Octavia Field Reid

Photo from the Office showing Pam, Jim and Michael holding hands overlaid with text: UK PUBLIC, INDEPENDENT REGULATOR and TRANSPARENCY MECHANISMS and "I love you guys so much..."

Our latest polling shows what the UK public want for Christmas: 🌲🎁🔥

- 89% think it is important to regulate AI independently.
- 82% want mandatory safety testing.
- 86% want known risks reported to government or regulators.

Read more here: www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

Ada's new public attitudes work shows UK government AI policy is out of step with people's sense of what matters.

It finds that people have really clear views on what's right and wrong for themselves and wider society. And overwhelmingly they want better controls.

Full findings in link below...

Ada's @octavia-fr.bsky.social is speaking at @techuk.bsky.social's Digital Ethics Summit next week!

Register to join the conversation here ➡️ www.techuk.org/what-we-deli...

A group of people having a discussion. One woman is speaking into a microphone, a man is listening and smiling, another person has their back to the camera, positioned so as to join in the conversation.

NEW OPPORTUNITY:
We are seeking members to join our BRAID Stakeholder Forum, helping to shape the direction of Responsible AI in the UK.
Information and details of how to submit your expression of interest can be found here:

braiduk.org/braid-stakeh...

On June 26 @octavia-fr.bsky.social, ‪@helenmargetts.bsky.social Roshni Modhvadia and Tvesha Sippy will offer insights into the public’s awareness and perception of AI, their experiences of harm and their expectations in relation to governance, regulation and the role of AI in decision-making.

Big thanks to @danmcquillan.bsky.social for the fantastic seminar and to @octavia-fr.bsky.social for hosting.

The recorded seminar will be on our website soon!

@designinf.bsky.social

‘Responsible AI Futures’ Hybrid Seminar – Dr Dan McQuillan Responsible AI means Decomputing Get your online ticket now!In this talk Dan McQuillan will argue that having a responsible approach to AI means decomputing. To start with, decomp

Delighted to be hosting this BRAID UK seminar at 4pm today where @danmcquillan.bsky.social will argue that having a responsible approach to AI means decomputing-- register here:

braiduk.org/event/respon...

Very proud to have co-authored this survey because it tries to represent the views of minoritised people and groups.

This is a difficult thing to do in the UK. Survey providers are not equipped to support these kinds of studies at scale. We managed to evidence some differential views. More below...

Come work with us as AD in Emerging Technology and Industry Practice -- this really is the dream job for anyone interested in how technologies alter and restructure societies. Details below...

A long, depressing survey of corporate governance failures much enlivened by this quote...

'Start small fires in the darkness, until they spread and the whole world is alight with a better vision of what we could do with our businesses … If not us, then who? If not now, then when?'🔥
—Charles Handy

💡Leading luminaries: For Women's History Month, Ada, @local.gov.uk and @techuk.bsky.social are spotlighting women whose research has made significant contributions to understanding safe and responsible use of AI & data in local government – where women's scholarship is often underrepresented.

A blue block of colour above a yellow block of colour

Don't worry about the pharping, just coord the rithm and it'll all fall into place... 🎶

Artwork by Robert Montgomery, white full caps text on a black background: Here comes the boom of the end of your civilisation...

Here comes the cabriolet edition of capitalism... don't you look pretty in your cool new jeans... nothing done to educate our children or save our planet... end of an empire you were too conceited to even protect.

Pinned to my boiler for years and more pertinent every day. Artist: Robert Montgomery

give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution." 😳 2/2

Michael Rosen, Fascism I fear...

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house... 1/2

Thanks for posting this beautiful book cover. Typeface nerdery: it isn't Comic Sans equivalent. It's Cooper Black, designed by Oswald B Cooper in the 1920s. It's egalitarian and notable for its ubiquity. In the UK you see it on high street kebab and pizza shops. fonts.adobe.com/fonts/cooper...

Is the UK entering a Data Winter?

Ada's @octavia-fr.bsky.social is on a Birkbeck University panel tomorrow exploring the concept of a Data Winter, how it might link to access to data and should we be concerned?

📆12 February 2025, 12:00 — 13:00
💻Online

Sign up: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Participation folks: please share with your networks (and apply if this is a you-shaped project!). Deadline 26 Feb.

Poster for Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium 8 February 2025

Really delighted to be chairing the participatory AI governance panel at PAIRS tomorrow -- the Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium.

Curated by @timdavies and @clairemellier the panel will bring forward examples and contribute to thinking about participation's role in AI governance.

A woman's upper body with sleeves rolled up to show a new red and black tattoo of a heart on her left wrist.

I don't often post personal news, but 5 years clear of cancer today. DCIS, invasive but caught early, and took all the advice (unusually!) -- surgery, radiotherapy, hormones... Statistics now say I'm no more at risk than anyone else. Celebrating with spontaneous tat. ❤️ PS check your breasts, folks!

Painting of a coloured U.S. flag overpainted with black pigment by the American artist Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns, Black Flag

Flaming car outside Trump building with overlaid text. 2025 setting a high bar for metaphorical images

Not a board game but have you tried EGG SLAM for levelling neurodiverse family fun? I am rubbish at it, incapable of naming the thing I'm looking at... 😜

The Business Corporation as a Political Actor | Universiteit Utrecht Universiteit Utrecht

CFP: Reconceiving Business Corporations in Times of Political Contestation - 22-24 May 2025 Utrecht, Netherlands. Keynotes include Lisa Herzog, Leo E. Strine Jr, and Blanche Segrestin. For more info see the project website: businesscorporation.sites.uu.nl #philsky #econsky

So great to see this out in the world. It was a lot of mapping, thinking, modelling, rethinking... focused on the role of inclusion in participation and top-down / bottom-up data stewardship approaches mean for broader purposes and incentives across the ecosystem. Would love to hear your thoughts...

Fun humblebrag: in a galaxy far far away, in another lifetime (in 2010!), I co-curated a show called SustainRCA at the Royal College of Art, London. And selected Jasleen Kaur to be in it – with a brilliant chai tea storytelling cart. And today she won the Turner Prize. Ha! jasleenkaur.co.uk/about-2/

My view: publics should be systematically/institutionally involved in decision-making around all sorts of policies/services that affect them (including ofc data and AI). Democratic involvement through elected representatives has not been sufficient to ensure public interest has a seat at the table.

...a resource that has multiple dimensions of 'ownership' when in use; clear evidence of effects of poor practice by power-holders & therefore inequalities in provision, benefits & harms. Also of inequitable effects of structural incentives that privilege decision-making by private-sector companies.

Happy to see citizens' assemblies on the agenda with the private member's bill proposing public involvement in management of water companies.

They're a good site for this conversation to happen...

amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theg...