The struggle for readability

Adverts and search engines have massively impacted the ways in which we read online. I don't just mean how we find things to read, but impacts on how we read and the quality of reading online. Adverts make content worse in many different ways Even simple banner adverts add visual clutter to a page. Pop-ups, … Continue reading The struggle for readability →

A prompt to condition a Positronic Brain to follow the Three Laws of Robotics

Gopher is Deep Mind's new language model. I saw a tweet that highlighted the text prompt that the researchers used to prepare the model for having a conversation with users. The prompt is taken from the Gopher paper (see Table A30, page 114). The paper says that: In order to produce a conversationalist, we use … Continue reading A prompt to condition a Positronic Brain to follow the Three Laws of Robotics →

Behavioural use licensing won’t fix the negative impacts of AI

I recently read a paper called "Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AI" in which the authors make a case that licences can be used to create a legally enforceable way to limit the ways in which AI can be used, and in particular in-line with response AI guidelines. Here's the abstract: With the growing reliance … Continue reading Behavioural use licensing won’t fix the negative impacts of AI →

Using a collaboration spectrum alongside the data spectrum

According to the ODI data spectrum, data exists on a spectrum from closed, to shared to open. Closed data is limited to internal use in an organisation. Shared data might be available to specific groups. Open data is data published under an open licence for anyone to access, use and share. While it's framed around … Continue reading Using a collaboration spectrum alongside the data spectrum →

A commons needs more than open licensing

When I look across the various "open" communities in which I either participate in or monitor, there's a lot of recurring issues. For example, sustainability is a common issue across open data, open source and open science. How do we ensure sustainable access to data? How do we make individual open source projects sustainable when … Continue reading A commons needs more than open licensing →

Role playing data governance

There's a lot of work happening around data governance that involves piloting and testing new approaches. A few years ago the ODI piloted some data trusts. The Data Trust Initiative is running three pilots. The ODI has also been running a peer learning network as part of its data institutions programme to support a variety … Continue reading Role playing data governance →

Prompting

My feed is full of screenshots of AI generated images made using Midjourney and DALL-E. I've seen Kermit the frog in, well, everything and Foucault on a swing. Creative prompt engineering can lead to some interesting results. And because interesting results leads to clicks which lead to revenue, then engineering interesting prompts will be a … Continue reading Prompting →

There’s a hole in my lawn

There's a hole in my lawn. I don't mean the grass is patchy. Although it is. I mean an actual hole in the earth. It's in the corner of the lawn tucked away by some lavender bushes. I think it was dug by a mouse. We used to see a mouse bolt across the patio … Continue reading There’s a hole in my lawn →

What are Data Unions?

I've been doing some research around different types of data intermediary recently and thought I'd share some things I've learned about "Data Unions". Like a lot of the terms being applied to new approaches to data governance, there's no clear definition of what constitutes a data union. A vision of collective action For example, this … Continue reading What are Data Unions? →

We need the right data institutions

Popular Science have recently published three pieces of speculative fiction exploring the question of "will 'we the people' benefit from our data?". They're called "Shared data", "The Memory of Tomatoes" and "Home@Heart". Each of the pieces of fiction is followed up a response from a policy expert. I read the first of these this morning. … Continue reading We need the right data institutions →