Jack Stilgoe
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jackstilgoe.bsky.social
Jack Stilgoe
@jackstilgoe.bsky.social

Professor in Science and Technology Studies, UCL @stsucl.bsky.social. Science policy, responsible innovation, emerging technologies. Book https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-32320-2. Responsible AI UK (www.rai.ac.uk) .. more

Political science 18%
Sociology 17%

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

🎓 Mel A., BSc Sociology & Politics of Science student, shares thoughts on The New Jim Crow in conversation with Dr Jenny Bulstrode.

🔗 Read more: bit.ly/4pJFnYj

#UCLSTS #StudentVoices #TheNewJimCrow #Sociology #PoliticsOfScience
Interview with Mel A. on The New Jim Crow
Mel A., BSc Sociology and Politics of Science student, talks about reading The New Jim Crow. Interview by Dr Jenny Bulstrode.
bit.ly
NEW on Wonkhe: Jim Dickinson reflects on the end of scarcity, the rise of AI, and the challenge to a system of higher education built on pretence, performance and proxies buff.ly/zQ6V7kK

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

Recently @jenitennison.com found herself considering how the distinction between “thick” and “thin” modes of involving communities around (data and) AI is useful.

Read her blog as she explores the distinctions, bringing them together and how some of our work has been testing these modes.
Link in 🧵
I was trying to track down the source of Gramsci's "time of monsters" quote and found that it's a "mistranslation" (ie he just made it up) by Slavoj Zizek. Gramsci's line clearly translates as "morbid symptoms" instead. Mad that you can just rewrite a famous quote and get it widely accepted.

I didn't really understand left-wing infighting until I saw Rock n Roll. At one point, the ageing communist prof (played by Brian Cox I think?) tells his student (Rufus Sewell?): 'For you, freedom means "leave me alone." For the masses, it means "give me a break."'

I like that...

We need a name for this sort of graph. An optimism stickleback?

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

"[Jack DeJohnette] is a person who for around 50 years, dating from his early work with Charles Lloyd and Jackie McLean, circa 1966, up through In Movement, released in 2016, managed to sound, at every point along this timeline, deeply and restlessly contemporary, forever on the edge."
The Infinity of Jack DeJohnette
The drums are almost beside the point: It was his absolute presence in every musical situation, across a half-century, that made him one of the creative giants of our time
darkforcesswing.substack.com

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

May we never stop trying to write cricket bats.

I’d love an update to the stuff on transport safety that you worked on. (Not sure if it was in the book or just in a paper). I’ve used it a lot for my work on how safe self-driving cars should be…
Join and help to lead the Constitution Unit!

@uclspp.bsky.social is looking for a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics who will also join our senior team and contribute to our research and impact activities.

Applicants must have, or be near to finishing, a PhD.

Apply 👇
Job opportunity: Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics
The UCL Department of Political Science and Constitution Unit are seeking to appoint a Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics. The successful candidate will join the senior team at the Unit.
www.ucl.ac.uk

SocArXiv are pressing pause on accepting papers about AI, except where those papers are proper social science looking at AI in society.
In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1
Nice 5-year STS/anthropology post at the ANU working with excellent people on an important project. The institution's had problems but seems to be overcoming them. I like Canberra as a city, too
#STS @aussts.bsky.social @4sweb.bsky.social
Research Fellow, Ethnography and Sociology of the Artificial Cryosphere - Canberra / ACT, ACT, Australia
Classification: ANU Academic Level BSalary package: $118,632 - $134,507 per annum plus 17% superannuationTerms: Full-time, Continuing (contingent funded) This position is continuing (contingent funded...
jobs.anu.edu.au

Scrutiny in peer review can be very weird. Sometimes authors can introduce new things after peer review. Often there's no actual editorial responsibility. And peer review is not designed to detect fraud.

This raises a very real question about how we talk about AI. To call this slop is to downplay the fact that it was published in an esteemed journal. We used to call such things fraud, but this suggests the publisher is innocent. AI has changed the terms of debate. We urgently need new norms.
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

When the first AI generated billion-streamers start cutting through, who’d bet against the AI companies demanding a share, even though they’re currently offering just tools and gimmicks?

Doctorow discusses Unity, the games engine. Unity initially sold tools to gamers, much like Linn sold drum machines to producers. But Unity saw some games succeed and greedily changed its approach to “shared success”, taking a piece of the profit. So consider…

I wrote a thing about drum machines and the lessons they point to for AI music. But I didn’t anticipate a nauseating thought raised by Cory Doctorow in his Enshittification book.
What drum machines can teach us about artificial intelligence | Aeon Essays
As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music?
aeon.co
In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1

Full thing here archive.ph/64V8s
archive.ph

Literally the first scientist quoted in this piece - @emilymbender.bsky.social - says the opposite of what this headline says "scientists say"
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

Has archive.ph stopped working?
archive.ph

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

this is an all-timer ethnographic vignette for me (from Noriko Milman's 2009 dissertation, "PAY ATTENTION!")

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

On a meta/political point of view, I have *no idea* why the Tory front benches haven't stuck the PDF of the OBR forecast into NotebookLM and got a quick readout and started asking questions

Yes!

Reposted by Jack Stilgoe

Study: Average 19th-Century American Spent 93% Of Time Waving At Trains, Boats https://theonion.com/study-average-19th-century-american-spent-93-of-time-waving-at-trains-boats/

Excellent stuff Rufus. Thanks for sharing.

Maybe those sunlit uplands are actually hallucinations? Maybe we're at peak-LLM?