Prof. Tom Crick

Today, @DCMS published its refreshed Areas of Research Interest on GOV.UK. These set out priority research and evidence needs across culture, creative industries, media, sport, civil society, youth, tourism, heritage and gambling. gov.uk/government/pub…

Hugging Face should have tried this new, innovative defense: Asking the agent to stop hacking you.

From the archives: MC Hammer on ML (2020) proftomcrick.com/2020/07/25/mc-…

World’s first Phase I Bundibugyo ebolavirus vaccine trial launched by Oxford Vaccine Group ox.ac.uk/news/2026-07-1…

We have today appointed my brilliant colleague, Lord Vallance, to chair the PM’s AI Taskforce. Patrick and I worked closely together before. We will now do so again, with the urgency and importance of the Vaccines Taskforce, applied to the central question of artificial intelligence. gov.uk/government/new…

Following a Machinery of Government change, @scitechgovuk's responsibilities have transferred to @biztradegovuk, @DCMS and @cabinetofficeuk. This account has closed. Please follow them for the latest updates and visit GOV.UK for more information.

Christopher Nolan expects audiences to believe this trip lasted 10 years

In Memoriam: Peter G. Neumann (1932-2026) cacm.acm.org/news/in-memori… @CACMmag

.@SciTechgovuk has opened a call for evidence on data regulation in the age of AI. It wants practical examples — what worked, what didn't, and why — from any sector, before 9 Sep. My take on why it's worth 30 minutes of your time: proftomcrick.com/2026/07/15/an-…

Scientists at the Centre: Science Advice at @DCMS proftomcrick.com/2026/07/13/sci… @uksciencechief

The National Risk Register 2026 sets out the UK’s assessment of the most significant risks facing the country. Effective resilience depends not just on understanding risk, but on building the evidence, partnerships and capabilities needed to prepare: gov.uk/government/pub…

IS THE ECONOMIST ALWAYS WRONG? Scandalously, in some circles @TheEconomist has a reputation as a contrarian indicator. This week we fessed up to getting a big call on oil prices from April wrong. Obviously our goal is not perfectly-hedged (and perfectly boring) predictive accuracy: often it is to stimulate, provoke, and challenge. But I did want to test that wider allegation, so I ran a series of LLM scorers across our full leader database since 2000 (7,000 leaders in all.) You can see the results in the chart below: each dot is one of the 1,400 leaders where we identified concrete and falsifiable predictions that were central to the argument. Higher = more accurate, further to the right = more contrarian. We do well, unsurprisingly, when aligned with conventional wisdom. We often do worse when truly out on a limb. But actually, on average, we are a bit likelier to be right than wrong on our somewhat-out-of-consensus calls. All round, a respectable performance. And as @ecurrnomics points out an accompanying leader, there is no shame at all in being beaten by the market: as good free-marketers we believe deeply in the aggregated wisdom of prices. Take a look at my piece here, which includes a canter through our best and worst calls of the last quarter-century: economist.com/interactive/fi…

@smithbarryc @TheOfficialACM Thank you Barry, hope you are well!

@ProfTomCrick @TheOfficialACM Congratulations!

New role: @TheOfficialACM Secretary/Treasurer (2026–2028) proftomcrick.com/2026/05/29/new…

China Takes Supercomputer Crown From U.S. for First Time Since 2017 nytimes.com/2026/06/23/tec… (see TOP500 list: top500.org)

England v Ghana is the World Cup’s only group-stage match where both countries' capitals sit right on the Prime Meridian England has London, where the Prime Meridian was fixed. Ghana has Accra, the only other world capital to sit on the zero degree longitude line. Stay tuned for more cutting-edge, geography-based World Cup analysis.

Great read: “Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You” moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/whe…

Seven years of AI research: what we got right, what we missed, and what still matters proftomcrick.com/2026/06/19/sev…

“Can gzip be a language model?” nathan.rs/posts/gzip-lm/

As usual, @hadleywickham has one of the cleanest, simplest, nicest explanations of things: in this case, the relationship between LLMs, harnesses, and agents. Better than a million Medium posts. tidydesign.substack.com/p/what-is-an-a…