Murray Goulden
@murraygoulden.bsky.social
Sociologist of the digital and everyday, and the political economies intertwined • Move slow and fix things.
Assoc. Prof U Nottingham.
Assoc. Prof U Nottingham.
Reposted by Murray Goulden
My NEO robot after I learn the 3rd worlder piloting them is mad chill
October 30, 2025 at 3:17 PM
My NEO robot after I learn the 3rd worlder piloting them is mad chill
“the next few years are not about owning a super-useful robot, but raising one, letting it learn from your home..”.
So usual AI industry social dynamic: Global South kid paid pennies to puppet robot, whilst Global North ‘owner’ pays for privilege of training AI, only real beneficiary is tech firm.
So usual AI industry social dynamic: Global South kid paid pennies to puppet robot, whilst Global North ‘owner’ pays for privilege of training AI, only real beneficiary is tech firm.
I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Got Weird. | WSJ
YouTube video by The Wall Street Journal
www.youtube.com
October 31, 2025 at 10:47 AM
“the next few years are not about owning a super-useful robot, but raising one, letting it learn from your home..”.
So usual AI industry social dynamic: Global South kid paid pennies to puppet robot, whilst Global North ‘owner’ pays for privilege of training AI, only real beneficiary is tech firm.
So usual AI industry social dynamic: Global South kid paid pennies to puppet robot, whilst Global North ‘owner’ pays for privilege of training AI, only real beneficiary is tech firm.
Absolutely smitten with @paulmmcooper.com's fascinating podcast on the rise and fall of the Mongolian empire, including how it inadvertently aided the European colonial project which followed open.spotify.com/episode/7iWl...
19. The Mongols - Terror of the Steppe
Spotify video
open.spotify.com
October 2, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Absolutely smitten with @paulmmcooper.com's fascinating podcast on the rise and fall of the Mongolian empire, including how it inadvertently aided the European colonial project which followed open.spotify.com/episode/7iWl...
My new paper with Lewis Cameron on 'The Role of Mundane Resistance in the Spectacular Failure of the Smart Home' is now available from Big Data & Society.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
The role of mundane resistance in the spectacular failure of the smart home - Murray Goulden, Lewis Cameron, 2025
A decade on from the launch of Amazon's Alexa – the smart home's breakout product – the vision of semi-automated, pervasively sensed domesticity remai...
journals.sagepub.com
July 28, 2025 at 8:39 AM
My new paper with Lewis Cameron on 'The Role of Mundane Resistance in the Spectacular Failure of the Smart Home' is now available from Big Data & Society.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
I couldn't get out of my head the sight of my MP, Lilian Greenwood, cosplaying in Parliament as a suffragette, just days before voting to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
July 13, 2025 at 11:22 AM
I couldn't get out of my head the sight of my MP, Lilian Greenwood, cosplaying in Parliament as a suffragette, just days before voting to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This author's work on the metaverse is a salutory lesson in the sunk cost danger of researching novel technologies. Months of effort only for it to turn out the platform you're an expert in is a dead scene (though tbh in this example that was clear from the beginning...)
June 10, 2025 at 10:14 AM
This author's work on the metaverse is a salutory lesson in the sunk cost danger of researching novel technologies. Months of effort only for it to turn out the platform you're an expert in is a dead scene (though tbh in this example that was clear from the beginning...)
An awful time to work in creative industries. Intellectual and creative development largely happens in-the-doing; in the act of writing, drawing, recording. GenAI doesn't shortcut the process, it short-changes it.
aftermath.site/ai-video-gam...
aftermath.site/ai-video-gam...
‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers - Aftermath
'I have had conversations about AI in a professional context that make me want to walk into the sea'
aftermath.site
April 9, 2025 at 1:52 PM
An awful time to work in creative industries. Intellectual and creative development largely happens in-the-doing; in the act of writing, drawing, recording. GenAI doesn't shortcut the process, it short-changes it.
aftermath.site/ai-video-gam...
aftermath.site/ai-video-gam...
If we wanted to assert British sovereignty, rather than leaving the EU we should have jailed Microsoft execs until they made Word's spellcheck recognise English spellings. I've spent my entire adult life assuming this was going to be fixed any day now.
March 20, 2025 at 10:49 AM
If we wanted to assert British sovereignty, rather than leaving the EU we should have jailed Microsoft execs until they made Word's spellcheck recognise English spellings. I've spent my entire adult life assuming this was going to be fixed any day now.
Tech companies are as good at humanising their AI, as they are at erasing the human labour that trains their AI.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1...
www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1...
An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it
While Nomi's chatbot is not the first to suggest suicide, researchers and critics say that its explicit instructions—and the company’s response—are striking.
www.technologyreview.com
March 18, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Tech companies are as good at humanising their AI, as they are at erasing the human labour that trains their AI.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1...
www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/06/1...
Jeanette Winterson's take on AI as "alternative intelligence" doesn't merit a single tweet, but having ensured reading it I need to cleanse my soul
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
‘OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving’ | Jeanette Winterson
I think of AI as alternative intelligence – and its capacity to be ‘other’ is just what the human race needs
www.theguardian.com
March 13, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Jeanette Winterson's take on AI as "alternative intelligence" doesn't merit a single tweet, but having ensured reading it I need to cleanse my soul
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
Reposted by Murray Goulden
Very good on The Great University Disaster. Note it's *not* attacking administrators: indeed unis may be *under*-managed. The point is that extreme, inappropriate corporatization and bureaucratization has destroyed their very purpose, like a virus from within. (1/2)
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullshit jobs in universities
You may never have considered yourself to be one. Why would you? But if you’re reading this, there is more than a likelihood that you are one. If you’re a
academic.oup.com
March 12, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Very good on The Great University Disaster. Note it's *not* attacking administrators: indeed unis may be *under*-managed. The point is that extreme, inappropriate corporatization and bureaucratization has destroyed their very purpose, like a virus from within. (1/2)
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
thewalrus.ca/i-used-to-te... Higher Ed and it's regulatory overlords desperately need to engage with the reality of post-genAI assessment, whilst there's still *a little* time to do it thoughtfully. The alternative is waiting until it's thoughtlessly forced on us in a moral panic.
I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats | The Walrus
I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated
thewalrus.ca
March 11, 2025 at 6:05 PM
thewalrus.ca/i-used-to-te... Higher Ed and it's regulatory overlords desperately need to engage with the reality of post-genAI assessment, whilst there's still *a little* time to do it thoughtfully. The alternative is waiting until it's thoughtlessly forced on us in a moral panic.
Reposted by Murray Goulden
Yet another scandal brewing within UK Higher Ed: universities can get research money for everyone they've sacked. Big ghost fleets of lecturers who don't exist will be launched into the next Research Excellence Framework. Unis will laugh and cash in (1/2). englishassociation.ac.uk/ref2029-conc...
REF2029: concerns about the implications of decoupling | The English Association
We support the teaching, learning, and enjoyment of English at all levels of education, from early years to further and higher education and beyond.
englishassociation.ac.uk
March 11, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Yet another scandal brewing within UK Higher Ed: universities can get research money for everyone they've sacked. Big ghost fleets of lecturers who don't exist will be launched into the next Research Excellence Framework. Unis will laugh and cash in (1/2). englishassociation.ac.uk/ref2029-conc...
You're remarkably far down the neolib education rabbit hole when your 11y/o brings this home. Notable it has the ideological self-confidence to acknowledge both how awful exams for primary kids are, and that they're only having to endure this in order to feed the metrics.
March 8, 2025 at 9:58 AM
You're remarkably far down the neolib education rabbit hole when your 11y/o brings this home. Notable it has the ideological self-confidence to acknowledge both how awful exams for primary kids are, and that they're only having to endure this in order to feed the metrics.
Am unjustifiably excited by seemingly being the first human to notice that Moderat's glorious video for Bad Kingdom features Wollaton Hall near my house, so much so that I don't care that you don't care.
February 4, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Am unjustifiably excited by seemingly being the first human to notice that Moderat's glorious video for Bad Kingdom features Wollaton Hall near my house, so much so that I don't care that you don't care.
Reposted by Murray Goulden
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
February 4, 2025 at 1:26 AM
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
Bets on how long before Higher Ed's head-in-the-sand over AI misuse in assessments crashes into a media moral panic about rampant cheating, and we find ourselves kneejerked into exams for everything?
January 26, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Bets on how long before Higher Ed's head-in-the-sand over AI misuse in assessments crashes into a media moral panic about rampant cheating, and we find ourselves kneejerked into exams for everything?
Everything about this case is grotesque, but fact that no tracking tag small enough is available is transparently discriminatory design and in breach of Equality Act's coverage of age and gender.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Just Stop Oil protester, 78, has jail term extended after no suitable tag found
Exclusive: Gaie Delap told she will have to serve 20 more days that correspond to period of time at home after recall
www.theguardian.com
January 25, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Everything about this case is grotesque, but fact that no tracking tag small enough is available is transparently discriminatory design and in breach of Equality Act's coverage of age and gender.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Reposted by Murray Goulden
🚨 NEW BLOG from Fairwork Philippines 🇵🇭 on the health and safety hazards for workers due to climate change induced extreme weather events: https://buff.ly/4hjWgV7
@oiioxford.bsky.social @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social
@oiioxford.bsky.social @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social
January 17, 2025 at 8:57 AM
🚨 NEW BLOG from Fairwork Philippines 🇵🇭 on the health and safety hazards for workers due to climate change induced extreme weather events: https://buff.ly/4hjWgV7
@oiioxford.bsky.social @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social
@oiioxford.bsky.social @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social
Further confirmation from this "analysis" (aka regurgitating breathless corporate self-promotion) that we're at the point where any software function at all is now called AI.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Speedier drug trials and better films: how AI is transforming businesses
From aviation to retail, many industries are already looking to artificial intelligence to improve productivity
www.theguardian.com
January 17, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Further confirmation from this "analysis" (aka regurgitating breathless corporate self-promotion) that we're at the point where any software function at all is now called AI.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Reposted by Murray Goulden
Wrote a short piece on our new national commitment to AI maximalism: cennydd.com/writing/on-a...
On AI maximalism · Cennydd Bowles
Well, the UK – like the US – is now fully AI-pilled, with our leaders hailing AI as our economic saviour and a national security sine qua non. Most of this is posturing, not considered policy, so I fe...
cennydd.com
January 14, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Wrote a short piece on our new national commitment to AI maximalism: cennydd.com/writing/on-a...
Reposted by Murray Goulden
OMG, I *just* wrote about this phenomenon a couple of months ago. Stuff on the emotional fallout from robot death in 'The Automated Heart: Digital Domesticity and Emotional Labour Saving', available here: uwlpress.uwl.ac.uk/newvistas/ar...
Saving this example for future teaching.
Saving this example for future teaching.
December 10, 2024 at 11:17 PM
OMG, I *just* wrote about this phenomenon a couple of months ago. Stuff on the emotional fallout from robot death in 'The Automated Heart: Digital Domesticity and Emotional Labour Saving', available here: uwlpress.uwl.ac.uk/newvistas/ar...
Saving this example for future teaching.
Saving this example for future teaching.
In which a dad livestreams his daughter's tears whilst he explains to her that her Internet connected emotional support buddy is going to die because the company went bust.
x.com/ZeroStateRef...
x.com/ZeroStateRef...
December 10, 2024 at 11:09 PM
In which a dad livestreams his daughter's tears whilst he explains to her that her Internet connected emotional support buddy is going to die because the company went bust.
x.com/ZeroStateRef...
x.com/ZeroStateRef...