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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Gabby HC, but a ghost, hiding in a corner @scriblit.bsky.social · 2h

I'm quitting being the French Prime Minister. For an hour.

Steve Coogan announces he is closing the bureau de change. for an hour.

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 8h

from law making to law capitulating

Sunak goes from occupying the highest office in the UK government to advising the wealthiest and most powerful industry

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Rishi Sunak takes advisory roles with Microsoft and AI firm Anthropic

The former prime minister has been told not to lobby the UK government by the appointments watchdog.

www.bbc.com

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 13h

important on LLMs for academics:

1️⃣ LLMs are usefully seen as lossy content-addressable systems

2️⃣ we can't automatically detect plagiarism

3️⃣ LLMs automate plagiarism & paper mills

4️⃣ we must protect literature from pollution

5️⃣ LLM use is a CoI

6️⃣ prompts do not cause output in authorial sense

5 Ghostwriter in the Machine
A unique selling point of these systems is conversing and writing in a human-like way. This is imminently understandable, although wrong-headed, when one realises these are systems that
essentially function as lossy2
content-addressable memory: when
input is given, the output generated by the model is text that
stochastically matches the input text. The reason text at the output looks novel is because by design the AI product performs
an automated version of what is known as mosaic or patchwork
plagiarism (Baždarić, 2013) — due to the nature of input masking and next token prediction, the output essentially uses similar words in similar orders to what it has been exposed to. This
makes the automated flagging of plagiarism unlikely, which is
also true when students or colleagues perform this type of copypaste and then thesaurus trick, and true when so-called AI plagiarism detectors falsely claim to detect AI-produced text (Edwards, 2023a). This aspect of LLM-based AI products can be
seen as an automation of plagiarism and especially of the research paper mill (Guest, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; van
Rooij, 2022): the “churn[ing] out [of] fake or poor-quality journal papers” (Sanderson, 2024; Committee on Publication Ethics,

Either way, even if
the courts decide in the favour of companies, we should not allow
these companies with vested interests to write our papers (Fisher
et al., 2025), or to filter what we include in our papers. Because
it is not the case that we only operate based on legal precedents,
but also on our own ethical values and scientific integrity codes
(ALLEA, 2023; KNAW et al., 2018), and we have a direct duty to
protect, as with previous crises and in general, the literature from
pollution. In other words, the same issues as in previous sections
play out here, where essentially now every paper produced using
chatbot output must declare a conflict of interest, since the output text can be biased in subtle or direct ways by the company
who owns the bot (see Table 2).
Seen in the right light — AI products understood as contentaddressable systems — we see that framing the user, the academic
in this case, as the creator of the bot’s output is misplaced. The
input does not cause the output in an authorial sense, much like
input to a library search engine does not cause relevant articles
and books to be written (Guest, 2025). The respective authors
wrote those, not the search query!

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Jon Ingold @jon.inkle.co · 11h

bleak. $150/hr to feed a shredder. on the plus side, i really do think stochastic modelling will never produce a good story, ever, no matter how many good stories you throw at it, so if you need the money you should take it. But also -- make sure you put the word aubergine in every story. Teach that

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Layla Moran MP 🔶🕊️ @laylamoran.bsky.social · 12h

Today is World Mental Health Day. Mental Health affects everyone, all of the time.

Today and everyday it is important to look out for our own and our loved ones mental wellbeing.

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Robot Talk @robottalkpod.bsky.social · 13h

📢 New Episode Alert!

This week, I chatted to Dr. Ali K. Hoshiar from @universityofessex.bsky.social‬ about how microrobots move and work together. 🤖

Listen now: www.robottalk.org/2025/10/10/e... #Robots #Robotics #Microbot #Medical #Healthcare

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 12h

Please report back on experimental results. 😁

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 12h

Having never watched the show, I have also internalised it as 'Werewolf on TV' (or Wink Murder, for a more old school twist).

'Love Island uses Scrum' almost makes me want to watch an episode to see...almost. 😅

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

BookTrust @booktrust.org.uk · 12h

📢 Don't miss our upcoming webinar for primary schools!

We'll be joined by our Writer in Residence Matt Goodfellow and #OURfP expert Debbie Thomas to explore the importance of book choice for children.

Find out more and book your free spot here:

https://bit.ly/48fqgQO

An illustration by Sandhya Prabhat of a group of children reading with a teacher on the floor of a school library. Plus the words: "Webinar: Developing a culture of reading for pleasure. Why book choice matters for children. 4pm, Thursday 20 November." And the logos for BookTrust, and The Open University Reading for Pleasure

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 3d

Phew!
That makes more sense. 😁

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 3d

Wait...the kid dated your Grandma or Bond dated your Grandma? 😅

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

arxiv cs.RO @arxiv-cs-ro.bsky.social · 14d

Atef Azaiez, David A. Anisi, Marie Farrell, Matt Luckcuck
Revisiting Formal Methods for Autonomous Robots: A Structured Survey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20488

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

arXiv cs.RO Robotics @csro-bot.bsky.social · 14d

Atef Azaiez, David A. Anisi, Marie Farrell, Matt Luckcuck: Revisiting Formal Methods for Autonomous Robots: A Structured Survey https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20488 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20488 https://arxiv.org/html/2509.20488

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

arXiv cs.LO Logic in Computer Science @cslo-bot.bsky.social · Jun 18

Matt Luckcuck, Angelo Ferrando, Fatma Faruq: Varanus: Runtime Verification for CSP https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14426 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.14426 https://arxiv.org/html/2506.14426

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

arXiv cs.SE Software Engineering @csse-bot.bsky.social · Apr 1

Marie Farrell, Matt Luckcuck, Rosemary Monahan, Conor Reynolds, Ois\'in Sheridan: Adventures in FRET and Specification https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.24040 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.24040 https://arxiv.org/html/2503.24040

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 7d

A cartoon from my new book, 'Physics for Cats'. Out next week: www.tomgauld.com

A scientist stands in front of an enormous contraption
"I created this device to test my theory that our entire reality is a simulation, but the readings I'm
getting suggest something much worse"

"What?" Asks a second scientist.
"We're living in a cartoon!" Says the first.
"Does it at least have a good punchline?" says the second.
The fiorst scientist carefully looks over the data, then eventually replies "Nope"

From 'Physics for Cats' by Tom Gauld - order it at www.tomgauld.com

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Colleen Morgan @clmorgan.bsky.social · 6d

“Bronze is brilliant!” #archink #inktober - bronze & flint
youtu.be/nyu4u3VZYaQ

Drawing of a skeuomorphic spear head made of flint. It says, “bronze bronze bronze bronze…what’s wrong with stone?” And hashtags in the tweet.

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 6d

Bronze is user friendly and Zeitgeisty!

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 8d

This was a really useful episode to listen to on the way to work.

Here, the Guardian's Science Weekly podcast talks about a lot of the big problems in the way we publish research (I don't suppose these issues are entirely confined to science research).

www.theguardian.com/science/audi...

Fraud, AI slop and huge profits: is science publishing broken? – podcast

Scientists warn academic publishing needs reform in order to retain trust in research system. Ian Sample talks to Madeleine Finlay and Dr Mark Hanson proposes potential solutions

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 10d

Charming little octopus from a Roman villa at Villaquejida, León, Spain. Limestone, 2nd-3rd century AD.

Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid 📷 me

#Archaeology

My photo shows a mosaic fragment from the floor of a Roman villa in Spain, dated AD 100-200s. It depicts a cartoon-like, stylised octopus using red, yellow, white, and black limestone tesserae, against a white background. The front-facing octopus has a large red and white head/body outlined in black. Its yellow circular eyes are outlined in black with a central black dot. Below the head/body are eight writhing tentacles

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Matt Luckcuck @mattluckcuck.bsky.social · 10d

The Remains of the Dough?

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Reposted by Matt Luckcuck

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · Nov 23

Not sure anyone can handle even more horrible AI in academia but as a T&F journal editor I am appalled to inform you of "Paperpal", allegedly "Trained on millions of published scholarly articles." 1/2
paperpal.com/blog/news-up...

CACTUS Joins Hands with Taylor & Francis to Simplify Editorial Process with a Pioneering AI Solution | Paperpal

CACTUS announced a partnership with Taylor and Francis to to introduce an innovative AI solution, Paperpal Preflight for Editorial Desk, designed to streamline journal editorial processes. By bringing...

paperpal.com