Brandon Jackson

I still remember the day I had this realisation in 2012, reading "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" by Langdon Winner (from 1980!). @histoftech is right, we need to move faster to turn this key insight into action. so...a 🧵 on my journey from tech to history of tech and back again

So much techno-utopianism about AI, particularly from @InstituteGC, in recent months. Even the tiniest amount of experience of delivering digital/data/AI systems in the public sector would reveal it's a bit more complicated than that. 🧵 Ten challenges that need to be tackled

In 2023 it's still insane that we've decided to make housing, a technology at least 100 centuries old, scarce enough to consume a major fraction of GDP in a speculative unproductive deflationary asset that we could otherwise allocate to solving real problems.

Sci-fi got it wrong. We assumed AI would be super logical and humans would provide creativity. But in reality it’s the opposite. Generative AI is good at getting an approximately correct output, but if you need precision and accuracy you need a human.

If AI turns mediocre writing containing no new ideas into a commodity, will that increase the "price" of good writing that does contain them? History offers some encouragement. Handmade things were appreciated more once it was no longer the default.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man: #JohnRuskin takes on @elonmusk (courtesy of @OpenAI): "You have gone too far in your innovations. And it is time for you to face the consequences."

I’m sorry, I simply cannot be cynical about a technology that can accomplish this.

@RossjournoClark Everyone knows - and accepts - that no matter how hard you work - in London you simply cannot buy a house you're proud of. So... what's the point? This has nothing to do with high taxes, and everything to do with Tory policy that prioritises existing wealth over innovation.

@RossjournoClark Thanks for your article: a brain drain is a serious risk. After studying at Yale + Cambridge, I decided to settle in the UK and just got my UK citizenship. But these days I'm asking myself whether it's unwise to stay. And it's for a simple reason...

Britain lost a net 356,000 people to migration in the high-tax, low opportunity 1970s. Could we be heading back to a brain drain? telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/1…

Keir Starmer: "At this moment of uncertainty, where our country feels caught between a past it cannot relive, and a future yet to be revealed, we must always remember one of the great lessons of our Queen's reign: that we are always better when we rise above the petty, the trival

Thank you Ma’am, for everything.

Hot take: Everyone's missing the big picture on AI writing. I've glimpsed the future of what's really going to happen:

@RestIsPolitics @campbellclaret @RoryStewartUK Listening to you/your guests it seems politicians gain 30 IQ points when they retire. But behind closed doors - are MPs having rigorous conversations about how to fix tough issues like productivity / housing / climate? Surely they must have a plan…

QUESTIONS REQUEST 🚨 We’re recording Monday lunchtime this week! So, what would you like @campbellclaret + @RoryStewartUK to talk about and what questions would you like them to answer? Thanks for all the submissions last week 🙌🏼 Hit reply below 👇

We live in an incredible human capital crisis. The best people are working on the fakest things. The upshot: whoever can provide people with real tasks will be able to break the deadlock and radically reshape our political economy.

A “razor” is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. The most powerful razors I’ve found:

What's causing all these logos to look the same?

How might we find the projects that (appear) completely independent of the need for a miraculous end to political deadlock - like billionaires doing whatever they want?

I normally do my best to ignore people debating AI and space colonization. But I’m always struck by how *real* they make this shiny future sound even if it’s totally mad. What if we made a shiny green future just as easy to imagine?

How might we find the symbols that latch onto the “inevitable” progress of science like the idea of AGI colonizing space?

How might we identify the things/places we could build that - even if they don’t actually solve anything - symbolize progress like the idea of a mars colony?

I wonder if 50 years from now we're going to look back at how we've redesigned our world around computers with the same regret that people look back at how we redesigned cities around cars. 🤔