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Jasper Jackson

@jasperjackson.bsky.social

4.6K followers 1.2K following 440 posts

Managing editor at Transformer. Ex-tech editor at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, also previously Guardian and New Statesman. Sometime media columnist. Signal: jasperjackson.01

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · Sep 9

Delighted to unveil Transformer 2.0! Building on @shakeelhashim.com's amazing newsletter, we're taking our coverage of the power and politics of AI up a level. We'll be publishing throughout each week with work from a star list of contributors and our own team: www.transformernews.ai/p/welcome-to...

Welcome to Transformer 2.0

We're now a team of reporters and editors dedicated to covering the power and politics of AI

www.transformernews.ai

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 2d

Great piece on Transformer by @jamesrball.com .... "As ever, there will be silver linings and small mercies — but there is little point sugarcoating it. A crash, whenever it may come, is likely to be brutal."

What happens when the AI bubble bursts?

The world is prepping for an AI crash. History points to what that might look like

www.transformernews.ai

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 2d

(I think it is often interpreted as satirical rather than a serious call for regression and destruction of all machines.)

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 2d

Dune appears to have taken it from this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_...

Darwin among the Machines - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 2d

Spread across various things but summed up here (with references): warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_...

Age of Technology

The Age of Technology, informally often referred to as the "Dark Age of Technology," was the zenith of Humanity's scientific knowledge and technological prowess in the Milky Way Galaxy, which lasted f...

warhammer40k.fandom.com

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 2d

I mean, it's a specific war against AI that tries to wipe out/oppress humanity (thus leading to the dark age), which is pretty much what it is in Dune?

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 2d

Buttlerian Jihad, tbf, doesn't come from computer games. Most famously from Dune books, and Warhammer, and originally a 19th century text...

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Joshi Herrmann @joshiherrmann.bsky.social · 3d

🚨 Very pleased to say that Moya Lothian-McLean has become the first Managing Editor at @millmedia.bsky.social. Along with @cameronbarr.bsky.social, who joined recently as
Investigations Editor, we're building a formidable team of senior editors. And editors are the 🔑!

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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 5d

The right-wing campaign group that helped topple Roe v Wade in the US is now working to roll back abortion laws in the UK, with the help of Nigel Farage.

Its first step? Trying to create a debate around "free speech"
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 9d

*sighs*

open.substack.com/pub/jonn/p/n...

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 9d

Places noticeably busier on Thursdays tho

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 10d

Yup I did wonder and has been pointed out. IMO the original is the best!

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 10d

Ah, I did wonder!

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 10d

There is literally already a relativey decent example of some mitigation already done by Google for Veo 3 in the shape of SynthID that would probably be quite easy to implement...

The Verge @theverge.com · 10d

Sam Altman: "There are clearly going to be challenges for society contending with this quality, and what will get much better, with the video generation. But the only way that we know of to help mitigate it is to get the world to experience it and figure out how that’s going to go.”
bit.ly/4h1KWhl

It’s a controversial take, especially for an AI CEO. For as long as AI has been around, it’s been used in ways that disproportionately affect minorities and vulnerable populations — ranging from wrongful arrests to AI-generated revenge porn. OpenAI has some guardrails for Sora in place, but if history — and the last week — is any guide, people will find ways to get around them.

Watermark removers are already proliferating online, with some people using “magic eraser”-type tools and others coding their own ways to remove the watermark convincingly. For now, text prompts don’t allow for generating a specific face without permission, but people have allegedly already gotten around that rule to generate close-enough approximations of someone to instill fear or make threats, and to make suggestive videos, including videos of women holding dildo-like objects.

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 10d

The Replacements version is particularly excellent. youtu.be/f8J9WssSj7Q?...

The Replacements - Androgynous (REMASTERED)

YouTube video by matdinozzo

youtu.be

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 11d

ChatGPT alone has nearly double the number of paying subscribers as the NYT.

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Steve Herman @w7voa.journa.host.ap.brid.gy · 11d

Nearly 50 news and media organizations have signed an amicus brief supporting AP in the ongoing legal case over White House press access. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.41932/gov.uscourts.cadc.41932.2139056.0.pdf

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Tits McGee @scientits.bsky.social · 11d

IMPORTANT

All freelancers, self-employed, creatives

This is the first I've heard of this, but the Department for Business and Trade is running a consultation on the scourge of late payments, they want to introduce new legislation to tackle poor practices

Deadline to respond is 23 October

1/2

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 11d

This is very good. And is a pretty close reflection of my views, too.

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 11d

My column this week: on a world in which your lifeboat seems ever more necessary- but ever more unappealing:

Israel seems more important — and less desirable — than ever for British Jews

Amid rising antisemitism at home, our lifeboat abroad seems less attractive

www.ft.com

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The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · 11d

This is a lie.

There are many criticisms you might sensibly and truthfully make of the Sentencing Council and the Sentencing Guidelines. I’ve been making them for years.

But this is an outright lie. Pure fabrication. A fraud on the public.

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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 12d

Boston Globe follows up on my reporting last Friday, which placed the formation of a new ICE surveillance unit in Vermont.

The Globe asks and answers the question: "Why the hell Vermont?"

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/06/m...

The department’s outsize presence in Vermont is attributable to one man: former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. For nearly half a century, Leahy steered a tsunami of federal funding to the state, particularly after he became the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the Senate Appropriations Committee.
In 1991, according to the Burlington Free Press, Leahy helped bring a branch of what was then known as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to Vermont. Over the next few years, he brought precursors of the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center and the Law Enforcement Support Center to the state.
“If it can be anywhere, why not have it in Vermont?” the senator said at the time, according to the Free Press.

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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 12d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal @signal.org · 15d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 13d

Yeah, she is not qualified to run a whole big news operation. Also, news reporting is quite different to running opinion/features!

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 13d

Oh yeah, but like, also just fundamentally almost old school antisemitism (at @tbij.bsky.social we found this when digging through the Southport riot linked groups on Telegram, for instance).

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 13d

Fully agree with this broadly, though I'd add that it's more than a convenient weapon for a very large proportion. You dig into these groups that are ostensibly pro-Israel while being incredibly Islamaphobic, and there is almost always a core of antisemitism.

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 13d

It is at least mildly interesting that Bluesky, the supposed social media home of antiracism, appears to have a big old antisemitism problem.