š to see it! @betterimagesofai.bsky.social now has an image representing "stochastic parrots at work" betterimagesofai.org/images?artis... š¦ cc @mmitchell.bsky.social @timnitgebru.bsky.social
Researching the internet at BBC R&D. Taking pictures of trees and clouds in England. Also found on Mastodon at https://assemblag.es/@tristanf
157 followers 431 following 30 posts
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š to see it! @betterimagesofai.bsky.social now has an image representing "stochastic parrots at work" betterimagesofai.org/images?artis... š¦ cc @mmitchell.bsky.social @timnitgebru.bsky.social
Reclaim the brain!
Oh, meanwhile screens have flattened the world to the same experience
Genly Ai > GenAI
Lads, I hate to break it to you, but the "animals on trampolines" videos are almost all AI-gen
You might also like about.surf.social
it's all about the clouds
Have you spotted any novel social media interfaces recently? I'm particularly interested in third-party clients or experimental interfaces for existing social networks...
Miles Davis from Jazz is reportedly coming to Fortnite.
Bird sounds.
How many Britons believe in supernatural creatures or phenomenon? Hypnotism: 60% say definitely/probably real Karma: 38% Ghosts: 38% Telepathy: 30% Reiki: 30% Astrology: 23% Witches: 21% Speaking to dead: 20% Magic: 19% Crystal healing: 17% Loch Ness monster: 12% Vampires: 8% Werewolves: 8%
Improbably Compatible #oldknees
wait, what?...Clive Sinclair's nephew has invented a 3-wheeled small personal vehicle and a small personal computer... www.grantsinclair.com
July tree
I really liked it, and By Force Alone
Iām convinced this is how a bay leaf would talk
![Cartoon by Stephen Collins for the Guardian, here's the script: [Scene is the inside of a SOUP. Some CARROTS and BITS OF BROCCOLI are floating around and a STOCK CUBE and a BAY LEAF have just been dropped in.] 1 STOCK CUBE: Alright lads - this is Bay Leaf. My colleague from the spice rack. 2 BROCCOLI: Hi Bay Leaf BAY LEAF: Yuh yuh hi 3 CARROTS: You up for getting proper blended with us later, Bay Leaf? BAY LEAF: Nuh mate, getting scooped out before soup stage. 4 CARROTS: Oh! Soā¦ youāre not being eaten then? BAY LEAF: Eaten! Haha 5 BAY LEAF: Not allowed mate. Iām afraid Iām a lilā bit *toooo intense*... 6 BAY LEAF: Just here for the flavour hit. Special forces, yāknow. Thatās why thereās just one of me. 7 BAY LEAF: Over-deploy and youād have this whole soup stiiinking of bay leafā¦ 8 BAY LEAF: You might wanna stand back actually. This place is about to get preeetty bay leafy... 9 [Silent pause] 10 CARROTS: Are you doing something BAY LEAF: Sure am mate. 11 BAY LEAF: Suuuuure am. 12 BAY LEAF [Getting scooped out by chefās spoon]: You need training to perceive it. CARROTS: OK](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreibguu2d74i7v7yrkx2z5vsiluhrnkp2uayri2gmcm4gpl4d3dvlgq@jpeg "Click to view full size")
2) "AI Agents" by @mathieutriay.bsky.social comes from a team research sprint into AI Agents and tries to get to a good definition of agents while avoiding the hype, and then thinks about the potential barriers to adoption and the impacts of this technology www.bbc.co.uk/rd/articles/...
Two new reports from my team at BBC R&D... 1) "The Social Internet" asks how social media and social networks shape the environment within which the BBC (and all of us) operates and what possibilities they create for delivering new forms of public value www.bbc.co.uk/rd/articles/...
Bird. On. A sign. This tree swallow perched out.
Here is one of my favorites #birds on #signs - just in case you were wondering what kind of bird it isā¦. thereās your sign
Who knew there's a dark-roof lobby? How the little-known ādark roofā lobby may be making US cities hotter www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Can we at least teach LLMs Marxism
Daily tree
+BBC CLOCK COMPETITION+ We won't be making a run of these but this Bank Holiday weekend you can win a one-off 90s inspired BBC ident clock. Follow, Like & RP to enter. Winner announced Mon AM. We've also restocked our 'Radiophonic' inspired signs & other items. hiddenbritain.bigcartel.com
Where I get my ideas from
Pilot Whale You know what time it is? That's right! It's time to plug my work again! Yay! www.worldofmoose.com/products/pil...
Merlin sound ID is a great example of LLMs doing what they are designed for. It does a specific thing based on a specific set of data. And other than the training period, requires no massive energy use (it runs on your phone even without an Internet connection)
Morning!!! A reminder that @danmcquillan.bsky.social will be joining the Reading Group for Hopeful Technologists at 1pm BST for a Q&A about his books Resisting AI. Tickets are free and you can still sign up here lu.ma/jrditlbj - feel free to listen to the Q&A while having lunch
Re-upping this blog post, because it took me freakin' ages to write. What do we talk about when we talk about AI? Is it a field of technology or an extractive social process that makes a few people rich and powerful? And why is it so hard to define? www.careful.industries/blog/2025-4-...
There's a lot of talk about Canada Geese and whether they're good and my answer is Yes.
Absolutely dream job here. Web Developer looking after @fullfact.org. Ideal for the #django #wagtail #python gang. Remote first working in the UK and of course we always #ShowTheSalary
This is the best thing Iāve read recently on LLMs, thank you for writing and sharing it
1. @alisongopnik.bsky.social, Cosma Shalizi, James Evans and myself have a new piece in Science on "AI" Large Models, pushing back against much of the collective wisdom about what they can and can't do. Official below, unpaywalled at henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod... . So why this now?
You can hire actual PhDs at a steep discount to this. Traditionally, you don't even have to treat or feed them very well
Happy Pancake Day to all those who celebrate www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj_a...
Daily tree
I have three reviews to go for the Obs but today, after 180 of them, is my last column for OFM. So I thought Iād summarise my searing advice from the last 15 years: the wisdom, the provocations and the occasional stupidities. Enjoy. Or grind your teeth. Your call www.theguardian.com/food/2025/fe...
How to secure the UKās vulnerable information supply chain - important report from Demos demos.co.uk/wp-content/u...
As part of our new blog series, 'Through My Eyes', Laura SofĆa MartĆnez Agudelo shares her reflections on 'Weaving Wires 1' ā Hanna Barakat, OLY's 'better image of AI' that was created for the Archival Images of AI playbook. šš½ Read Laura's blog post here: blog.betterimagesofai.org/weaved-wires...
Daily tree
āBut when we crave power over life - endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality - then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale." ā Ursula Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
If @404media.co or the @theverge.com want to see Trump's Executive Orders in action from the government tech side - You can follow the GSA's 18F as they scrub their handbook of all references to equity, remote, and other things. #civictech github.com/18F/handbook...
what if AI gets economically necessary, like GPS, but then we find out we don't have any uncontaminated training data to build new ones? New blog post! The need for a strategic fact reserve interconnected.org/home/2025/01...
Public Service Announcement: Better Images of AI has loads of CC-licensed images that you can use to illustrate your stories about AI betterimagesofai.org/ Including this one by Hanna Barakat + AIxDESIGN & Archival Images of AI / Better Images of AI / Frontier Models 2 / CC-BY 4.0
AI in the workplace is going to show up integrated in software tools like Salesforce and Canva, not as āvirtual employeesā.
Frosty, foggy, flooded fields
oh to be a Mossy Frog, happily crouching invisible amongst forest leaves and debris
A month of the daily tree
A very powerful, prescient and affecting book
We are thrilled to announce the BRAID Artist Commissions Open Call, encouraging new ways to think about todayās AI. Artists will receive a Ā£10,000 budget to develop their work & will be showcased during the Edinburgh Art Festival 2025 at @inspacegallery.bsky.social šØ braiduk.org/artist-commi...
Meanwhile, would this be a good time to do a run of "FOMO is not a strategy" stickers so that people can signal intent from their laptop cases?
this is back up now. my five-part series for BBC Radio 4 about what the current information environment is doing to us and how we - as a species - got through the last two massive information crises: the invention of writing & the invention of printing www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Daily tree is sad
A Really Big Project, which I see no evidence of actually happening anywhere, is "understanding what people see on the internet".
Daily tree with moon
"...one way to describe Digitalland today is that itās factories and urban slums stretching to the horizon, or rather their digital or mental equivalent. Attention farms, subscription traps, insecure/stress-inducing digital work environments, bullying in school Whatsapp groups, etc."
As I've complained before in this here platform, AI gen'd images are taking over websites that us artists use for references. Here's an example, screenshot courtesy of a reddit post (from user MetaKnowing). Same thing is happening on DeviantArt, Pinterest etc. with no clear way to filter them out.
New @backlisted.bsky.social! Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, with @unamccormack.bsky.social Salena Godden, John, Nicky and a lovely audience at Foyles Charing Cross Road. Let them infotain you! www.backlisted.fm/episodes/223...
Wrote up some rough notes from the Festival of Commoning lbj20.blogspot.com/2024/10/comm... Thanks to everyone who helped bring folks together in Stroud for a fascinating event! Lots of learning and inspiration. #commons #commoning
Iāll take that as a yes then. I mean, do you really expect Meta to do the right thing?
The Social Web Foundation has just launched, led by Tom, Evan and Mallory. socialwebfoundation.org/2024/0 āThe Social Web Foundationās mission is a growing, healthy, financially viable and multi-polar Fediverseā (honoured to be one of their advisors for launch, itās been interesting)
We've just pushed the weekly drop of new music into this...
Digital ID in the UK: A rapid response study by me for @carefultrouble.bsky.social, published today, drawing on public polling by @survation.bsky.social and a landscape map of known govt plans. Do govt's plans for digital ID meet the public's needs? www.careful.industries/digital-iden...
I should write this up properly and put it somewhere better, but for now here's a short version of how to discover new ideas and solutions in a large possibility space, based on our recent music prototype www.linkedin.com/pulse/discov...
you're right, it isn't accessible for keyboard only or voice users. If it goes beyond an experiment then we would aim to make it fully accessible
they're algorithmically mapped so that similar sounding things are near each other. It means you get areas of the universe for different types of music, like "sad piano corner"
Orbit is a new music discovery experiment from the BBC to help you find new music from unsigned UK artists. My team has been designing and building this for the last 6 months. It only takes a few minutes and you'll probably find something good... bbc.co.uk/orbitmusic
I'm here now so you all get to see my tree photos. Canonical versions are on assemblag.es/@tristanf
Tom Scott 