David Barnard-Wills
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dbarnardwills.bsky.social
David Barnard-Wills
@dbarnardwills.bsky.social
Political scientist working in tech regulation. Emerging technology. Previously Research-Innovation Lead at Trilateral Research. Privacy, ethical AI and responsible innovation. Manchester UK
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
I am participating and reviewing submissions for this workshop. so let's get some interesting proposals here, yeah? If you are an STSer/anthropologist working on how AI is changing ideas and practices in the sciences, would love to have you in the conversation.
The Craft of Science with AI: Evidence, Judgment, and Practice
We invite researchers and practitioners to join us in examining how scientific reasoning and imagination are being reconfigured as AI systems become a part of the everyday practice of science. Learn m...
datasociety.net
November 6, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
I had a long conversation with MIT Tech Review’s @willdouglasheaven.bsky.social about AGI; it fed into this very good read on the rise of AGI orthodoxy
How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time
The idea that machines will be as smart as—or smarter than—humans has hijacked an entire industry. But look closely and you’ll see it’s a myth that persists for many of the same reasons conspiracies d...
www.technologyreview.com
November 2, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term
www.gov.uk/government/p...
The value of public R&D
www.gov.uk
October 30, 2025 at 1:28 PM
"whats that lad? Trouble at t'ech accelerator?"
October 27, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
🎉Today, we released a series of five Responsible AI courses that you can take for free: alltechishuman.org/rai-courses

Principles of Responsible AI

The History of Responsible AI

Operationalizing AI Governance (2)

Governing Agentic AI Systems
October 22, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
CNN takes a deep dive into the business of crypto ATM companies who mark up the price of cryptocurrency by adding 20% to 30% to each transaction. "Americans, often retirees, lost around $240 million to crypto ATM scams in the first six months of this year" www.cnn.com/interactive/...
Americans are losing millions to scammers at crypto ATMs. Here’s how companies profit
Companies often fail to refund money to victims and aggressively fight police to claw back scam money seized from machines.
www.cnn.com
October 17, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Thank you. In my last job, at research company, we put a ban on "silicon samples" in our gen AI policy. I think it's particularly bad for "hard to reach" populations because they are less likely to be represented or represented well in the models training data.
Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵
The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention
Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 1:12 PM
connect.cma.gov.uk/drcf-cyberse... registration is now open for this digital regulators hosted event on the future of cybersecurity
Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies in 2030
Date and time Wednesday 15 October 2025, 9:00am to 2:00pm Location In-person, the Cabot, 25 Cabot Square, London. Registration for this event closes at 12pm on Thursday 9 October 2025. About this even...
connect.cma.gov.uk
September 29, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Preparing my notes for an interview on history of identity cards, back in the news because of proposals such as Labour Together’s Britcard (left). There’s a long history (see WW2 poster, right)

Here’s a thread on recent (1980s-2010s) UK ID card history, showing how Tony Blair became keen on them
July 30, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Enter the cybersecurity game challenge and get your cybersecurity game printed!

cybersecgames.com/pages/the-cy...
The CyberSec Game Challenge
Build trust, shape a culture and kick start conversations. Physical games for in person threat modelling, training and fun.
cybersecgames.com
September 19, 2025 at 8:58 PM
This just arrived, looking forward to giving it a play.
September 11, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Whenever we speak to public servants who are keen to involve the public more on decisions about data and AI, an early subject to be raised is always: who’s already done it, and how did they do it?

@gavinfreeguard.bsky.social‬ shares some examples here.

🔗 connectedbydata.org/resources/b...
Public sector public engagement on data and AI
Whenever we speak to public servants who are keen to involve the public more on decisions about data and AI, an early subject to be raised is always: who’s already done it, and how did they do it? People are understandably keen to learn from what has already been tried. This blog/case study is part of a series exploring how public sector organisations involve the public, workers and civil society in decisions about data and AI, and some of the consequences when they do not. Read more about our work on public involvement in public sector data and AI.
connectedbydata.org
September 11, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Interesting read: Europe's Innovation Agencies Need Radical Reform To Meet Today's Grand Challenges: www.socialeurope.eu/europes-inno...
Europe's Innovation Agencies Need Radical Reform To Meet Today's Grand Challenges
Innovation agencies in the EU are no longer fit for purpose. A major overhaul of both the concept of innovation and of institutional structures is urgent.
www.socialeurope.eu
September 5, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Facts alone won’t bridge science and society. Researchers call for a “collaboration model” built on dialogue, trust, and shared values, to make science more relevant and connected to people’s lives.
For effective science communication, 'just the facts' isn't good enough, say scholars
In a new communications landscape that feasts on polarization, the science community needs to rethink how it engages society in scientific discovery, controversy and policy.
phys.org
September 5, 2025 at 9:02 AM
What did I visit on my holidays?
August 22, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
📢 Applications close this Friday to attend our Future Leaders workshop! 📢

Together with the RBOC Network+, we invite you to a co-hosted workshop aimed at developing future research leaders working in TIPS.

Apply here: www.spritehub.org/event-detail...

#SPRITE #events #opportunities #TIPS
Future leaders: Imagining Scenarios/Effective Decision Making/Encouraging Resilience. | SPRITE+ Hub
Join our Future Leaders workshop in collaboration with the RBOC Network+
www.spritehub.org
July 21, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
I did some research and reporting to try to understand why Elon turning Grok "anti-woke" also made it into MechaHitler, some interesting stuff in the guts of LLMs. feat @theophite.bsky.social prospect.org/power/2025-0...
How Did Elon Musk Turn Grok Into MechaHitler?
The malfunctioning xAI chatbot provides some insights into how large language models work.
prospect.org
July 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
Scoop from @eileenguo.bsky.social - huge amounts of personal information are embedded in a major data set used to train AI models www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/18/1...
A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data
Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.
www.technologyreview.com
July 18, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by David Barnard-Wills
There’s so much wrong here, but in particular it’s noted in the article that the creator of this project met with a bunch of stakeholders who told him the idea was shit, and he did it anyway.
The UN Made AI-Generated Refugees
The AIs are designed to teach people about atrocities in Sudan.
www.404media.co
July 10, 2025 at 3:44 PM