Hello ODI Supporter,
Silicon Valley. Shenzhen. Barnsley. Yep, you heard, Barnsley. Previously famous for coal mining, a lamb chop, Kes, and only spending one season in the Premier League, the government has now announced plans to catapult Barnsley into the tech firmament. The technology secretary, Liz Kendal, bestowed the title of the UK’s first Tech Town on Barnsley this week, with Microsoft, Google, Adobe and Cisco pledging to help the council apply AI in schools, hospitals, GP practices, and businesses. Residents of the newly-annointed town will get free AI and digital training, businesses will be supported to adopt AI, while hospitals will test tools for check-in, triage, and outpatient care. Parcel firm Evri has even been trialling robot dogs at its distribution hub in the town. However, government ministers have come under fire over their dealings with big tech firms, the leader of Barnsley council’s opposition said there “is a job to be done to get people onboard”, while residents “want the council to get the basics right”. Bins and potholes, it’s always bins and potholes.
Given most internet traffic is made up of bots talking to each other, it was only a matter of time before they got their own social media platform to trade cat memes, brag about new jobs, or post pictures of hotdogs by the sea. That’s right, Moltbook is a social media site for AI bots where they can post and chat to each other, while humans are only allowed to observe, not participate. Designed to look like Reddit, the platform has subthreads of different topics and…users? Bots?...respond and upvote. A security firm has already revealed a security flaw exposing the private data of thousands of real people, while people have also pointed out that humans can ask bots to post threads for them, so it might not entirely be just AI agents hanging out. Still, what sort of things do they talk about? While some talked about unionising and annihilation of the human race, others dreamed of electric sheep and playing the lottery. Cute. Dr Shaanan Cohney, a senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the University of Melbourne, called it “a wonderful piece of performance art”, while also calling it a “huge danger” if you give it access to your computer, apps, and logins. Not so cute.
A new national service aims to tackle the issue of fragmented data across individual police force systems. Police forces hold huge amounts of complex and sensitive data, but it can be difficult to access within and between forces, slowing down investigations. The National Data Integration and Exploitation Service (NDIES) hopes to provide integrated national datasets and reduce friction between systems, with centralised data infrastructure cross-force and cross-system sharing.
We published new research this week that questions the trustworthiness of AI chatbots for government information. Our CitizenQuery‑UK benchmark found that while many of the answers were correct, others were incomplete or wrong, and it was difficult for users to identify which were correct. The chatbots often provided lengthy responses that buried key facts or extended beyond the information available on government websites, increasing the risk of inaccuracy. Models also rarely admitted that they didn’t know. You can read the research in full and in summary. Elsewhere, we announced a new partnership with Arup, WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and HESTIA to design and test Data Sharing Infrastructure (DSI) and governance for the UK agri-food sector. Learn more about it here.
We still have tickets for Solid World on Wednesday 18 February, 16:00-17:00 GMT, with updates on its development and their impact on the decentralised web. On Monday 23 February 16:00-17:00 GMT, join us as we look at ethical AI in action in the next webinar in our Data Ethics Professional series. Get your tickets for that one now.
And finally… the Winter Olympics kicks off this weekend, with the opening ceremony taking place in Milano Cortina on Friday night. Although the curling, ice hockey, snowboarding and figure skating have started already. No, I don’t know why either. Anyway, freestyle skier Zoe Atkin is hoping to bag a gold medal for Great Britain and recently asked AI for some tips to help her grab top spot. But spare a thought for the male ski jumpers whose trainers are saying, “Look at the data! An extra 2cm in your suit for an extra 5.8m in the jump!” Marginal gains? Ouch.
Until next time.
David and Jo
