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May 29 13 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Since the introduction of generative AI for image and music and video and some extent language models too, it is really dumb down and amplified ignorance about the entire field of machine learning and artificial intelligence to an extent where you can’t have a decent discussion!
I absolutely agree that AI should not be replacing a single person in creative industries. However, it is undeniable to all sorts of kinds of AI tools are exceptionally useful to people in creative industries they’ve been used for years and are being used and will be used.
The National Grid is using AI to help with its management and planning, and how uses renewable resources. Medicine researchers are using AI to help them find new medications and compounds engineering are finding how to make efficiencies and new solutions using AI.
Language models are also extremely useful. Not for creating new works of literature. That’s absolutely ridiculous pointless use in my opinion but forgetting through large amounts of data both texture and otherwise save so much TDS work
Tedious*. We created business computers so that we could get rid of the tedious work of the back office accounts administration. Lions Tea houses in the UK Pioneered this approach after the Second World War. I don’t think there’s a single person who’d love to go back to before
Sure all forms of technology and automation have displaced jobs. And yes a lot of AI automation is very different to the types of automation we’ve had before in many ways. Whilst it’s true that there will be people who dominate the space and technology (Who will need regulating
And Taxing so that the wealth isn’t dominated by a few small players hoarding all wealth), creating AI has never been easier and more widely available to anyone with a half decent computer. I’m talking about training and running on your own computer.
Open source language models and other types of models are available download and run on all almost every day hardware. And using simple tools can be extended or used to orchestrate other local AI models.
The only limit is the imagination. In terms of jobs, yeah we need to share the wealth that is inevitably going to be concentrated further up the chain. We need to agree that as a society that those who controlled the technology should fairly compensate society.
This means yes, universal unconditional minimum income. “ but some people won’t want to work” yes. And in a world where the refer jobs then perhaps that’s actually not a bad thing at all is it? Most people will use that time to do all manner of remarkable things.
Other people may use that time to do nothing and well that’s their loss. But we will start to put a lot more value on jobs that care for people. Higher value on real creativity. Hire Valley on just spending time with family and friends. Volunteering gardening and making things.
Doing all the things that hundreds of years ago aristocracy used to do. Paint drawer poetry Music philosophy. Tinkerers can tinker; experimenters can experiment; engineers can try anything. We need to imagine life without mandated capitalist wage slave labour.
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More from @MePeterNicholls

May 28
I’m reading the Milburn Exoeriment. I mean Report. (The other was Milgram was t it….) anyway, my first analysis is that the evidence is best read as triangulation, not as one definitive causal model. Some of the groups were as low as 30 members. Many under 500.
The report also puts too much weight on one single quarter having passed 1 million NEETs. ONS’s own caution on LFS volatility means the best interpretation is not “one bad quarter proves crisis”, it is that the medium-term direction and level that are worrying.
The report doesn’t scapegoat health issues, it’s quite balanced in that respect. However, it says the NHS, schools, welfare and employment services are not configured around participation as a health outcome. That seems like just another wording if work as a health outcome.
Read 24 tweets
May 12
1. The UK is especially exposed to bond markets because of the specific ways government has chosen to organise its financial institutions. This a political architecture that turns gilt-market movements into immediate pressure on policy; it’s not just “it’s economics”. Here’s why:
2. Firstly, the Bank of England. Its independence and strict 2% inflation remit mean markets don’t assume the central bank will simply accommodate government borrowing. (Which it is actually obliged to by law.) That helps control inflation, but…
3. it also means fiscal policy is constantly judged against monetary “credibility”. This is a shifting sand and not logically straightforward. Its value judgments based on “sentiment” and not mathematical precision.
Read 11 tweets
Apr 28
80% of landlords own only 29% of the rental homes in the uk

Meanwhile, 20% of landlords own about 71% of uk rental homes.

This is where the debate about landlords slides around because of the misunderstanding and deliberate muddying of these ratios in to semantics.
There’s no registration require for rental properties and non to be a landlord. So these figures are based on a collection of gov sources and surveys. Any statistic about the median income of landlords is flawed because only 1-2% of all landlords are actually in dataset!
The dataset for rental income is a sub set of a sub set of a sub set. Only landlords using registered deposit schemes are surveyed (30% of all properties), of those only 9000 replied out of 512,000. That’s estimated at 1-2% of all landlords. But there could be millions.
Read 14 tweets
Aug 24, 2025
“Mass deportations” - it gets the red paint flag waving kind very excited, but means nothing. It means what ever the hearer thinks it means, and thus garners support for the one offering it. It sounds a strong solution, but it’s amorphous—
Mass - who? Maybe “illegals”- I’ll take it to mean all who arrive by small boats; but most over estimate how many ‘illegal’ arrivals are, and underestimate how many legal migrants of ALL kinds there are. It’s not internationally recognised
Arrival by any means with the intention of seeking asylum as a refuge is not and should never by illegal. But the supporter of mass deportation may suggest we’re over run with people who are here illegally. We’re not. Sure they may exist, but we don’t know. No one
Read 17 tweets
Jul 29, 2025
The UK’s #OnlineSafetyAct shows nativity and stubbornness of MPs asserting parliamentary sovereignty over technical expertise.

MPs and ministers were warned REPEATEDLY that secure client-side scanning is not technically possible. Yet, they legislated for it anyway.
Encryption experts, civil society groups, and former intelligence officials described the Act’s surveillance powers as “magical thinking.” The proposed powers would require the impossible: encryption backdoors usable only by the state, and safe from abuse. They do not exist.
Despite this, government ministers insisted they could compel platforms to develop or source “accredited” scanning technologies even while conceding such tools are currently unavailable.

In short: they passed law on the assumption that reality would bend to Parliament’s will.
Read 10 tweets
Jun 19, 2025
The document is closer to a ministerial press release than to a serious Impact Assessment (linked in retweeted post by Dr Jaw Watts).
Key appraisal‐stage disciplines (clear options, full monetisation of costs & benefits, sensitivity testing, equality analysis, review plan) are either missing or so thin that policy-makers, Parliament and disabled people cannot rely on the numbers.
One GLARING issue is that benefits cells are literally “£XX m” placeholders!

Range of options are binary “do nothing” or “do it our way”.

There has been no independent quality check carried out on this. And it looks unlikely that this will ever officially happen.
Read 21 tweets

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