Matt Davies

Is AI a bubble? Is it going to change the world? Will Claude take my job? Should I invest in Nvidia? Is [insert corporate entity here] my friend? We don't claim to have all the answers. But my co-author Sumedha and I had fun mapping the questions policymakers *should* be asking in our new paper:

How does the UK's "AI sovereignty" debate connect to public expectations? At @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social we’re kicking off an exciting new project that will use polling and conjoint analysis to explore public views on trade-offs — and we're looking for a fieldwork partner. Tender below 👇

This makes me think that Anthropic is a truly Californian company. Yes, Silicon Valley and venture capital but also cults, woo woo and vague spirituality.

Well, I for one am an economist who supports rent controls! Here’s why 🧵: Markets only work well if: -buyers & sellers have roughly equal power -producers respond to price signals & expand supply in response to scarcity -buyers can walk away if prices get too high

"Instead of treating fascism as the opposite of liberal democracy, we should see fascisation operating within it — or what is left of it — in ways that cannot be pinned on extremists alone." Useful frame from @robin-c.bsky.social for recent political developments in Germany (and indeed elsewhere)

I don't disagree with the thread below but frame it somewhat differently as an academic who regularly sees people who read for a living fail in the way described here. From that perspective it seems more a cultural crisis than an educational one

In both China and the west, the gig economy has become a sort of safety net/labour market shock absorber. But automation is coming for a lot of this work. Which means the biggest impact of AI/robots might unfold in the dark, in the part of the economy hardest to track. www.ft.com/content/a2c3...

Our latest issue on tech is out now, featuring Brian J. Chen on data centers, Veena Dubal and Katie Wells on algorithmic pricing, Jeremy Wallace on EVs, Marc Aidinoff on the AI welfare state, JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine on tech workers, and more.

this is perhaps the most useful thing that LLMs and GenAI have done: to provoke people into articulating (over again) that even the 'hardest' of 'hard sciences' are human endeavours, with human meaning, and concerned with human understanding of the significance of the world we all inhabit

"The system of supply and demand in fact plays a subordinate role in capitalism. The most characteristic feature of capitalism is how independent investment is from demand – how much it is geared toward a speculative future, and how little it relies on information."

Should be possible to gather new coalitions around the diagnosis that big tech are anti-innovation

Our forum “How to Save Science” is now online. Led by Zeynep Pamuk, with responses from @alondra.bsky.social @sbagen.bsky.social @jeremymberg.bsky.social @madeleineebaker.bsky.social @jamesowenweatherall.com @cbo.bsky.social @nataliebaviles.bsky.social @heatherdouglas.bsky.social + more

Superb post on UK AISI echoing some of our analysis at Ada. Key point is towards the end: "voluntary governance schemes are insufficient... the government agency becomes captive to the companies it is supposed to monitor because it is dependent on their good will to continue to function at all."

EVENT | How can government help deliver a globally competitive AI infrastructure for the UK? 📅 Thursday 10 Sept, 12:30 Join us to hear an expert panel explore how ministers and civil servants can deliver the government’s AI infrastructure goals www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/govern...

Some thoughts from me on the latest AI security testing farrago substack.com/@ciaranmarti...

I have blogged! The State of the Present: Andy Burnham’s new government or - Why the abolition of DSIT is baffling and bad - Why I'm worried about what it means for civil service reform - Some opportunities for the new government around data, digital, open government medium.com/state-of-the...

What should the new UK government do to increase public control over AI and its infrastructure for development and deployment? In a new blog post, Matt Davies (@halcyene.bsky.social) outlines the key steps government can take to improve leverage. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/taking-...

New from me on early steps the Burnham administration could take to resolve the contradictions in the UK's AI sovereignty agenda: 1️⃣ Insulate businesses from AI-related supply shocks and rent extraction 2️⃣ Extract more value from AI partnerships 3️⃣ Support independent AI capabilities Read below 👇🏻

It bothers me how many AI critics are failing to keep their critiques aligned with where the models actually are. I hate to give it to the haters (of the haters), but good criticism has to get close enough to its target to understand it, and stay close.

This. Also for big tech / social media co.s too. A single (always open) door into Govt for tech lobbyists means conversations about growth/sector support are also opps to argue against accountability/ regulation. This is the conflict at the heart of DSIT (and previously in "D is for digital" DCMS).

A domestic AI industry built on an American backbone is ultimately offshoring UK productive capacity to the US. Meanwhile, huge societal risks are just being glossed over. All the while we are panic regulating social media. Needs a reset.

Some news… @carsjung.bsky.social and I are launching a Substack! We will be using this to explore what needs to change for AI to actually work for most people (spoiler: it is a lot) First post is up looking at today’s launch of the AI economics institute and how to predict AI's jobs impact 1/2

I wrote about protests in Albania, Europe, development traps, oligarchic capture, and, well, hope. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Baffled at what otherwise smart people are seeing in that Blair screed. We've known for years that Labour had no prospectus for governing. Blair's proposals, meanwhile, are like a Telegraph op-ed run through ChatGPT: slash welfare, scrap net zero, "unleash AI". It's not just unserious, it's boring!

IMHO possibly the most interesting question in finance and economics right now is the extent to which future AI dominance can retain any monopoly characteristics. People assume because it's "Silicon Valley" that those explosive network effects will necessarily pertain. They really might not... 1/

An aggressively expansionist ethnostate, but all they have to do is to parrot the word "security" (the security of their victims having no importance) and many Western journos just parrot along

Me, in the Guardian today, on Reform voters and sympathisers in England's post-industrial towns www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Not just lobbying! our new paper maps 27 mechanisms of regulatory capture used by Big AI + 11 narrative framings that rationalise capture. “Big AI’s Regulatory Capture: Mapping Industry Interference and Government Complicity” will be presented at #FAccT2026 next month arxiv.org/abs/2605.068... 1/

LGBTQ+ voters have abandoned Labour in droves (see work by @turnbulldugarte.com). Like in other areas, Labour has sacrificed minority rights to appeal to authoritarian voters. They are now facing the consequences. People who do not identify as straight make up 8-10% of the electorate.

Claims that AI will deliver significant productivity gains and savings in the UK public sector are shaping government policy and spending. Ada’s new briefing helps policymakers, journalists and others to evaluate AI productivity claims more robustly. www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

Today we publish 📏𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐔𝐏📏, a new @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social briefing on AI and public sector productivity. We find: ⚖️The link between measurement and real-world outcomes is unclear 📐Workers and citizens are absent from research design ⏲️Industry shapes what gets researched Read more:

Scary diagram on how much of our daily lives would fall apart if somehow we were cut off from US tech. Tech sovereignty and resilience is going to be costly! www.ft.com/content/4c3a...

Pretty disappointing to see @adamtooze.bsky.social posting that climate issues around data centre growth are just barely "real" and are verging on "fake" Me and many others have done a huge amount of work I think solidly demonstrating how real they are. Much more than.......whatever this graphic is

Calls for data center moratoriums are strategic and help build needed leverage. For example, the national moratorium bill introduced by Reps Sanders & @aoc.bsky.social is explicitly designed to force AI regulation—the ban would lift as soon as laws were put in place that actually constrain harms.

We really are going to have to revisit the socialist calculation debate at some point quite soon.

I have family members who are very reliant on the state. And I use the NHS a lot for endometriosis. Sometimes I think the eye-rolling I see on here in response to voters' belief that everything is broken is because the eye rollers are middle class and don't interact with the welfare state much.

"The promises of a green future are being co-opted by the same forces driving planetary destabilization." NEW: @ceciliarikap.bsky.social on how Big Tech's cloud services give them unprecedented power to shape how we understand climate change, and how we respond www.break-down.org/talking-abou...

"The current public discourse about antisemitism is defined by two claims. First, that Jews are victims of Muslims and the pro-Palestine left, and, second, that the proper response to racism is more aggressive policing." Typically sharp analysis from Barnaby Raine in @equatormag.bsky.social:

BREAKING: The Chinese government pressured Zambia to screen + exclude Taiwanese speakers attending @rightscon.org, leading to the largest international convention on digital rights being canceled a week before it takes place, the host org @accessnow.org tells WIRED. By @telliotter.bsky.social + me