Oli Hutt
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olihutt.bsky.social
Oli Hutt
@olihutt.bsky.social
160 followers 390 following 9 posts
Lover of board games and tea. Working in policing and criminal justice research/consultancy. Favourite book title is definitely "My numbers my friends." From the UK now living in Leipzig, Germany.
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Reposted by Oli Hutt
andrew.heiss.phd
Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...
In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class. I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you. It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents. NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning. In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work. I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this: (a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder) At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map. Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.” That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!) Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already. It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it. I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here. I’m concerned that it’s not real data. It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal. None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.
November 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
jerryratcliffe.net
This is an exceptionally evidence-based and important thread from @mattashby.com debunking some biased nonsense published in the Grauniad by Amnesty International.
Thread is a perfect primer on predictive policing.
mattashby.com Matt Ashby @mattashby.com · Feb 20
The head of Amnesty International UK claims in this Guardian article that "The evidence that [predictive policing] keeps us safe just isn’t there". But that's simply not true.

Let's look at what the best-available evidence on predictive policing shows …

🧵

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
UK use of predictive policing is racist and should be banned, says Amnesty
Exclusive: rights group says use of algorithms and data reinforces discrimination in UK policing
www.theguardian.com
February 20, 2025 at 3:09 PM
olihutt.bsky.social
As always, a well thought-through and clear thread from Matt. It frustrates me no end to see all forms of "predictive policing" conflated as if it's all the same. The Amnesty report just reminded me of a similar Liberty report from 2019 that did the same.
mattashby.com Matt Ashby @mattashby.com · Feb 20
The head of Amnesty International UK claims in this Guardian article that "The evidence that [predictive policing] keeps us safe just isn’t there". But that's simply not true.

Let's look at what the best-available evidence on predictive policing shows …

🧵

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
UK use of predictive policing is racist and should be banned, says Amnesty
Exclusive: rights group says use of algorithms and data reinforces discrimination in UK policing
www.theguardian.com
February 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
mtrc.bsky.social
This is such a wild thing to report. Google Gemini does this! It does it all the time! Why is this *front page news*??? (I know why) www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek censors itself in realtime, users report
Depending on version downloaded, app approaches its answers with preamble of reasoning which it then erases
www.theguardian.com
January 28, 2025 at 8:44 PM
olihutt.bsky.social
I spent Friday getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't turn this off as it kept popping up. It's 100 times more annoying and useless than Clippy and I wish there was a simple way to just turn it all off. When will this con finally die?
litbowl.bsky.social Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · Jan 17
I want to share my experience today with Google support, trying to get Gemini (their AI/plagiarism machine) turned off in my Google workspace account. That account is where I personally do all my work communication—I am an editor, and most of my work contracts explicitly ban any use of Generative AI
January 19, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
propublica.org
🧵 THREAD: Our reporter spent the past year reporting inside the State Department, trying to answer the central question of Biden’s foreign policy:

How did the U.S. let Israel get away with widespread horrors in Gaza?
January 16, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
hhesterm.bsky.social
It is hard for public institutions to change gear and communication policies. But consider this: UK and German public institutions that post information on twitter but not on bluesky are providing free benefits and competitive advantages to a platform that aims to put the far right in power.
January 5, 2025 at 5:56 PM
olihutt.bsky.social
I've had to take soooo many flights this year. Thankfully this will be the last one.
A photo of a Ryanair Boeing 737 from the rear door along the fuselage at night as passengers board.
December 14, 2024 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
nhold.bsky.social
hey bluesky, in case anyone's interested, I wrote this for my students about why I don't want them to use anything AI in my classes. It interrupts the course calendar part of the syllabus, coming immediately after the first day there's a writing assignment assigned.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
A note on AI usage
A note on AI usage I genuinely want you to succeed in this class. One of my very favorite things about my job as a professor is when students are succeeding and I feel like I helped. I want you to suc...
docs.google.com
December 12, 2024 at 2:25 AM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
sevenrasmussen.com
can I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no
November 30, 2024 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
ncrenic.bsky.social
Two stages of writing:

1) This shouldn't take too long
2) Oh no
December 4, 2024 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
hushuo.bsky.social
It's important that you look through the gallery for this listing until you get to the top floor bathroom.

Important.

www.cbmaritimerealty.com/listing/2024...
5642 Morris Street, Halifax Property Listing: MLS® #202425868
Situated in the historic Schmidtville district, 5642 Morris St / 1290 Wright Avenue. is a Scottish Georgian townhouse built in 1859. While the exterior presents classic Victorian charm, the interior r...
www.cbmaritimerealty.com
November 12, 2024 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
cassiarowland.bsky.social
Yesterday, there was a major change in the criminal justice system that’s largely sneaked under the radar: the doubling of magistrates’ court sentencing powers. What does that actually mean, and is it good or bad?
November 19, 2024 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
gmhales.bsky.social
This is my favourite example of perverse incentives arising from police performance management. library.college.police.uk/docs/Policin...
November 19, 2024 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
edconway.bsky.social
🧵SALT🧵
It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question:
Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from?
The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised.
1/14
November 19, 2024 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
gemabbott.bsky.social
There are some bloody brilliant people on this #CriminalJustice #StarterPack

Lawyers, commentators and NGOs working in/ discussing topics from the police to the courts to prisons (hi 👋) to probation…

Please do share - and let me know if you’d like to be added

go.bsky.app/2sQ9xmz
November 18, 2024 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
thejackgm.bsky.social
If you’re a new Bluesky user and interested in criminology, see this thread for lists feeds and starter packs.
adiazor.bsky.social Alba Díaz @adiazor.bsky.social · Nov 16
Dear folks in criminology! I made this list in which I will include all criminology professionals around the world. Let me know if you want to be added to the list (or if not). In this thread I will be adding all the feeds, lists and packs that I find🧵🌐🌍
bsky.app/profile/did:...
November 18, 2024 at 3:00 PM
olihutt.bsky.social
We're looking for a lead Quant Analyst to join our team. Interested in a new challenge, or know someone who might be? Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or apply here: www.crestadvisory.com/post/we-are-...
We're hiring a Lead Quantitative Analyst
The Lead Quantitative Analyst is a newly introduced role at Crest Advisory, created to support the growth of our data analytics services for clients in the justice, policing, and public safety sectors...
www.crestadvisory.com
November 17, 2024 at 11:35 AM
olihutt.bsky.social
And one night and day in Dresden. We'll be going back again in about a month because we didn't have time to do any of the museums this time but the old town centre is absolutely stunning.
November 9, 2024 at 3:21 PM
olihutt.bsky.social
In Sächsische Schweiz for a few days enjoying some fantastic views.
November 8, 2024 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by Oli Hutt
charleswlogan.bsky.social
"And should a state rely on a private company, whose methods are not entirely transparent, to make decisions on sensitive school issues?"

No. The answer is no. Full stop. No.
hypervisible.blacksky.app Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Oct 12
The system removed over 200,000 students from the at-risk category. State funding was slashed. No educators know how the new categorizing system works, and the founder of the company argues that the specific workings of the tech, “Infinite Campus,” are “proprietary and so must be kept private.”
Nevada Asked A.I. Which Students Need Help. The Answer Caused an Outcry.
The new system cut the number of students deemed “at risk” in the state by 200,000, leading to tough moral and ethical questions over which children deserve extra assistance.
www.nytimes.com
October 12, 2024 at 1:25 AM