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James Garforth

@jamesgarforth.bsky.social
175 followers 289 following 93 posts

Lecturer in Ethics, Society and Professionalism in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Proud associate of the Centre for Technomoral Futures.

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Reposted by James Garforth
Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I might write a little song about how standards don't fix anything without legal enforcement and routine safety inspections.
But we need to go further.
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Building on the meeting convened by His Majesty King Charles last week, I can announce today that l am going to put Al at the heart of the UK's G20 Presidency next year.
I look back at how we responded to the financial crisis back in 2008.
We moved quickly in the G20 and smaller groups to deliver an urgent, practical response.
We came together to agree principles - which everyone implemented at home in a way that was right for them. And it worked.
That is the kind of approach we need now.
So we will bring the right people together on the key issı
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And we will work towards agreeing a single set of global principles and standards to ensure the transparency and access we need to increase our preparedness - and to ensure that Al development is safe.
This will bring together welcome initiatives from others - like that proposed by Norway this week.
As His Majesty said, the task before us "is not merely to advance technology, but to ensure that it remains firmly in the service of humanity."
www.gov.uk
And I want to reassure un nush people that
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I have joined the significant number of people signed off for burnout at the moment. There are a few interwoven factors, but high among them is this: caring about teaching computing ethics against a backdrop of what industry/our departments are doing atm is soul-destroying. Take care of yourselves.
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Students are going to buy drugs anyway, so the University might as well become a dealer
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Ohh, THIS is what they meant by videogames encouraging violent behaviour
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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
And by the way, those tasks that some people say isn't really writing, or isn't really research, and so is outsourceable to the psychosis machine? It's not okay to use it for them, either. And those tasks ARE writing and research. Insight is an emergent property of doing the work. 5/5
buttondown.com
The 'I only use AI for...' fallacy
Hallo friends, and welcome, new readers! I hope you’re managing to navigate safely whatever weather challenges may have come your way this year. In today’s...
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Dr. Elinor Carmi @elinorcarmi.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
If you live in the UK please sign this petition against data centres! act.38degrees.org.uk/act/datacent...
act.38degrees.org.uk
Stop these monster data centres before they wreck our neighbourhoods!
Are you worried about this too?
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A great discussion of something @aggillespie.bsky.social also spoke about at our Refusal workshop in February. One of my rare sources of optimism is that students are often fully driving the push back on AI if only given the space to do so.
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Dr Kevin Guyan @kevinguyan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
📢 The Gender + Sexuality Data Lab is hiring a Research Assistant to join its project, ‘Box Breakers: Improving Organisational Data Practices for Minoritised Communities’.
Poster for the Box Breakers project showing workers at computers, all cast in a bright, lime green.Quote from Dr Kevin Guyan, Director of the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab, which reads: "The Box Breakers project aims to transform how data professionals understand and represent people whose identities exist beyond conventional categories."
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
In other news, OpenAI's car went rogue after they parked it on a hill and removed the handbrake
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Maybe universities could also learn from this?
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Something for @facct.bsky.social 2027?
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Anyway, my theory - FWIW - is that lots of the experienced and senior people who are hooked on LLMs are actually having a midlife crisis, and that spending money on Claude is cheaper than buying a Lambo buttondown.com/justenoughin...
buttondown.com
The Sports Car Theory of LLM Adoption
If LLMs make decision makers feel stupid, maybe they'll stop using them?
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
This is poetry
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19/06/2026
“Amazon, Walmart, Cisco, Uber and Meta are among early adopters that have introduced caps, discouraged wasteful use or pushed employees to cheaper models in a bid to keep AI spending under control.”
ft.com
‘We created a monster’: companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets
Amazon, Walmart and Uber are among early adopters that have introduced caps or discouraged wasteful activity
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
"Cars used to kill children, now we want a shot" (also the cars still kill children)
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 15/06/2026
Corporate needs you to find the difference between AI companies and social media companies...
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Every staff update in every university right now: 1. We are excited to announce a strategic investment of eleventeen squillion pounds in ACRONYM, a new AI-powered centre for the development of strategic acronyms. 2. Staff have until Friday to apply for enhanced Voluntary Death.
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David Slack @slack2thefuture.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Hilarious and deeply insightful writing by @brianphillips.lol.
Because the truth is, tech doesn't have an image problem. It doesn't have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What's wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn't successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What's wrong is that he's trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that's designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn't that you haven't told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.
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Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
You can either join your union, go to the meeting, and get in the fight, or you can watch them kill higher education in the US. This will not pass. There will not be a natural reset. You fight or die.
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Barrelhouse @barrelhouse.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy
ABOUT AI: 
Anyone who uses AI to write something they submit to us is a loser, and we want nothing to do with them.
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Dr Matt Mahmoudi @docmattmoudi.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...
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Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco @joshpizpom.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
EXC: Shock at Edinburgh Medical School as more than a dozen courses are to be cut, sparking fears of redundancies. One course that generated £500k in annual profit is being shut down. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2613266...
heraldscotland.com
Fury over 'unacceptable' closures of 'highly-regarded' med school programmes
The closure of the Science Communication and Public Engagement programme has drawn particular ire, with 130 offers rescinded.
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org
Screenshot of the Luddite Lab website. The word Luddite Lab is in the top left corner. The tables in the top read: Case Studies, Primers, Resource Library, Contact Us, and About. The text below reads: “The Luddite Lab Resource Hub provides resources for unions, labor organizations, and worker-organizers fighting AI and automation at work. The lab provides strategies for worker-led governance and oversight of new technology through case studies, primers, and a resource library.” Below, there are five cards: Case Studies (Stories from worker organizers resisting AI), Primers (Applied research insights into AI, automation, and the future of work), Resource Library (Additional resources from partners), Contact Us (Ways to connect with the Luddite Lab team), and About (About the Luddite Lab project and team)
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jesse, head of endorsement deals at Boingo Wireless @killgoldfish.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
my gf works corporate and is on a training about AI and there's a word cloud for "what do you use AI for." the largest word by far is "Nothing" and the trainer is PISSED
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Is this art?
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Alex Prichard @profalexp.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Good piece, brief and to the point from @drjogrady.bsky.social Gen Sec of UCU: “We are calling for direct government intervention before the crisis spirals further.” Intervention is cheaper than most think, and pound for pound excellent investment in our future economic prosperity.
politicshome.com
The government must intervene before the universities crisis worsens
During moments of political crisis it’s often said there are weeks when decades happen. This has been one such week.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
"People everywhere are picking up the mantle of collective resistance....Educators and students are pressuring their institutions. Victims and their families are suing. Tech employees themselves are campaigning. Group chats for more organizing abound. People are marching." - @karenhao.bsky.social
theguardian.com
The Elon Musk v Sam Altman battle is a distraction | Karen Hao
Fixating on questions of whether Altman is untrustworthy, or whether Musk is even less so distracts from a far deeper problem with AI
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 12/05/2026
folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI" the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI
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Dan McQuillan @danmcquillan.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Only one week until the first virtual assembly of our Critical AI Network “How do we break something that is already broken?”. Three days of quick-fire presentations + keynotes on AI in/as Education, AI in/as Law, Governance & Politics, The Ecology of AI/AI & the Environment cpct.uk/2026/05/09/p...
Logo for the The Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought (CPCT) at Goldsmiths
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Ash @queerash.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Labour MPs calling for an orderly transition but unfortunately their government needs to be at least 18 years old with four doctors to sign off first
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
An article from The Guardian:

‘She’s opening the bees!’ US beekeeper jailed for trying to save friend from eviction

Massachusetts woman set swarms of insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to evict elderly man with cancer

A beekeeper has been jailed for six months after she set swarms of her insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to carry out an eviction at a friend’s house.

Rebecca Woods insisted she only released her truckload of hives to allow the bees to enjoy the “lovely, flowering landscape” near the home of an elderly friend and cancer patient.

But a district court in Springfield, Massachusetts, heard that Woods, 59, admitted under questioning that she was trying to save him from eviction by freeing the bees in the presence of the deputies who had shown up to serve papers.
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
having the opportunity to feign surprise and drop this line would give me a kind of high no drug could reproduce
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
In their defense, there's a lot of duplication of effort when every other government team is _also_ ignoring all of the evidence
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
The silver lining here is that this government is so broadly awful and unpopular that hopefully AI will suffer by association
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Cambridge Digital Humanities @camdighum.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
We're delighted to share that we've extended the application deadline for our next Cambridge Data School, Teaching and Learning Critically in an Age of Generative AI. Get your application in by 1 May 2026 to be in with a chance of joining our next cohort 💡 Apply: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/events/41023/
Poster with photo of flat lay of chalkboard, chalk, toy car, toy soldiers, electronic items.
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 17/04/2026
if you are wondering "but what is it good for then and why are companies pushing it so hard" the answers are "it is good for centralizing power and rationalizing harm" and "because it is good for centralizing power and rationalizing harm"
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Dr Zena Assaad @zenaassaad.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
The ceasefire was supposed to include Lebanon, but instead, Israel attacked Lebanon 100 times in 10 minutes and massacred hundreds of people under the tired and unsubstantiated guise of a war on terror. apnews.com/article/iran...
apnews.com
Ceasefire is threatened as Israel expands Lebanon strikes and Iran closes strait again
A ceasefire deal to pause the war in Iran appears to be hanging by a thread after the Islamic Republic closed the Strait of Hormuz again in response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon.
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Mia Sato @miasato.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
New: 150 unionized ProPublica workers are on strike TODAY over AI, layoff protections, wages, and more. They're asking readers to not visit ProPublica or engage with content on other platforms. It's the first work stoppage of its kind at the newsroom. www.theverge.com/news/908401/...
theverge.com
Unionized ProPublica staff are on strike over AI, layoffs, and wages
A key issue is protections against layoffs from AI
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Anchovy Georgiev @pommesdeguerre.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
I can’t think of any historical equivalents to the universal glee here. It’s like Iraq striking a vuvuzela factory in the early 2000s
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...
publicbooks.org
Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books
We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
🧵
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
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
elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate
The Philosophy Department in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences is seeking a full time, fixed term Postdoctoral Research Associate. This post is available from May 2026.
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Deeply grateful to the UK AI and Robotics research community for this Leadership Award. So many wonderful researchers were honoured with me tonight - my own award would not be possible without my amazing @braiduk.bsky.social @technomoralfutures.bsky.social @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social colleagues
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James Garforth @jamesgarforth.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
If this destroys grammarly that would be fabulous
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 10/03/2026
This is why AI "inspiration" - slop outputs fed into new chatbots - creates an near-immediate systemic collapse, and also why tech companies want to turn human creatives into little piggies that do nothing but feed the slop machine, because they *know* it's unique and valuable
nymag.com
The Laid-off Scientists and Lawyers Training AI to Steal Their Careers
Experienced white-collar workers are now part of a miserable gig economy.
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Critical AI https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/issue @criticalai-journal.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Three cheers for the House of Lords. This far from the the first time in their modern history that they have functioned as a check on the tendency of governments to comply with the industry pressure.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
"The task of AI education, then, is not merely to teach technical competence, but to cultivate the political imagination and collective capacities necessary to contest and reshape technological power," write Jan‐Philipp Siebold, Annemarie Witschas, and Rainer Mühlhoff.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
When the Future Feels Foreclosed: AI Resignation and the Power to Act
This article develops the concept of ‘AI resignation’ to capture how young people encounter AI not only as a helpful or flawed tool, but as an overpowering and seemingly inevitable force that can for....
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
I don’t think most academics realise that we’re way past the ‘AI concerns me’ phase and in the middle of a full scale apocalyptic war waged by tech corporations. We must fight for our lives and for everything we hold dear. AI should be exposed, shamed, and rejected in every facet of our profession.
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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
surely we can teach the children how to ethically use this product designed for unethical use by unethical people
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Centre for Technomoral Futures @technomoralfutures.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
In case you missed it, the recording of 'Technomoral Conversations: What's the Story with AI? AI Narratives and Counter-Narratives' with @abeba.bsky.social @johnthornhill.bsky.social @amoorelouise.bsky.social & @alex-taylor.bsky.social is available now! Watch the event recording 👇 edin.ac/4q8TXsZ
edin.ac
Technomoral Conversations: What’s the Story with AI? AI Narratives and Counter-Narratives — Centre for Technomoral Futures
During this fireside chat, we will hear insights from experts across academia and industry on the dominant narratives surrounding AI, and what alternative stories can and are being told about AI and i...
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