Ian Graham

"Gouged" is OUT! I started this book angry about all the ways corporations are ripping us off. I finished it hopeful, because once you know how they're doing it—you can start to fight back. Thanks to everyone who has been part of this. Now go read it.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2... This could give university bosses some bad ideas.

UKRI is using AI for grant reviewing. Alternatively, they could have modernised the grant review process by paying human reviewers for their labour, ensuring a wider pool and speedy turnaround. Using AI here is likely a race to the bottom: uniqueness is at risk of being ironed out. What a world.

Wtf www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Brilliant name for a liquor factory near Santiago ; "The Distillery of Ideas". Borges novel in the making.

You may have been told to watch this video about the OpenAI AI hack. You really should, even if you don't usually care about any tech stuff. If nothing else, click this link to the 18 minutes in & see how the agents spoke & coordinated with each other. Its eye opening. youtu.be/87DyyMV0kCY?...

Cool paper looking at how AIs solve unbounded, complex business problems in many fields by testing how well they can crack the cases we use to teach MBAs: 1) AI already does extremely well across diverse business topics 2) Models are improving rapidly with time Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2607.16057

Managers, and their belief in the value of AI & how to use it, determines the value they actually get from AI. Neat paper looking at startups. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

We are leaving the Old Code Age, the Paleocodic, the artisinal code era, where if you needed a novel program, you would commission a local codesmith or code guild to hand-craft a work of code for you, bespoke.

(1/11) If you live in NY, you’ve probably started seeing a new warning: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” This mandatory disclosure went into effect late last year, and it’s the first attempt by a US state to grapple with a new generation of surveillance pricing.

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

‘The world of giant digital platforms often turns on surprisingly small matters, such as whether or not users are willing to spend a few seconds doing something they don’t absolutely need to do.’ Donald MacKenzie on the history and future of Google Search. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

These Tureen tests are getting crazy

Tony Harrison RIP. He was so much more, but the anger, the energy, the thrill of V back in the day was really something youtu.be/7if44iVP3_I?...

⭐Doors Open Day 2025 at Edinburgh Futures Institute⭐ 🗓️ Saturday, 27 September | 10:00 to 16:00 Join us on Doors Open Day 2025! Meet our staff, students and partners and discover how they are shaping better futures for all. 👉 Free entry! See the full programme efi.ed.ac.uk/event/doors-...

Why is it always a children's book? When do we get a celebrity who decides to edit a Festschrift or prepare an annotated edition of a primary source text?

Under FOI I've obtained a copy of the unpublished full strategic review on electoral registration and conduct, which informed some of the govt plans announced last month on reforming electoral law. It has a substantial section on overseas voters which seems to have been completely ignored.

Did you know Bluesky's founder has an #STS degree? In a new article, Erin Burkett and I explain why, despite current threats to humanities and social science, "STEM-in-Society programs" like STS are more important than ever. And we guide funders and university leaders how to better support them.

"Asked to generate intervention plans for struggling students, AI teacher assistants recommended more-punitive measures for hypothetical students with Black-coded names and more supportive approaches for students the platforms perceived as white" www.chalkbeat.org/2025/08/06/a...

If AI is being used extensively in office jobs, then should we be letting students use AI in the classroom? No - here's why. With reference to 3 papers that show what you do in a job isn't the template for what you do in the classroom. substack.nomoremarking.com/p/education-...

Coding interviews from people who left government earlier this year, and this is a fantastic quote in response to a question about what DOGE tech folk don't understand.

on.ft.com/45cJxz9 It’s time to retire the word ‘technology’

BIG NEWS: After a long investigation we have uncovered that Axon's Draft One--a program that uses genAI to write police reports based on body-worn camera audio--is *designed* not to retain the data on which parts were written by an officer and which parts were written by AI. A looming disaster.

‘Stone suits the poetry. Or perhaps it’s the other way round. I think poetry suits stone, more than it suits paper, certainly more than it suits a screen. The poetry releases something latent in the stone.’ Kathleen Jamie visits the Canongate Wall in Edinburgh: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

My cartoon in this weeks @newyorker.com

This article from @threadinburgh.scot is a jolly read. But when you get to the end, you realise that it is making a point that should worry all of us, even if we are not interested in the history of large suburban villas in #Edinburgh . threadinburgh.scot/2025/06/27/t...

New, from me: how might automation fail in public services? The Australian Robodebt case provides a compelling set of insights that governments lurching toward AI or algorithms need to pay attention to. 🧵 substack.com/home/post/p-...

“He had a billion streams and no fans.” The week after a jazz album hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart, it disappeared from the ranking altogether. Its success might never have been real in the first place.

This is very good on the slow adoption of AI in organisations as ideas are generated and trials carried out. Many potential users lag because of lack of knowledge and it takes time for senior managers to commit. This is the area that is most interesting for business school academics.

Always admired these people and what they do. Fascinating to hear her describe the process.

In his new book "Empty Vessel," the historian Ian Kumekawa landed on an ingenious way to make the abstractions of globalization feel more concrete: Tell the story of neoliberalism from the perspective of a barge. (The pic is from its stint as a "floating jail" in the East River in 1992.)

For academics that are skeptical about AI's ability to provide perceptive & useful results, a fast way to test your assumptions is to give one of your papers as a PDF to o3 (or Gemini 2.5 but it lacks some tools), with the prompt: "critique this paper" I have found very good accuracy & insight...

ChatGPT's rolling back of its 4o update highlights a concern around indoctrination. My latest for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Absolutely love this FT letter. "Thought experiment: what if no one buys a new car?"

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

The future is is just everyone yelling ‘REPRESENTATIVE!’ ‘AGENT!’ PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET ME TALK TO A PERSON!’ until we are hoarse

🚨 SCOOP: Thousands of civil servants have chatted nearly 45,000 times with a proprietary generative AI system, Redbox. The government won't say what advice they're getting, and how or if those outputs filter into policy. My latest for @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2478...

This is an interesting experiment in the use of AI to assess school student writing in a comparative judgement exercise. I am sure there will be universities trying this, and they can compare the AI to student assessment as well.

BRAID partner @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social along with the Alan Turing Institute have published a new national survey exploring public attitudes to AI. BRAID was pleased to be able to support the work of colleagues at Ada on this project. Read more here: attitudestoai.uk

Amazon UK categorise Wynn-Williams Careless People as "Business Humour" I am now expecting a laugh on every page.

🚨 @newscientist.com SCOOP: I've exclusively obtained Peter Kyle's interactions with ChatGPT using FOI laws - in what I believe may be a world-first transparency release. The chatbot said "Lack of Government or Institutional Support" slowed UK AI adoption www.newscientist.com/article/2472...

This is a new one: Victim about to deliver an impact statement in court, defence barrister raises a concern that it has been ‘generated by AI’ Victim says she put it through a computer system to check spelling, but denies the entire thing is AI generated.

Humane AI pin: now all you can do is charge it then check the battery level. From claiming to being our e-future to being e-waste in a year. www.wired.com/story/what-t...