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Jasper Jackson

@jasperjackson.bsky.social

4.6K followers 1.2K following 430 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 · 29d

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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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 6h

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

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 7h

Ah, I did wonder!

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 8h

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 · 8h

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 · 8h

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 · 1d

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

Reposted by Jasper Jackson

Steve Herman @w7voa.journa.host.ap.brid.gy · 1d

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 · 1d

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

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 1d

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

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

📣 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 · 5d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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

Reposted by Jasper Jackson

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 4d

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 4d

What an admirably clear statement from the Jewish Leadership Council, especially when all of those involved must surely have been dealing with so many other urgent challenges in safety, security and grief + shock today before having this further divisive and distracting intervention to address too.

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 4d

Greta Thunberg says she is being detained by Israel in cell ‘infested with bedbugs’

Exclusive: Activist tells Swedish officials she has been subjected to harsh treatment, including insufficient food and water Environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg has told Swedish officials she is being subjected to harsh treatment in Israeli custody after her detention and removal from a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, according to correspondence seen by the Guardian. According to the correspondence, Israeli forces are also reported by another detainee to have taken photographs where Thunberg was allegedly forced to hold flags. The identity of the flags are unknown. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · 5d

NEW from me:

Several CBS News staffers and insiders told me that the network "is not a good place now" amid the imminent arrival of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, who one source likened to Michael Scott of The Office based on her lack of qualifications.

www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

CBS News staffers are ‘literally freaking out’ about Bari Weiss taking over newsroom

EXCLUSIVE: ‘People are using words like depressing and doomsday – feels like some sort of doomsday,’ one source told The Independent about the mood inside CBS News right now.

www.the-independent.com

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Transformer @transformernews.ai · 6d

OpenAI's new evaluation helps to ground conversations about AI-driven job loss in actual model performance, rather than fear and wild speculation. It also shows that “Will AI take our jobs?” isn’t a yes or no question.

AI models are getting really good at things you do at work

A new OpenAI benchmark, GDPval, tests AI models on things people actually do in their jobs — and finds that Claude is about as good as a human for government work

www.transformernews.ai

Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 6d

It's interesting, and tbh surprising, that the government's new AI minister actually seems to get what is a pretty complex, but hugely important, brief. www.transformernews.ai/p/kanishka-n...

Britain’s new AI minister actually ‘gets’ AI

Kanishka Narayan is excited about AI opportunities, but takes the risks seriously too

www.transformernews.ai

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Christy Somos @christysomos.bsky.social · 7d

“For example, low-cost drones, often guided by AI, are now responsible for more casualties than artillery — and inventing, flying and buying them is highly decentralised.”

Freeland’s piece waxing poetic about the war is….something.

www.ft.com/content/8d59...

We need Ukraine as much as it needs us

Kyiv is not merely a victim — it is an exemplar for western democracies and defence industries preparing for future wars

www.ft.com

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Jasper Jackson @jasperjackson.bsky.social · 7d

Jonn's pitch to found the Cumbrian People's Liberation Front below.

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 7d

"No one would be mad enough to write 2,500 words about Cornish separatism!" they said. WELL THEY CALLED THAT WRONG

From the Outside

This week: everything I thought about Labour conference while not being there. Also: a deep dive into Cornish separatism and the nature of national identity.

jonn.substack.com

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404 Media @404media.co · 8d

BREAKING: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has bought access to a surveillance tool that is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones, according to ICE documents reviewed by 404 Media.

🔗 www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

www.404media.co

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 8d

This week’s column: on Labour returning to its comfort zone and its old hobby horses, with the same results it always gets when it does that:

Memo for Labour: globalisation is good, actually

This government is in many ways the party returned to its factory settings. But the product was faulty in the first place

www.ft.com

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