iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 1h

@jamesrball.com Hi James, hope all is well. Belatedly noticed that the finished Gay Times piece is out and I'd love to read it, you don't have a gift link to share do you? Ty :)

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Roa Powell @roapowell.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The UK is spending £500 million to build British AI champions while leaving in place a market structure that will see them acquired or outcompeted. New report today on digital competition for growth and sovereignty - with polling of 417 UK businesses that rely on tech. Here's what they told us 1/6

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Ada Lovelace Institute @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

What should the new UK government do to increase public control over AI and its infrastructure for development and deployment? In a new blog post, Matt Davies (@halcyene.bsky.social) outlines the key steps government can take to improve leverage. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/taking-...

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Taking back control?

A pragmatic AI agenda for the new UK government

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Hughster @hughster.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

From Liz Kendall's cabinet departure letter, posted on… you guessed it… X

As DSIT Secretary *I have been proud to stand up to Elon Musk and Grok*, ban nudification apps and help make the online world world safer for women and girls. Throughout my career I have championed women's equality, which is why I established the Women in Tech taskforce and launched the Women in Research Charter: to give women a fair shot and make science and tech work for all.

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a rare photo of sean connery signed by roger moore @steamedhamms.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

binface vs farage vs lawrence fox is like el classico for “different ways your mate’s dad could end up taking the divorce”

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Matt Davies @halcyene.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Today we publish 📏𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐔𝐏📏, a new @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social briefing on AI and public sector productivity. We find: ⚖️The link between measurement and real-world outcomes is unclear 📐Workers and citizens are absent from research design ⏲️Industry shapes what gets researched Read more:

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Measuring up

Evaluating claims about AI and productivity in the UK public sector

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State of the Future @sotf.org.uk · 11/03/2026

Two weeks today! Sign up for the latest @transformgovtalks.bsky.social with: @laragroves.bsky.social, @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social on www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/scrib... Owen from the ICO on ico.org.uk/about-the-ic... In person (central London) or online 👇

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

'it’s interesting to compare how hard it was to differentiate a web browser with how hard it is today to differentiate a chatbot' Fab piece from @thebenedictevans.bsky.social asking hard Qs of OpenAI when its tech is similar to other labs and has no network effects www.ben-evans.com/benedictevan...

ben-evans.com

How will OpenAI compete? — Benedict Evans

OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are lever...

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

not to be a massive bore but in these times of A) received inter-gender polarisation and b) AI sloppified media/textual offerings it does feel insane to keep chiding men for... reading books www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

newyorker.com

The Curious Notoriety of “Performative Reading”

Is the term a new way of calling people pretentious, or does it reflect a deprioritization of the written word?

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Ada Lovelace Institute @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

🎄All we want for Christmas is for AI regulation to work for people and society. Our new polling shows the UK public are concerned that tech companies’ needs are being prioritised over their own when it comes to AI regulation. Read the full findings ⬇️ www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

84% of the UK public are concerned about the government putting technology sector needs ahead of the public when regulating AI. Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8–24 September 2025

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

academia friends, anyone got experience using Open Review as a Programme Chair? help needed please!

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tamara nopper @tamaranopper.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

In the intro issue of New Left Review, Stuart Hall noted, “The humanist strengths of socialism—which are the foundations for a genuinely popular socialist movement—must be developed in cultural and social terms, as well as in economic and political.“ Zohran Kwame Mamdani‘s campaign got the point!

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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michael veale @michae.lv · 01/10/2025

Either real-time bidding data or app SDK data is being bought and used by ICE to seize people from the streets. If you didn’t believe that the adtech stack is a human rights concern, I’m not sure what more evidence you need. www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

404media.co

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

It would be good if the only political pushback against Nigel Farage's plans to mass deport hundreds of thousands of our neighbours, friends, family and colleagues didn't just come from a handful of backbench MPs and one regional mayor

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Rob 🏳️‍🌈 @rotster.net · 13/09/2025

Met Police’s policy on when they use oppressive facial recognition technology is made pretty clear here… ✅ Black community celebration / event ❌ White supremacist rally

From BBC live news ticker:

Police are not using live facial recognition in its policing of the 'Unite the Kingdom' demonstration which is beginning on London's south bank, reports the PA news agency.
It said:
• We're using a mobile CCTV van to help monitor the build up of crowds.
Officers have been asked if it's using 'live facial recognition' - we can confirm it is not.
The live facial recognition technology - which captures people's faces in real-time CCTV cameras - was used in the policing operation at the Notting
Hill carnival.

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Kendra Albert @kendraserra.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

alignmentalignment.ai

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers

We align the aligners

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Novelty Cistern @noveltycistern.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

hey im putting something together for my boss for his birthday. yeah can you write a letter or better yet an insane poem or horrifying drawing about the unspeakable crimes you all have committed together

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Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte @turnbulldugarte.com · 05/09/2025

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

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Jeni Tennison @jenitennison.com · 04/09/2025

Please apply for / pass on this vacancy with @tuc.org.uk! You'll be working with the brilliant @adamc-c.bsky.social and with us @connectedbydata.org to ensure workers' voices are an effective countervailing force that shape the adoption of AI. tuc.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/...

tuc.current-vacancies.com

Policy and Campaigns Officer - London

Policy & Campaigns Officer, Technology and Artificial Intelligence Grade 6 £44,228 per annum (pro rata), plus London Weighting £6,154 per annum (pro rata) Temporary – 18 months, Four days (28 hours)...

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Ian Betteridge @ianbetteridge.com · 03/09/2025

1. Incitement to violence is a serious offence, carrying a sentence of up to six months in prison. 2. What's it got to do with the health secretary? 3. I'm sure if I posted that Wes Streeting needed a good kicking, he would be very eager to send the cops round. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Police should focus on ‘streets not tweets’, says Wes Streeting after Graham Linehan arrest

Health secretary criticises Tory policing record after Father Ted co-creator arrested over posts on transgender issues

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Keir Starmer: cut me and I bleed union j

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

the level of disorder on show in the UK right now in terms of kneejerk conspirational thinking against every possible intervention or source of authority is quite the concern!!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Spending on AI data centers is now so great that it’s crowding out investment in housing and other critical parts of the real economy, through higher energy costs and by propping up interest rates, argues The Economist economist.com/finance-and-...

The trouble is that the very sector powering so much of America’s economic growth is squeezing the rest of its output. Housebuilders, for instance, cannot afford to be blithe about higher borrowing costs. Data centres have also constrained the rest of the economy by keeping energy prices high. Average American electricity bills have risen by 7% so far in 2025, at least in part because of the extra strain data centres have put on the grid.

Chart showing investment in AI infrastructure shooting up as investment in other parts of the economy declines

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David Wearing @davidwearing.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Far right demagoguery - thanks to crucial, repeated validation from the political mainstream - has painted a target on the back of every man of colour in this country. Everyone knows what is likely to happen next.

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Matt Davies @halcyene.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Interesting work from Turing, adding to the growing evidence that significant performance gains — and possibly real-world utility — can still be gleaned from smaller and previous-generation foundation models www.turing.ac.uk/blog/why-we-...

turing.ac.uk

Why we still need small language models – even in the age of frontier AI

Lean, locally run models can unlock huge benefits for public sector and compute-constrained environments

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

resonates with what we're finding in forthcoming Ada research on transcription tools in social work. these tools are being rolled out without systematic evaluation, often with a singular theory of change -'productivity gains' - which risks obscuring other important impacts on work & care

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Transcribing trust

Evaluating the use of AI in social care

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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Last month, Anas al-Sharif sounded the alarm on starvation in Gaza. Israel accused him of terrorism. "We warned this felt like a precursor to justify assassination," said Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today he was killed in a targeted strike on a tent housing reporters.

aljazeera.com

Israel murders five Al Jazeera staff in Gaza, including Anas al-Sharif

Al-Sharif was killed along with Mohammed Qreiqeh two cameramen and an assistant in an Israeli attack on Gaza City.

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David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Arresting 400+ people for the "terrorist" offence of protesting against mass murder while large segments of the right are openly encouraging riots against immigrants is a tale of a very unhappy country and government.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

'It is less that AI is the cause of degradation in reading and thinking, and more that the creation of a culture that views knowledge primarily in an instrumental manner has made it easier to misuse AI.'

observer.co.uk

AI thrives where education has been devalued | The Observer

A culture that views knowledge as a means to an end invites the misuse of new technology

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

fascinating paper on 'character training' LLMs - models fine-tuned to be 'warmer' are significantly more likely to promote conspiracy theories or validate incorrect facts, particularly when users express sadness 🤯 arxiv.org/abs/2507.21919

arxiv.org

Training language models to be warm and empathetic makes them less reliable and more sycophantic

Artificial intelligence (AI) developers are increasingly building language models with warm and empathetic personas that millions of people now use for advice, therapy, and companionship. Here, we sho...

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped?

I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry.

Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto.

It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

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michael veale @michae.lv · 31/07/2025

The Online Safety Act assumes that all tech, social networks, etc, are run by big tech, raking in profit from illegal advertising. Community-run and funded networks/sites — real non-Big Tech alternatives — are left in the dirt. I have never seen OSA proponents consider their needs or their value.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

This, and it doesn't work. Now, it is possible to address the harms of mass engagement-driven platforms. But doing so requires pushing back on the core biz models of the platforms, not tinkering on the edges w surveillant 'solutions' that increase surveillance w/o addressing the root cause.

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Kobi Hackenburg @kobihackenburg.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues. We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more! 🧵:

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

'Today's career incentives & social norms prize solutions to scientific problems over human understanding [...] If we use AI to short circuit this process of understanding, that is like using a forklift at the gym. You can lift heavier weights with it, sure, but that's not why you go to the gym.'

aisnakeoil.com

Could AI slow science?

Confronting the production-progress paradox

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

just one more supply side economics please bro trust me this time it will fix everything. just some more trickle for my economics please www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

Reeves to say cuts to City red tape will bring trickle-down benefits to households

Chancellor to announce raft of deregulation changes as City regulators move to pare back transparency rules

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

It's out! New @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social and @cdt.org report exploring what 'calling in the professionals' might achieve for AI assurance www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/report/going...

adalovelaceinstitute.org

Going pro?

Considerations for the emerging field of AI assurance

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madoc cairns @madoc.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Ahead of the expected proscription of Palestine Action - the first time a protest group has been legally redefined as terrorist - I went through the Hansard of the 2000 Act they're being banned under. Turns out MPs were assured the law wouldn't be applied this way. Thread 🧵🔽

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

first £8 pint, harrowing threshold breached. screaming crying throwing up

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Reuben Binns @rdbinns.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

New paper out today, accepted at #FAccT2025, led by Jake Stein and me: "Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber's Algorithmic Pay and Pricing" arxiv.org/abs/2506.15278 Over the last 3 years, we've been working with @workerinfox.bsky.social to audit Uber's algorithms. 1/

arxiv.org

Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber's Algorithmic Pay and Pricing

Ride-sharing platforms like Uber market themselves as enabling `flexibility' for their workforce, meaning that drivers are expected to anticipate when and where the algorithm will allocate them jobs, ...

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I too hope to have novel insights next year, at the same small small price of $10billion

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

"If human goals and preferences become increasingly co-constructed through interaction with AI systems[...] then AI safety requires paying as much attention to the psychology of human-AI relationships as the wider societal factors and technical methods of alignment" arxiv.org/pdf/2502.02528

arxiv.org

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Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

The Guardian story does not mention that the EHRC's Akua Reindorf has previously advised and represented Sex Matters and been instructed by LGB Alliance. Seems relevant.

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Lara Groves @laragroves.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

"Governments should view companies that drape their products in a democratic banner with great scepticism. When Washington decides to weaponise technology access, partner countries will discover their “sovereign” infrastructure is anything but." www.ft.com/content/4b2a...

ft.com

The US government has most to gain from ‘OpenAI for countries’

Imagine how much leverage it will have if it can turn off artificial intelligence capabilities around the world

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

not to be histrionic but I kind of feel like the confluence of Trumpism, algorithmic social media, and LLMs have placed language and the fundamental proposition that words have meaning under unprecedented strain and it’s freaking me out more than a bit

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