Cian O’Donovan

The recording of our webinar with @cianooo.bsky.social and @suoman.bsky.social right here... www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoGu... @stsucl.bsky.social

Great #metascience2025 pres by @cianooo.bsky.social on new Public Values in AI Research project. Agree it’s a very hard case, not least because of the v lively public culture around AI ethics, which is heavily influenced by science fiction.

Join us to hear about what we found from studying AI researchers and what they say about public reception of AI. Findings from @jackstilgoe.bsky.social/ @cianooo.bsky.social's survey of 4.5k AI experts and the review I led of 320 pieces of international evidence.

As part of the Public Voices in AI webinar series, Jack Stilgoe, Cian O'Donovan and Susan Oman will be presenting their research on what experts think and what the evidence says when it comes to public opinion on AI.

📅 : 10 Jun 2025 16:00, online

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/public-voi...

Will AI improve your life? Here’s what 4,000 researchers think Scientists working on artificial intelligence are more confident than the public that the technology will benefit people.

Nature have picked up our survey. We think it's the largest survey of AI researchers ever conducted. Here's a quick thread on some of the headlines @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

There's much, much more in the report, and more analysis to follow zenodo.org/records/1511.... The work was led by @cianooo.bsky.social, with a team of MSc students from @stsucl.bsky.social @ucl.ac.uk @uclnews.bsky.social

AI is a cultural, not social, technology A response to Farrell et al’s essay in Science

In which I argue that @himself.bsky.social and @alisongopnik.bsky.social got it half right with their recent essay in @science.org.

@eaterofsun.bsky.social @johnwhitfield.bsky.social @jackstilgoe.bsky.social @melaniesmallman.bsky.social @cianooo.bsky.social @dpcressey.bsky.social

Debates about tech governance and responsility are boiling onto the street. If you work for Meta or Google or Amazon or Microsoft and are up for a chat about this - in confidence - I'd love to talk. Get in touch direct - cian.o@ucl.ac.uk

But what I want to know is this: what do tech workers and AI researchers think of all this? A few passed by. They looked understandably sheepish and reluctant to talk - a bunch of usually very sedate and bookish protesters were shouting 'thieves' directly at them.

This is really relevant to debates in the UK right now about copyright and whether tech firms should be allowed do build statistical models from any data they can get their hands on.

People had found upwards of 30 of their books in the Atlantic's list of millions. They were seething. They said they felt violated. A lifetime's work unacknowledged and unremunerated.

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI. Search through them here.

I'm a social scientiest so I did what I usually do, I had a few chats. People told me they were really angry. By way of an article in The Atlantic, many had just found out that their books had been hooverd up into Meta's big AI system, Llama. (www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...).

I've just finished a year long research project called Public Voices in AI. This lunchtime I walked over the Kings Cross to listen to some public voices very much outside of AI. Specifically 150 authors and illustrators delivering a protest letter to the offices of Meta / Facebook.

Opinion | DeepSeek and the Dangerous A.I. Nonsense That Trump and Biden Fell For This is not a Sputnik moment. It’s way past that.

The containment myth that underpins AI safety talk www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

This is sad. What a hero.

This will be good - feb 6 - Sarah Angliss, Gavin Bryars, and Shiva Feshareki - new works that explore the musical possibilities of historic sound technologies such as EMS synthesizers, the Watkins Copicat, and the DIY electronic instruments of Hugh Davies. www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/t...

The Case for Diversity and Inclusion in Research Information Science is largely conducted in alignment with the interests of rich countries and people. If we really want science to be a public good, it needs to become more pluralistic.

While folks argue about which wealthy country is going to benefit most from the global LLM race... @ismaelrafols.bsky.social makes a case for making marginalised research topics visible, and the need for a multiple-perspective science observatory katinamagazine.org/content/arti... #metasciece

This is going straight onto the reading list for my Politics of the Digital Age module. Really beautiful work.

@jonagar.bsky.social it’s on. Thanks.