Some terrifying numbers in Ed Zitron’s post AI Is Too Expensive: But LLMs are too expensive! They cost too much to run, and said costs appear to increase linearly with revenues. The more a user uses a product, the more…

New guidance published on GOV.UK – AI, open code and vulnerability risk in the public sector: User research suggests that the primary driver of exploitation risk is the presence of weaknesses in systems – including unpatched vulnerabilities, insecure implementation, and…

Although much of what I post about ‘AI’ is sceptical, I am in fact a daily user. Whether it is for helping with technical matters, or sorting out my thinking on some topic or other, I find Google’s Gemini particularly…

LOTI’s Eddie Copeland – Putting in place the enabling conditions for AI: Many organisations seem to be falling for the same mistake we’ve been trying to undo with digital government for the past 15 years: thinking that this is just…

Kristin at Newark and Sherwood District Council shares Discussing Practical AI for Projects: The effectiveness of AI ultimately depends on the quality of data and the proficiency of its users. It was a valuable opportunity to exchange perspectives, and many…

Terence Eden writes [the] NHS Goes To War Against Open Source: …this is not the correct response to the purported threat by Mythos. Neither the AI Safety Institute nor the NCSC recommend this action. While there may be some increase…

Another one for my almost-bulging AI scepticism evidence folder – Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’: Crane said that he was monitoring the agent as it deleted this data.…

John Gruber on AI: Something is profoundly off in the computer industry when it comes to software broadly and AI specifically. It’s up for debate what exactly is off and what should be done about it, but the undeniable proof…

Guidance from the ICO on AI and freedom of information requests: Information requests often involve secondary correspondence, such as clarification or internal reviews. If requesters use AI to read and respond, it can result in long, complex emails. These take…

Am super impressed with the way Doug is using AI tools to help him build useful software. Commonplace is a way of saving online stuff into collections. It’s a bit like Delicious of old. What’s more, browsing through the collections…

Richard Pope: Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services: The principles of what makes a well-designed service remain the same as in the pre-AI digital era. AI should be treated as a design material rather than as a…

Interesting perspective on Ai generated software from Quentin Stafford-Fraser: As we enter an era where software development is much cheaper and easier, the number of people able to create their own bespoke apps will increase rapidly. Either you’ll do it,…

Catherine Howe on her philosophical approach to working with AI models: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to help people get started with AI. Not the technical side — there are plenty of people better placed than me…

Giles Turnbull on AI: I have a feeling that everyone likes using AI tools to try doing someone else’s profession. They’re much less keen when someone else uses it for their profession.

Richard Pope – Unified inboxes, streams and augmentation: The idea of a unified inbox for government is not a new one. Many governments around the world have developed one, as have public organisations like the National Health Service in England,…

As an experiment, relating to some work I’m doing for a customer, I asked Google’s Gemini to do some deep research and write a report about the market for revenues and benefits systems for UK local government. You can read…

Doug Belshaw – The (AI) Lottery Is Already Running: AI tools arrived as things you could choose to try: chatbots, image generators, and the like. Pretty quickly, though, they’ve become things employers expect to be used, positioned as ‘things your…

Interesting writing project from Ben Welby – The Future of (Public Sector) Product Management in a Vibe Coded World: Public service teams are at a kairos moment: a time when a new technical capability invites us to rethink almost everything…

Harry Metcalfe shares a cautionary tale of vibe coding and security: But the arrival of these tools has – like all development tools that help get more done more easily – raised the security stakes. Tools like Lovable make building…

Doug Belshaw – I needed a scheduling tool that respects privacy. So I built one: Scheduler reads iCal feeds, so it works with Proton Calendar or any service supporting iCal/CalDAV standards. It doesn’t store calendar data, instead checking availability in…