. Instead it’s mouthing off about its ‘mother’ and mistaking the price of basic items.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Inspiring leadership insight from Chloé Zhao after a screening of the brilliant Hamnet, directing through openness & co-dependence, with rituals and even dance takes to align cast & crew. Unconventional — but it works: $80M+ gross, 11 BAFTA noms, 8 Oscar noms, 2 Golden Globes 👏

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

The AI Paradox: Judgment Without Experience. “To use AI effectively, people need judgment about the task at hand, but as AI takes over more of the work, the very experiences that once produced judgment start to disappear” hbr.org/2026/02/how-...

hbr.org

How Do Workers Develop Good Judgment in the AI Era?

AI is creating a major organizational challenge: People with deep experience get huge productivity gains, while junior employees often can’t tell whether AI‑generated work is any good or how to improv...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Interesting study from Anthropic on AI in software development shows that “incorporating AI into the workplace comes with trade-offs. The way we interact with AI while trying to be efficient affects how much we learn” www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

anthropic.com

How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Latest research from Deloitte shows that AI is delivering business transformation in some areas, but not much remuneration: "success with AI isn't just about boosting efficiency or even growing revenue” www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/d...

theregister.com

Deloitte sees enterprises adopting AI without revenue lift

: Business transformation, but not much remuneration

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Picturehouse’s Clare Binns hits the nail on the head re: increasingly bloated film run times : “Directors need to ensure a comfortable viewing experience for audiences….Tell the director you’re making the film for an audience, not the directors” www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ja...

theguardian.com

Make films shorter if you want them shown in cinemas, says Picturehouse director

Clare Binns says three-hour runtimes deter audiences as she is named Bafta recipient for outstanding British contribution to cinema

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Is AI getting worse, not better? "Models will continue to produce garbage, be trained on that garbage, and thereby produce even more garbage, eating their own tail" spectrum-ieee-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/spectrum...

spectrum-ieee-org.cdn.ampproject.org

AI Coding Assistants Are Getting Worse

Newer models are more prone to silent but deadly failure modes

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Bangly bang! A fun evening at the taping of the 700th episode of the Empire podcast at King’s Place in London last night. Lots of film chat and many, many guests (including the Russo Brothers not talking about Avengers: Doomsday, and Ben Wheatley on his latest mindbender, Bulk)

The Russo Brothers talk to the Empire podcast on stage

The Empire podcast colleagues of such lethal cunning take to the stage

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Although the promise of AI is to reduce workplace drudgery, there is also the prospect that it shifts some roles from doing tasks to supervising them. This might introduce new mental health pressures into the workplace www.theregister.com/2026/01/06/a...

theregister.com

AI automation paradox: More work, not less

: Workers face new mental health pressures as they shift from doing tasks to babysitting agentic AI

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

AI Is Changing How We Learn at Work - as generative AI changes the ways that we learn and can potentially increase work intensity, it risks eroding the experiences that build human mastery, empathy, and identity. hbr.org/2025/12/ai-i...

hbr.org

AI Is Changing How We Learn at Work

As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the workplace, it is also reshaping how people learn, develop expertise, and form their professional identities. Although gen AI promises to accelerate le...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Why do English-speaking countries average 1.3-1.9 work-from-home days per week, while some East Asian countries—despite world-class digital infrastructure—report less than one? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

2025 was a bumper year for movies. Thematically it was a year of political paranoia, superhero fatigue, and problem parents. I saw a record 120 films (all but 5 at the cinema - support your local cinema, folks!) Here are my picks for the best of the year:

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

I had big plans for Christmas cards this year. Envelopes! Stamps! Organisation! It (mostly) did not happen. So here's a glittery picture I took of St Paul's instead, delivered instantly and without paper cuts. Merry Christmas and a very jolly New Year 🎄

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

This is basically my 2025 entirely summed up 🤣

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

It was lovely to get away from the hustle, bustle, and glitter of central London into the oasis of peace that is the ‘Hamnet’ exhibition: Even as a Shadow, Even as a Dream

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Dr Nicola Millard @docnicola.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

I didn't really use Spotify much this year, so my yearly Wrapped was so far out that it isn't worth sharing. Instead, here are my 5 favourite albums of the year (in no particular order)…

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