Steve Smith

I wrote a new piece yesterday, called "Confessions of an Unrepentant Slop Snob", about my escalating rage at AI-generated text. It includes a framework for thinking about when AI involvement is fine -- just another tool -- and when it lands as a violation. charity.wtf/p/confession...

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor - Desmond Tutu

So the answer to "how did the super spooky all powerful AI go rogue" is that they just let it rip and then went home for the day In a normal world, this would be a story about OpenAI's culture of negligence and half-assery, not how we should all bow down to the AI overlords

The Guardian once asked me 'what one change would you make to achieve Black equality in Britain?' and it feels appropriate to share my answer again

“A fundamental shift is needed in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents,” argues Meredith Whittaker. “Basic lessons in privacy and digital security are being discarded,” she warns

The power of strong, but fair, leadership...

TONIGHT @ 7PM (UK) 😬 @stevesmithtech.bsky.social

For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.

The Odyssey is incredible

I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting: 2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight 2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose" Not one safeguard survived intact

Meta has launched a new AI image generator that allows anyone to create AI images with your Instagram photos. And if you have a public Instagram account, Meta automatically opted you in. Here’s how to opt out: wapo.st/4ymzOnN

Buried lede: Meta sends all your nudes to Kenya where humans annotate it and feed it to AI

Non-Blocking Code Reviews at #AgileOnTheBeach2026 The slides are available online. Thank you all for the lovely feedback. It’s been delightful ☺️ thinkinglabs.io/talks/2024/0...

Brigitte from @thoughtworks.com keynotes about the state of AI at #AgileOnTheBeach2026 1/n

NEW: Boris Johnson failed to declare to parliament a gift of private jet flights from the same cryptobillionaire, Christopher Harborne who gave £5m to Nigel Farage, leaked documents reveal. New #HarborneReceipts investigation from @thenerve.news. 🔗 below 1/

Just another day where I try to summon @abeba.blacksky.app Today was: if you're on trial in court, would you prefer a human or an algorithm as the judge

nobody in British politics seems to want to say it but the single biggest driver of their inability to keep a prime minister for any length of time is that Brexit was stupid and ruinous and made everyone’s lives worse

You can't escape Goodhart's Law Amazon scraps AI leaderboard to stop workers chasing usage scores - www.ft.com/content/b1a6... via @FT

Thank you @teamcherry.bsky.social for Silksong. I completed 99% in 81 hours, it was a joy from start to finish 🕷🪲❤️

Uber’s COO has said that it’s getting “harder to justify” its AI costs because there was no way to show a link between AI spend and any meaningful increase in useful features. This is the first time I’ve seen a company say this directly. www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-and...

There's something strange about seeing Meta employees complain about their employer imposing surveillance capitalism on them

A Radical Approach To Long Term Software Ownership | @stevesmithtech.bsky.social 📅 TONIGHT @ 7PM (UK) Subscribe & turn on notifications so you NEVER miss an upload! 🔔 youtube.com/@ModernSoftw...

AI tools don't muddle along with us. They fall below muddling, plausible deniability disguised as code. Low features, low flexibility, complexity stacking until even the genie gives up.

I feel seen, @martinfowler.com

'It's just a chat' is never a chat

Top AI Trends From 100 Interviews | AI Briefings: nWave | @davefarley77.bsky.social 📽️ AVAILABLE NOW, from our NEW SERIES! Watch HERE ➡️ youtu.be/8WJ1XVBh8NA

"The rise of extreme wealth is one of the clearest signs of this imbalance. In 1987, billionaires held wealth equal to 3% of global GDP. Today this tiny elite, just 0.0001% of the world population, owns the equivalent of *16%* of world GDP in wealth."

I worked on an XP team once where we genuinely had 100% test coverage. It was awesome, we could make changes so fast, and yes we still had the occasional live defect

Orbán's electoral crushing is a far greater achievement than most people outside Hungary realise. He systemically consolidated power for 16 years, fixed the electoral map, abused govt power for political purposes & censored media. The hurdles that Hungarians overcame for this moment were immense.

🇭🇺 🙏

@stevesmithtech.bsky.social goes deeper on this in this episode on the Modern Software Engineering channel, check it out here: youtu.be/kDBeFOscZpc 7/7

Rethinking The Software Lifecycle | How To Look After Software For The Long Term | @stevesmithtech.bsky.social 📽️ AVAILABLE NOW Watch HERE ➡️ youtu.be/CBcdERAv5P8

Rethinking The Software Lifecycle | How To Look After Software For The Long Term | @stevesmithtech.bsky.social 📅 TONIGHT @ 7PM (UK) Subscribe & turn on notifications so you NEVER miss an upload! ➡️ youtube.com/@ModernSoftw...

'Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence.' Many big companies adopted gitflow because it had a cool poster and tons of Microsoft/GitHub marketing dollars. The rest followed suit because 'best practice' and Gartner quadrants. They don't mistrust us, they don't even know us!

7 Testing Myths Every Developer Should STOP Believing | @emilybache.com TONIGHT @ 7PM (UK) Subscribe & turn on notifications 🔔 so you never miss an upload! ➡️ youtube.com/@ModernSoftw...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

fresh off the press from yours truly: oecs.mit.edu/pub/b61joemo... I offer an overview of algorithmic bias. I trace its historical roots, examine canonical scholarship and notable real-world incidents, and explore how algorithmic bias emerged as a field of study 1/

A survey of 1,000 hiring managers: 59% say they stress AI's role in layoffs or hiring freezes "because it plays better"; only 9% say AI has fully replaced roles (Gautam Mukunda/Bloomberg) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink