Sign in

Rob Farrow

@rfarrow.bsky.social
1.3K followers 712 following 206 posts

Professor of Critical Educational Technology The Open University (UK) Editor, jime.open.ac.uk Co-Director, go-gn.net scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user… (No DMs)

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Mollie Katzen @molliekatzen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
There are more Cornell frat boys accused of raping one woman than there are trans athletes competing in all of NCAA sports.
121089325
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Inspirational Skeletor @skeletorinspires.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Make it exist first. You can make it good later. Says Skeletor thinking this octopus staff needs some more work.
14844213
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It is a profound indictment of most media coverage of Big Tech that your best bet for getting an informed understanding of AI and its dangers is following a decently curated list of Bluesky shitposters
1030686
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Dr. Chinasa T. Okolo @chinasa.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"If Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI giants want to keep referring to themselves as labs, they should adhere to scientific best practices: open-sourcing code, preregistering studies, and, most important, subjecting research to independent peer review." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
There’s No Such Thing as an AI ‘Lab’
The term lends an air of scientific rigor to what are really billion-dollar corporations.
06222
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Many out there want to treat AI in education seriously. Then there's this from *Napster*. "Trained on a teacher’s material, courses, and papers, these digital twins will live online, becoming a 'copy of yourself that you can then use to scale your time.'” www.wired.com/story/napste...
wired.com
Napster Is Back, and It Wants to Digitally Clone Teachers
Once the music industry’s biggest headache, Napster’s next act is bringing AI to the classroom.
32613
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Neil Turkewitz @neilturkewitz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
“A Microsoft executive called the training of AI models the ‘largest theft of labor in human history.’ In another instance…that same executive called it ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.’” @gerritd.bsky.social @scottnover.bsky.social 👀 @kint.bsky.social
wapo.st
Microsoft exec called AI the ‘largest theft of labor’ in history, court records show
The quote headlined an unsealed document in the New York Times’s copyright case against Microsoft and OpenAI.
094
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 17/09/2026
“A senior executive at Microsoft said A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’ and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”
orlandosentinel.com
Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’
The admission appeared in a newly unredacted filing in the landmark copyright infringement legal battle playing out between newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI...
9555432156
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1
4253422317
Reposted by Rob Farrow
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
145136954892
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Erik Angner @erikangner.com · 12/09/2026
The Prime Minister of Sweden 🇸🇪 Ulf Kristersson just dismissed my colleague Åsa Wikforss – Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm University, Member of the Swedish Academy and the Royal Academy of the Sciences, and celebrated author of numerous books – as "princess" 🧵
3219127
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Seriously, what percentage of the current economy is basically people pointing a (metaphorical) gun at higher ed and demanding money?
33811
Reposted by Rob Farrow
August J. Pollak @augustjpollak.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A reminder that evangelical doctrine, up to and including the wildly popular Left Behind book series where the Democratic president essentially does exactly this, has for decades insisted this is how the antichrist will reveal himself.
17925287
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
CFP: Open education principles between the tension of humans and machines in the Generative AI era Smart Learning Environments, deadline 30th December 2026. Share with your friends in #AI, #openeducation, #OER, #OEP, #OEGlobal26, #OpenEd26, #edtech, #aied etc. link.springer.com/collections/...
021
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I've added a glossary to my website to consolidate the themes I have been working with across various pieces over the years in a single place with concise definitions, clarifications, and links, all in citable formats. www.cyberneticforests.com/glossary-of-...
cyberneticforests.com
Eryk Salvaggio: Critical AI & Culture | Glossary — Cybernetic Forests.
Stochastic Flocks, Systems From Nowhere and other citable terms for describing AI systems without borrowing from cognition, by Eryk Salvaggio.
34518
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
Guys but it's the fictional machine god that needs to be regulated and that we should worry about. prospect.org/2026/09/09/a...
prospect.org
Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists - The American Prospect
New hires and comments in interviews show that the AI giant is using its capabilities against dissenters.
623397
Reposted by Rob Farrow
sepoy @sepoy.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This is an insane detail in this report on cheating! nymag.com/intelligence...
In the meantime, many schools have turned to surveillance.
Owen, a junior at Princeton
familiar with its Honor Committee, says the school often catches AI cheats by spying on internet use. Students' browsing histories are pulled from the campus network and scanned for recent visits to ChatGPT or Claude. If you whipped out your phone during a quiz, accessing a model on the building's Wi-Fi, you will likely be busted. While every case requires multiple pieces of evidence, and Princeton says it does not pull students' search histories unless they are already under investigation, Owen says the network logs have become critical in proving academic dishonesty. Every case he's been aware of lately has leaned on them.
122955
Reposted by Rob Farrow
The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Have seen this Nature piece about the effects of X's algorithm mentioned again and it bears repeating; exposure to a right wing algorithm makes you - measurably and predictably - more right wing, even after you stop using it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature
Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...
4239361777
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Imagine if you just gave mathematicians 22 million dollars
141598359
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
On its 60th anniversary, thanks to #startrek for popularising the concept of fully automated luxury gay space communism
110
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
i am a tech company from 2026. i am called nazgul after the evil soulless gouls from the lord of the rings that go around killing people. i have no viable products and no profits. my ceo is a crazy drug addict who keeps talking about war and jesus christ on tv. give me a trillion of your tax dollars
126256
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026
Speaking of plagiarism: www.scientificamerican.com/article/open...
scientificamerican.com
OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say
OpenAI released 10 AI-generated results over the weekend. Some mathematicians are unhappy with their approach
12958393
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
👇🎯
1356
Reposted by Rob Farrow
John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 06/09/2026
So in one week: 1) Reform get stung for dodgy finances, and the regulators play pass the parcel about enforcement 2) Farage announces plans to largely dismantle independent scrutiny of govt, and barely any press discussion of it 3) Masked thugs blockade a port, with narry a word from senior govt
491821642
Reposted by Rob Farrow
✨ˢᵗᵒⁿᵉᵈ // STAR WARS✨ @stonedstarwars.com · 05/09/2026
George Lucas. Prophet.
1395
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 05/09/2026
This is interesting. You get assigned to being born at a random place and time in history, to see what a typical person's life might have been like then. Unfortunately I was born in 1403 in the valley of Mexico and died at age 4 from dysentery.
anyhumanever.com
Any Human Ever
One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived.
54547188
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 02/09/2026
The US Department of Justice claimed that limiting OpenAI's ability to train its models using millions of articles would 'hinder American prosperity and economic mobility'. ft.trib.al/uHc3dvZ
184516
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Transitional agreements...?
000
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Ashley @ashleysays.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Chefs kiss
12455331679
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Ross Johnson @rosserford.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We’re going to hear about how everyone loved Dolly, and that feels true. But it’s good to remember, and to her credit, that she was attacked for her AIDS activism, her vaccine advocacy, her LGBTQ+ support and even, more recently, for her reading initiatives. She ALWAYS stood firm when it mattered.
326301906759
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
posted in the lefty folk group chat
Karl Marks, the communist manifesto, Dolly Parton, 9-5
43246789
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Turrican II
000
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I got tired of waiting for the journalists at @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social to cover this (it IS summer), but this is to say that ALL the staff members in Women & Gender Studies here were laid off last week, on the top of the cutting of 5 lecturer positions in the program last year.+
21920551
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Fereshte Goshtasbpour SFHEA @gfereshte.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Join us to earn a PG Cert in Researching Digital Education while preparing a PhD or EdD proposal or an application for a funded project! Alternatively, you can earn the certificate and continue on to our MA in Online Teaching (@oumaot) www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate... #digitaleducation #CPD #OUMAOT
014
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Will raindancing come into fashion?
010
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
391572915
Rob Farrow @rfarrow.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
My news is that I have been promoted to full professor at The Open University. I will take up the title of 'Professor of Critical Educational Technology' in reflection of my disciplinary trajectory and distinctive approach to research. Grateful to all those who helped on the journey!
3151
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 12/08/2026
Incredible. When E—n M—k & his crew obliterated USAID in a weekend, they deleted a vast trove of publicly-funded knowledge: the Development Experience Clearinghouse. A Canadian high school student (!) happened to have downloaded the entire thing for a project. AidData has now posted it for all.
aiddata.org
Before reimagining development data, remember what we’ve learned
Why we’re publishing a free, searchable, and ungated archive featuring a quarter-century of USAID evaluation reports.
374442808
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
“In the 1990s + 2000s, gov’ts, uni’s, + libraries—the institutions that historically bore responsibility for organizing + preserving public knwldg—declined to, or were prevented from, bldg the digital infrastructure plainly required by an age when democracy seemed ascendant + universally desirable”
bostonreview.net
What Was the Internet?
As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.
215954
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 12/08/2026
This is actually what chatgpt is for.
futurism.com
Homeschool Parents Are Planning Lessons With ChatGPT, Which Will Churn Out Anti-Evolution Curriculums With No Pushback
Homeschooling was already a fraught practice, even before parents began turning to ChatGPT to plan out their lessons.
1325675
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Banning Maus is obscene.
1228046
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Aras Bozkurt @arasbozkurt.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Must-read alert! A Critical Scholarly Conversation with Tony Bates: Insights on the Future of Online and Distance Education w/ @openpraxis.bsky.social www.researchgate.net/publication/...
researchgate.net
(PDF) A Critical Scholarly Conversation with Tony Bates: Insights on the Future of Online and Distance Education
PDF | This scholarly conversation features Dr. Tony Bates, a leading voice in educational technology, discussing the future of online and digital... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ...
032
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Lee West @whodat35.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
WTF? Amazon received a permit from the state of #Texas allowing its new gas power plant to emit 33 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — the largest single source of pollution in the United States. newrepublic.com/post/214111/...
newrepublic.com
Amazon Is Creating the Biggest Pollution Source in the Entire Country
Amazon has bought a site in Texas where it plans to build a data center campus.
78087355647
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 07/08/2026
It's funny that Elsevier can simply retract *650* papers because of "compromised peer review, authorship irregularities, tortured phrases and citation manipulation" and then Clarivate are satisfied and hand out an impact factor.
retractionwatch.com
Clarivate removes hold on mega-journal Heliyon after internal audit, 650+ retractions
Clarivate has lifted its hold on Heliyon after the journal’s internal audit led to over 1,000 retractions, expressions of concern and corrections. As a result, the journal will receive an impact fa…
11610
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Looks like if you're one of the 300miliion who ever took a MOOC with Coursera or Udemy, your data just got turned into assets for Andrew Ng's latest "AI native" edtech "personalized learning" scheme, which Coursera just invested $100m in. investor.coursera.com/news/news-de...
Our strategic investment in LearnVector has the potential to be a force multiplier for our growth. Andrew's unmatched AI expertise pairs his agentic AI with our platform and assets that turn learning into validated mastery — a clear competitive advantage that we believe can accelerate our business and expand the impact we deliver for individuals and enterprises around the world.
— Greg Hart, CEO, Coursera 

Source https://learnvector.ai/ Building on the broader reach we’ve gained through Udemy, this investment reflects our conviction that AI can help grow the market itself by making learning more continuous, more personal, and more embedded in people’s daily lives. In other words, we’re focused on creating a much bigger opportunity for learning overall.

As LearnVector develops new AI-native learning experiences, we’re exploring powerful ways to combine those advances with Coursera’s unique strengths: trusted content, insights from more than 300 million learners, and one of the world’s largest ecosystems of university and industry partners. 

Source https://blog.coursera.org/coursera-invests-in-learnvector-to-build-the-future-of-ai-native-learning/
912878
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.
ft.com
Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says
LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance
9671278
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Pat McGovern @patmcgovern.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Came across the Jason Arday affair at the end of a bad week for #sociology Still reading the details but let say that I have great regard for Martyn Hammersley’s work and especially his efforts to raise standards in qualitative research. retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/c...
retractionwatch.com
Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm
Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…
041
Reposted by Rob Farrow
Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 01/08/2026
This post and the accompanying paper are worth reading. There is definitely an interesting lineage of open science that leads from philanthro-capital to present-day "gold standard science", but it's also worth pointing out this is only one lineage in a pretty complicated genealogy of open research.
1106