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Louise Amoore

@amoorelouise.bsky.social

4.9K followers 1.2K following 190 posts

Professor of Political Geography & Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life @leverhulmecal.bsky.social Algorithms, politics, technology, biometrics, AI, ethics Author Cloud Ethics http://dukeupress.edu/cloud-ethics .. more

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Louise Jane Amoore, is a British geographer and academic, who specialises in geopolitics, biometrics, state security and the ethics of machine learning. She is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University. From 2017 to 2023, she was a member of the Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group (BFEG), a non-departmental advisory body which is the "only formally accountable ethics committee" within the UK Government's Home Office. .. more

Political science 45%

Sociology 26%

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI

This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

www.tandfonline.com

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 1h

Thanks so much Nina for highlighting this question on speech and politics. It’s always so fascinating that when someone else reads the work it shows a new aspect. So now I’m thinking about how those foreclosures might be prised open (perhaps also with language) Thanks

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“What could a critical politics of the prompt look like? Berlant uses the concept of the prompt in a different register: 'the prompt of inconvenience activates the problematic of receptivity to the stimulus and situations of the world'”

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“If prompting is akin to a mode of interacting or speaking with an algorithmic model, then the model itself decides, or at least shapes, the parameters of what kind of speech is possible.”

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“Notwithstanding the widespread appeal to LLMs as a means to summarize and generate text, to draft a response, or answer a question, in fact to elicit something from a model entails a more specific machine learning relationship to the model and its underlying data.”

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“The paradigm shift we lave described in machine learning - from supervised task specific datasets and training to the unsupervised describing of a natural language task - is affording a novel governmentality of what it means to task politically.”

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“Here, the machine learning logic of task agnosticism sets the scene for a task agnostic politics. In short, the prompt at this early stage of the GPT models is a natural language task that is said to enable an immediate and context-independent relationship of user to Al model”

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“The politics of the prompt is not simply a new calculative device that replaces an analogue red box for a digital one. More fundamentally, the prompt changes the politics of what can be said, what questions can be asked or answered”

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

“The mutation of the government red box to Al prompts embodies a significant and durable shift, where the suspicion of expertise and civil service advice becomes actualized in a political technology that offers its dissolution” 2/n

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

@termcern.bsky.social

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 2d

Such a nice paper on feature extraction as a project of perception - drone enclosures in digital India. “Feature extraction is an entirely speculative endeavour” rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library

Svamitva drone survey in Rajasthan. Source: Author.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by John Hogan, Louise Amoore

Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life @leverhulmecal.bsky.social · 8d

Welcome to the first day of the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life. We look forward to working with you and hope that you will watch this space for recruitment, events, & more @leverhulme.ac.uk #AI #MachineLearning #SocialSciences #Humanities

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Reposted by John Hogan

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 13d

“Wait though, if we use passport & visa images for facial recognition in policing, what about all the other people?”
“Ah yes, you’ve a point there”
“A compulsory enrollment, call it Brit card”
“Great, just don’t mention the biometrics or the facial recognition “
“Sorted”
www.gov.uk/government/p...

Handling facial image search requests from law enforcement organisations (accessible)

www.gov.uk

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 17d

Oh dear, when Russian jets entered Estonian airspace two days ago, I may have wondered aloud why they would do that when they could hack Tallinn’s EU-LISA…. yet one more example of a visible face of war mirrored by digital and algorithmic architectures www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

EU cyber agency says airport software held to ransom by criminals

Brussels Airport asks airlines to cancel nearly half of their outgoing flights on Monday.

www.bbc.co.uk

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 23d

@nannathylstrup.bsky.social #loss

Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · 23d

Robert St. Clair, Counter-Modernities in Nineteenth-Century French Literature: Constellations of Loss in Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Flaubert - Oxford University Press, July 2025
global.oup.com/academic/pro... @oxfordacademic.bsky.social

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Reposted by Louise Amoore

Stuart Elden @stuartelden.bsky.social · 23d

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Sep 4

Congratulations @bnjacobsen.bsky.social on the award of your ERC starting grant. Can’t wait to continue working with you and your new team @leverhulmecal.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu #AI #syntheticdata #machinelearning

Benjamin Jacobsen @bnjacobsen.bsky.social · Sep 4

I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms

Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.

www.york.ac.uk

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Reposted by Louise Amoore, Paul Langley

Benjamin Jacobsen @bnjacobsen.bsky.social · Sep 4

New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms

Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.

www.york.ac.uk

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Aug 28

More than insulating. They are profiting from the genocide, harnessing the derivatives of violence.

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Aug 22

UK government simultaneously replaced expert advice on technology with tech company “consultants” and displaced their civil servants’ experience and expertise into AI models… It’s a disaster & an absolute gift to the tech vendors…

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Reposted by Steve Peers, Martin Paul Eve, Joseph Schafer , and 6 more Steve Peers, Martin Paul Eve, Joseph Schafer, Daniel W. Drezner, Aurélien Mondon, Elizabeth Eva Leach, Louise Amoore, Simon Lester, Daxton R. Stewart

John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · Aug 21

UK government asks everybody to stop using VPNs.

"everybody who's out there thinking of using VPNs...verifying your age keeps a child safe...So let's just not try and find a way around. Just prove your age."

- UK government

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Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Meredith Broussard, Brigitte Nerlich , and 8 more Joanna Bryson, Meredith Broussard, Brigitte Nerlich, Luxembourg, Gerald Roche, Adrian Vickers, Julie Cupples, David Murakami Wood, Louise Amoore, Katrina Navickas, Hilary J. Allen

michael veale @michae.lv · Aug 12

In a new digital twist to environmental individualisation of responsibility, the UK government is now advising people to “[d]elete old emails and pictures” in data centres to help with the current drought. www.gov.uk/government/n...

HOW TO SAVE WATER AT HOME
Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.

Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.

Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.

Avoid watering your lawn – brown grass will grow back healthy.

Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.

Take shorter showers.

Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

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Reposted by Marc Lynch, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Louise Amoore

David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · Aug 8

university presidents think they're cutting deals to restore their funding. i get their pressures. but this is what's happening: ramping up the extortion, creating homogeneous zones of government-directed curricula, shutting down campus speech.

UC says Trump demand for $1-billion fine would 'completely devastate' university system

The Trump administration has proposed the University of California pay more than $1 billion to settle antisemitism charges and restore frozen grant funding at UCLA.

www.latimes.com

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Aug 8

They do have form for tear gas…

Reposted by Dave O’Brien, Susan J. Smith, Fabián Muniesa , and 4 more Dave O’Brien, Susan J. Smith, Fabián Muniesa, Andrew Leyshon, John Hogan, Louise Amoore, Paul Langley

Economy & Society @econsocjournal.bsky.social · Aug 8

We are greatly saddened by the passing of Michel Callon, a key contributor to debates in our journal about economization, marketization, and ecologization. RIP
www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu/articles-ved...

Michel Callon (1945-2025)

www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu

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Reposted by Martin Paul Eve, Thucydides, Louise Amoore

Aidan Cook @aidancook.bsky.social · Aug 8

Found it!

A screengrab from mapping app whatthreewords that shows “beyond.ignites.curiosity’ to be in Taiwan.

It’s a bit of gravel by a river

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Reposted by Louise Amoore

Liz Morrish @lizmorrish.bsky.social · Aug 8

As a linguist, I'm not supposed to be prescriptive. But I will never tire of policing the abomination of managerial discourse.

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Reposted by Louise Amoore

Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · Aug 8

ah, didn't you see their brand guidelines? They state: "Do not use 'Beyond' conventionally. It should always be used as a subject noun or abstract noun".

AAARGH.

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Aug 8

Something about this also speaks to the decimation of the humanities. Beyond is a preposition or an adverb… what is it doing here?

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · Aug 8

Maybe the human felt the need to inject some error into the ChatGPT strap line…