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Reposted by Murray Goulden

ww3 memes for NATO teens @natowave.bsky.social · 1d

My NEO robot after I learn the 3rd worlder piloting them is mad chill

Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · 20h

5. Contra-Marcus Brownlee's take, the stakes here in the home are definitely *not* lower than they are for self-driving cars!
6. But on that subject, expect this promised autonomous future to still be caveated-to-the-point-of-being-vapourware in another decade, just as self-driving cars have been.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · 20h

4. It will be safe to occupants because it 'can't lift heavy things or hot things'? So it can't cook or do many common domestic tasks? The domestic version of the Trolley Problem: be useful and dangerous, or useless and safe?

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · 20h

2. credit to company for not doing usual Musk-style deception of hiding the human puppeteering the "AI", though they very much do obscure the class realities of hidden AI labour.
3. An image of what this spotlessly soft-textured robot will look like after a month in a typical family home.

Screengrab from tech promo, showing heavily stained robot

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · 20h

“the next few years are not about owning a super-useful robot, but raising one, letting it learn from your home..”.

So usual AI industry social dynamic: Global South kid paid pennies to puppet robot, whilst Global North ‘owner’ pays for privilege of training AI, only real beneficiary is tech firm.

I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Got Weird. | WSJ

YouTube video by The Wall Street Journal

www.youtube.com

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · 29d

Absolutely smitten with @paulmmcooper.com's fascinating podcast on the rise and fall of the Mongolian empire, including how it inadvertently aided the European colonial project which followed open.spotify.com/episode/7iWl...

19. The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe

Spotify video

open.spotify.com

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Sep 23

The Emperor's generated clothes

on.ft.com/427C17Z

America’s top companies keep talking about AI — but can’t explain the upsides

FT analysis of hundreds of filings suggest the S&P 500 businesses are clearer about the risks than benefits

on.ft.com

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Reposted by Murray Goulden

Shacknews @shacknews.com · Sep 18

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Jul 28

We invoke the concept of ‘mundane resistance’ to describe the ways in which smart tech comes to be diminished in the interplay between household members in the course of their everyday participation in its moral economy, and link this to the very expensive failure of Big Tech's smart home vision.

Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Jul 28

My new paper with Lewis Cameron on 'The Role of Mundane Resistance in the Spectacular Failure of the Smart Home' is now available from Big Data & Society.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The role of mundane resistance in the spectacular failure of the smart home - Murray Goulden, Lewis Cameron, 2025

A decade on from the launch of Amazon's Alexa – the smart home's breakout product – the vision of semi-automated, pervasively sensed domesticity remai...

journals.sagepub.com

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Jul 13

I couldn't get out of my head the sight of my MP, Lilian Greenwood, cosplaying in Parliament as a suffragette, just days before voting to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Jun 10

This author's work on the metaverse is a salutory lesson in the sunk cost danger of researching novel technologies. Months of effort only for it to turn out the platform you're an expert in is a dead scene (though tbh in this example that was clear from the beginning...)

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Apr 9

An awful time to work in creative industries. Intellectual and creative development largely happens in-the-doing; in the act of writing, drawing, recording. GenAI doesn't shortcut the process, it short-changes it.

aftermath.site/ai-video-gam...

‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers - Aftermath

'I have had conversations about AI in a professional context that make me want to walk into the sea'

aftermath.site

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 20

If we wanted to assert British sovereignty, rather than leaving the EU we should have jailed Microsoft execs until they made Word's spellcheck recognise English spellings. I've spent my entire adult life assuming this was going to be fixed any day now.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 18

Tech companies are as good at humanising their AI, as they are at erasing the human labour that trains their AI.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1...

An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it

While Nomi's chatbot is not the first to suggest suicide, researchers and critics say that its explicit instructions—and the company’s response—are striking.

www.technologyreview.com

Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

The only element of this which successfully argues for AI is that it's almost certain you will never read an AI output as stupid as what this human has produced here.

Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

I take it back, this bit is even worse. No Jeanette, the process of mutual socialisation through which culture emerges is not the same as a corporation unilaterally privatising that culture in order to profit from it. Those two things are different.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

This is the real triumph here. In the same paragraph that Winterson acknowledges that AI is regurgitating the work of her profession, she heralds it as an "alternative way of seeing"!

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

Then she makes the Clever Hans mistake of confusing imitation for understanding.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

Bold opening: Winterson invokes humanity's failure to address climate change - which is perhaps best signified by us burning country-sized resources on using AI to make Trump memes - as a reason to embrace AI.

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 13

Jeanette Winterson's take on AI as "alternative intelligence" doesn't merit a single tweet, but having ensured reading it I need to cleanse my soul

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

‘OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving’ | Jeanette Winterson

I think of AI as alternative intelligence – and its capacity to be ‘other’ is just what the human race needs

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Murray Goulden

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · Mar 12

Very good on The Great University Disaster. Note it's *not* attacking administrators: indeed unis may be *under*-managed. The point is that extreme, inappropriate corporatization and bureaucratization has destroyed their very purpose, like a virus from within. (1/2)
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullshit jobs in universities

You may never have considered yourself to be one. Why would you? But if you’re reading this, there is more than a likelihood that you are one. If you’re a

academic.oup.com

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 11

thewalrus.ca/i-used-to-te... Higher Ed and it's regulatory overlords desperately need to engage with the reality of post-genAI assessment, whilst there's still *a little* time to do it thoughtfully. The alternative is waiting until it's thoughtlessly forced on us in a moral panic.

I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats | The Walrus

I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated

thewalrus.ca

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Reposted by Murray Goulden

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · Mar 11

Yet another scandal brewing within UK Higher Ed: universities can get research money for everyone they've sacked. Big ghost fleets of lecturers who don't exist will be launched into the next Research Excellence Framework. Unis will laugh and cash in (1/2). englishassociation.ac.uk/ref2029-conc...

REF2029: concerns about the implications of decoupling | The English Association

We support the teaching, learning, and enjoyment of English at all levels of education, from early years to further and higher education and beyond.

englishassociation.ac.uk

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Murray Goulden @murraygoulden.bsky.social · Mar 8

I guess it is educational in preparing them for the dissonance of a society where everyone is told to take metrics incredibly seriously, whilst simultaneously being coached to remorsely game them.

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