Chair, 695th Lord Mayor's Ethical AI Initiative. Personal views only. Blog on science & religion etc. Work in Strategy & Search. I only follow people I’ve met.
Joined January 2018
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1 Jul 2020
#unethicalOptimizationPrinciple paper now out in @royalsociety Open Science. Thanks to brilliant co-authors Heather Battey, Anthony Davison & Robert Mackay.
@DameWendyDBE gave us quote for press: "This is a really important paper. It shows that…
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royalsocietypublishing.org/d…
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Mat 9.35 talks about Jesus healing πᾶσαν νόσον καὶ πᾶσαν μαλακίαν.
Why add μαλακίαν, a word which only occurs in Mat in NT?
Is this a reference to Deut 7.15 where μαλακίαν is used in the LXX & emphasises that Jesus is fulfilling the promises made there?
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V interesting background- highlighting amongst other things the key role of UK AISI.
NEW: Inside the 24-hrs before WH slapped export controls on Anthropic
- Last Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns about Fable jailbreak to Trump admin
- Friday AM, Sean Cairncross, Bessent, Susie etc. held WH call to discuss
- Then White House started reaching out to Anthropic to speak with Dario Amodei, who was at a wellness retreat.
- When Amodei was finally available past 1pm, he had three tense phone calls with a combo of ppl including Cairncross, Bessent, Lutnick, Kessler, Will Scharf, Richard Walters, and Walker Barrett.
-Amodei tried to clear up what he assumed was a misunderstanding. He defended the guardrails and distinguished between universal and non-universal jailbreak
- Cairncross and Bessent were unmoved and asked Amodei to take down Fable and work with the admin to fix the vulnerabilities. (A WH official said Amazon’s findings were run past the NSA and they felt they had “proof.”)
- Amodei asked for more time and info, but he made no commitments to pull the model
- Bessent told Amodei directly at one point that he was making a “bad decision”
- By Friday evening, the Trump admin imposed its export controls.
- “Export controls were a last resort after begging them for hours to work with us,” senior WH official said.
W/ @cheyennehaslett
politico.com/news/2026/06/13…
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Related @AnthropicAI blog post here:
anthropic.com/news/fable-myt…
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Great to see a smart Brit running a cutting edge company. But their best technology was developed by Oxford Ionics so they bought it for $1.1bn and now they’re a $22bn company.
thetimes.com/business/compan…
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There has to be a contest to test the ideas of the potential PMs. And Labour MPs must then focus on who would be the best PM, not who would tickle the Labour Members. Otherwise Labour will be Pasoked at the GE.
thetimes.com/comment/the-tim…
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@KanishkaNaryan has the strongest private sector financial experience of any Labour MP. It’s too early for him to be Chancellor but perhaps Chief Secretary?
thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…
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How on earth can you develop a viable Defence Investment Plan without full involvement of the Armed Forces Minister & the National Security Adviser?
thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…
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Jun 13
It’s v good for the UK to have two seriously ambitious large life sciences firms. @IsomorphicLabs might become a third.
ft.com/content/ffaa4f9b-0f49… via @ft
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Jun 13
“A criminal investigation has been launched into an allegation of perverting the course of justice after the alleged use of AI systems by an officer to create evidential material in a number of cases.” AIs are unreliable assistants. Must be checked.
ft.com/content/514bab88-788c…
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Jun 13
Congratulations to
Helen Mirren CH
Julia Donaldson DBE
Hayaatun Sillem DBE
Sir @DavidGauke
Sir @GregHands
Sir Alastair King
Sarah Munby CB
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Jun 12
V interesting. Slight worry: is N=2316 really enough? @ScienceMagazine Patterns of brain-wide associations reflect socioeconomics sciencemagazinedigital.org/s…
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Jun 12
Blimey. Look at the video! Though 481m is "only" the runup, not the height of the wave itself. @ScienceMagazine - A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord sciencemagazinedigital.org/s…
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Jun 12
Characteristically, @DG_Rand @GordPennycook & Tom Costello have reacted with impeccable scientific integrity when some data issues were brought to their attention: re-analysing & correcting the results.
If only others…
sciencemagazinedigital.org/s…
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Jun 12
Decryption is certainly a viable business case for quantum computers. But Demis Hassabis has an interesting hypothesis that any important problem in the normal physical world will prove tractable to classical computing. We’ll see.
ft.com/content/7e461be0-5c13… via @ft
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Jun 12
AIs are unreliable research assistants. They’re very useful but everything needs to be checked. If any advisory firm doesn’t understand that their advice on AI is, I’m afraid, worthless.
ft.com/content/b3828e92-4961… via @ft
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Jun 12
A clever idea. But re-orchestrating Mahler?!?
He did this to other composers, including Beethoven, but really.
thetimes.com/culture/classic…
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Jun 12
Limit increases to benefits (including pensions) to 1%pa for 4y & spend the extra money (c£30bnpa) on defence. Maybe we need an emergency bill with cross-party support?
thetimes.com/comment/the-tim…
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Jun 11
We should cap benefits & state pension rises to 1%pa for 2y. This would free up £30bnpa to invest in defence.
@JohnHealey_MP would I’m sure return to serve with such additional funding.
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Jun 11
Boards should be discussing roles of AI. But there seems to be extraordinary of naivety. Outsourcing decisions to an algorithm from a 3rd party is really dangerous, esp if & when that 3rd party starts tilting the decisions in favour of advertisers.
ft.com/content/0f79da9c-cd59…
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Jun 11
This is insane. They should join GCAP. There simply isn’t the demand or expertise for a separate project.
ft.com/content/ad600574-64c9… via @ft
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