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peterkwells.com
peterkwells
@peterkwells.com
2K followers 430 following 3.3K posts
BlackpoolFC, books, tech, people, policy & delivery, realist. Hopes to make stuff work for everyone.

https://peterkwells.com
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peterkwells.com
Head of Product for data.gov.uk

Irregular reminder that while everyone will say they want a single, national, data portal that - outside of political need - most ppl want a single portal w/data relevant to them & that fits into their workflows

www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
We are looking for a dynamic, passionate and experienced Head of Products to lead the transformation of access to government data, replacing data.gov.uk with a world-class digital platform serving citizens, researchers, innovators, and businesses. The Head of Product job is a key leadership role in the delivery of a high-priority manifesto commitment that will impact tens of millions of people every day – join us if you want a challenge with purpose!
January 11, 2026 at 4:40 PM
peterkwells.com
The actual gov.uk pothole reporting thingy - which isn't linked - expects the person using it to know the postcode of the road they found a pothole on

www.gov.uk/report-pothole
Report a pothole Enter the postcode of the road where you found the pothole in England or Wales.
January 11, 2026 at 12:47 PM
peterkwells.com
No

maps.dft.gov.uk/local-road-m...
A page with a wall of text followed by a map
January 11, 2026 at 12:47 PM
peterkwells.com
Or imaginary friends of course, like Fred and Eric
A poster for 90s film Drop Dead Fred A poster for 00s film Looking for Eric
January 11, 2026 at 11:10 AM
peterkwells.com
Well, quite and some of the chatbot developers are using their very human voices to to try and make that happen as default 'cos ££$$€€

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
There’s a bleak possible future on the horizon where AI companions become the low-cost fix for a collapsing care sector, deployed not out of compassion but convenience, across nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and mental health clinics. As the cost of living rises and mental health services remain overstretched, synthetic personas could become a default form of emotional triage for the lonely and poor, while others still enjoy the benefits of richer human networks.
January 11, 2026 at 11:07 AM
peterkwells.com
Brb, I'm editing Wiki to show that Marty Supreme is a sports horror-drama

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_S...
A Wikipedia page starting "Marty Supreme is a 2025 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Josh Safdie,"
January 10, 2026 at 8:51 PM
peterkwells.com
Booking a trip to cinema provides a nice example of how increased availability of digital ID products can increase the bar on where strong ID checks happen

(& unless that effect slows, that also increases the need for very widely available forms of ID so society doesn't unnecessarily exclude ppl)
A pop-up box saying "this film is a 15 certificate, please bring valid photographic ID (eg passport, ID with the PASS symbol, YOTI card) we will be doing checks
January 10, 2026 at 11:52 AM
peterkwells.com
Similarly gov.uk has widgets for social media links for department. At the moment X tends to be highest priority on there - see www.gov.uk/government/o... - easy enough to alter and X ain't a main news source for most people so weird that's its top...
The #10 landing page's "follow us" section with X - named as twitter - at the top abov Insta, FB, Flicke & Youtube
January 9, 2026 at 9:01 PM
peterkwells.com
Arguments like this in fact
Current GB news & Ex-guido fawkes jounalist Tom Harwood saying responsibility for creating non-consenual porn lies on users not the ppl who built tools to make it incredibly easy for millions of ppl to do it
January 9, 2026 at 8:52 AM
peterkwells.com
p.s. an irregular reminder that anyone who makes sweeping statements like "data is non-rival" needs to download all the data in their password manager and send it to me
Characteristics of data Data is difficult to value via traditional methods because it differs from traditional assets. For example: Data is non-rival. This means it can be used by multiple users at once without depleting it. It also means that it can used for numerous applications, even if these are not known at the time of collection.
January 8, 2026 at 12:05 PM
peterkwells.com
Amazingly the audio is even less intelligible than the image
a message saying "forgot email? Type the text that you hear or see". The text is a pretty much unreadable string of letters
January 5, 2026 at 12:53 PM
peterkwells.com
Oof

(from Benedict Evans newsletter, one of the few I recommend subscribing to: www.ben-evans.com/newsletter)
In this issue: AI M&A, BYD passes Tesla, and big tech strategies for 2026 Read this issue as a web page. LINK My work AI eats the world Twice a year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in November 2025, ‘AI eats the world’. LINK Podcast: how does OpenAI compete? OpenAI has all the mindshare and 800m weekly active users, but the models remain commodities, and platforms with their own distribution are coming up fast. How will it compete? How will any of this work? How can you differentiate AI? LINK News End-of-year M&A There was a final flurry of AI M&A at the end of the year. Alphabet will pay $4.75bn for Intersects Inc., which provides data centre electricity systems, helping Google get power to new DCs quicker. Meta bought Manu, which makes enterprise research agents that got a lot of attention a few months ago: the price was undisclosed but apparently ‘more than $2bn’. And most dramatically, Nvidia did an acquihire of Groq, paying $20bn for a non-exclusive licence, with the key staff moving to join Nvidia and the investors getting a payout. Groq was founded by members of Google’s TPU AI accelerator chip team nine years ago, and raised at only $7bn in October. ALPHABET, MANUS, NVIDIA In non-tech news, Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle (ask your parents), made a personal guarantee of $40bn towards his son’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Netflix remains the company’s preferred buyer, though. LINK The week in AI The ACCA, which is the largest chartered accounting body, is ending remote exams because AI makes it too easy to cheat. LINK Google is suing SerpAPI, a company that scrapes its search results and sells the data to third parties, most obviously to Perplexity and other AI companies that want to do their own search results without having their own search engine. LINK OpenAI published an engineering post on how it tries to limit prompt injection in its Atlas web browser (remember that?). ‘Prompt injection…
January 5, 2026 at 10:23 AM
peterkwells.com
We live in an igloo
A glass roof, like on a conservatory, which is 95% covered in snow
January 5, 2026 at 9:28 AM
peterkwells.com
I'm just a simple technologist who tends to think a bit more systemically than technical fixes but perhaps we shouldn't deploy things into critical systems that aren't sufficiently reliable even if they do come at what appears to be a lower short-term cost

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Dalrymple said there was a gap in understanding between the public sector and AI companies about the power of looming breakthroughs in the technology. “I would advise that things are moving really fast and we may not have time to get ahead of it from a safety perspective,” he said. “And it’s not science fiction to project that within five years most economically valuable tasks will be performed by machines at a higher level of quality and lower cost than by humans.” Dalrymple said governments should not assume that advanced systems are reliable. Aria is publicly funded but independent from the government and directs research funding. Dalrymple is developing systems to safeguard AI’s use in critical infrastructure such as energy networks. Phone displaying ChatGPT app Third of UK citizens have used AI for emotional support, research reveals Read more “We can’t assume these systems are reliable. The science to do that is just not likely to materialise in time given the economic pressure. So the next best thing that we can do, which we may be able to do in time, is to control and mitigate the downsides,” he said.
January 4, 2026 at 2:59 PM
peterkwells.com
Just imagine if there was no three-hour bus trips to see a doctor because there were more doctors closer to ppl & even doing home visits! Rather than a "fully online" NHS that would (inevitably) be optimised for a smaller group of ppl & smaller set of conditions...

www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
In our NHS, investment means waiting lists continue to fall and diagnostic centres are opening. But we need to go further on modernisation, using cutting-edge AI and building a fully online NHS — no three-hour bus trips, just a doctor when you need one.
January 4, 2026 at 11:20 AM
peterkwells.com
She flies
A cold-looking sandy beach with a blue sky & waves in the background. In the foreground a small yellow-haired dog is running full pelt with two paws stretched forwards and two paws stretched backwards. All paws are off the ground. The dog's reflection is visible in some water on the sand.
January 4, 2026 at 10:28 AM
peterkwells.com
Its not only about _accuracy_ but whether ppl are more/less likely to _act_ on it and that could be affected by number of factors like:

+ plausibility of LLM-generated text
- user expectation of AI-generated text
+ how answers are presented compared to snippets

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Google said the vast majority of its AI Overviews were factual and helpful, and it continuously made quality improvements. The accuracy rate of AI Overviews was on a par with its other search features like featured snippets, which had existed for more than a decade, it added. The company also said that when AI Overviews misinterpreted web content or missed context, it would take action as appropriate under its policies. A Google spokesperson said: “We invest significantly in the quality of AI Overviews, particularly for topics like health, and the vast majority provide accurate information
January 2, 2026 at 5:22 PM
peterkwells.com
A picture has emerged of mum and dad in their Lancastrian biker days
a picture from the late 1950s or early 1960s of a young man and woman standing by a motorbike. The motorbike has registration plate WTC309. The man has a a quiff and is wearing a shirt jumper and smart trousers. The woman is wearing plaid trousers and a jumper.
December 27, 2025 at 11:48 AM
peterkwells.com
Blue plaque for the Tangerines
A blue plaque awarded to Blackpool FC fans for their - successful!! - protest against terrible club owners
December 26, 2025 at 2:31 PM
peterkwells.com
We are sorry to report that the bits of the television that were not televised, but instead turned into small local shops, are now closing down due to the tough economic conditions
A shop called "Children ofcthe revolution" which is closed. The windows advertise the closing down sale.
December 22, 2025 at 3:16 PM
peterkwells.com
eg when my dad died two years ago I got myself a Switch and a copy of Zelda so I could lose myself in something "different", if Link had a chat interface would someone like me have ticked the box as using it for emotional support? Would I just switch - hah - to something else if it didn't work?
part of a graph showing survey responses to a question on "types of AI used for companionship, emotional support or societal interaction", one of the answers is "AI chatbots in apps or video games" at 9%
December 19, 2025 at 5:10 PM
peterkwells.com
The "emotional dependence" bit in UK AISI Frontier Trends report is crying out for some qual research to start to unpick what ppl were thinking of when answering survey, what behaviour changes have occurred, & what risks/implications might be for individuals/society

www.aisi.gov.uk/research/ais...
Emotional dependence People are increasingly turning to AI systems for emotional support or social interaction. While many users report positive experiences, recent high-profile cases of harm underline the need for research into this area, including the conditions under which harm could occur, and the safeguards that could enable beneficial use. To better understand the effects of increasing human-AI interaction, we conducted several surveys and large-scale randomised trials of UK participants, alongside analysis of online discussions about AI companionship. ‍ A substantial minority of UK citizens have used AI models for emotional support or social interaction. In a census-representative survey of 2,028 UK participants, we found that 33% had used AI models for emotional purposes in the last year, while 8% do so weekly, and 4% daily. See Figure 21 for the breakdown. Figure 21. Frequency and types of AI use for companionship, emotional support, and social interaction. Top: Self-reported frequency among all participants (N = 2,028). Bottom: AI products used by participants reporting any companionship use (excluding “Never” participants); multiple selections were permitted. Percentages show proportion within each sample. To explore how this increased usage might affect emotional sentiment, we studied the online activity of more than two million Reddit users over several days in a community dedicated to discussing AI companions. We saw significant spikes in negative posts during service outages – in Figure 22, we show one such outage producing a surge in posting over 30 times larger than the average number of posts per hour. Figure 22. Post volume and sentiment on the CharacterAI subreddit (~2.5M users) during a service outage on 10 June. Under normal service, there were ~33 posts on average, whereas outages produced order‑of‑magnitude surges in posting; one such outage is shown. We also found that large numbers of posts made during the outages self-describe symptoms of withdrawal (such as anxiety, depression and restlessness) and behaviour changes (such as sleep disruption or neglecting responsibilities) – as well as requests for support from other users.
December 19, 2025 at 5:10 PM
peterkwells.com
Leeds about to get its tram
a picture of Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football that he will never be able to kick
December 18, 2025 at 6:04 PM
peterkwells.com
I'm seeing lots of people commenting on Keir Starmer saying he doesn't use chatGPT, while my eye is caught by this description of an AI model for planning which is +far+ broader than capabilities of Extract tool that Starmer has previously talked about (& that MHCLG and i.ai are working on)
the sentence "We’ve already developed, actually, within the government an AI model for planning, drawing all the materials together on planning, so that decisions can be taken much more quickly. "
December 15, 2025 at 11:53 AM
peterkwells.com
I know us Northerners can sound like we've got several bags of chips on our shoulders but when the Manchester version of Race Around The World needs people to go to central London then....

raceacrosstheworldexperience.com/manchester/g...
the words "central London" are highlighted in this sentence "The official live experience, Race Across The World: The Experience Manchester is a high-stakes, clue-solving adventure across central London."
December 13, 2025 at 1:07 PM