Ghost is more of a newsletter-centric than blog-centric platform I feel, and I’m not sure I’ve quite shifted my perspective, or if I’m just carrying over the blogging habits developed over 20 years of EdTechie. We’ll see.

I’m also not sure what the voice is on the new blog yet, it took me a while to find that on here, so I expect it will take a similar period to get comfortable with it focusing on writing. But I have found myself thinking about books or topics from a writer’s perspective now that I’m deep into writing book three. As with this blog, I think just having a site that I post on will encourage me to reflect on aspects of writing more, just as I examined ed tech more deeply because I framed my thoughts in terms of blog posts.

Whether I have enough half-decent thoughts to maintain two blogs is the question. I certainly have enough typos and weak jokes for two. Anyway, give it a view/subscribe if you’re interested.

(Photo by form PxHere)

Having been retired for about 18 months now, I found it tiring though! I have lost my conference stamina. I didn’t even get to have a nap for four days.

This month I also went on a writing retreat with my dog, and reluctant writing buddy, Teilo, to West Wales. We hunkered down (see the featured image) and I finished my second novel, an academic horror set around… a writing retreat in West Wales. I also got 30K words into the third novel, so I am on a roll at the moment.

Books

I posted some thoughts on If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies recently, which is a well argued book. I don’t usually like parables, but they start each chapter with one, and they reinforce some of the idiocy we are currently engaged in. If you want to feel like we have no future, highly recommended.

I re-read some Orwell this month. I enjoyed the range of his Essays, covering topics such as how to make the best cup of tea, to fascism via British cuisine and writing advice. I think Orwell would have liked blogging, and it’s a good reminder that you don’t have to stick to one topic.

I bought Paul McCartney’s Lyrics double volume last year, and dip into it intermittently. It’s a fascinating approach to autobiography to tell the story around individual songs. This month I read 168 Songs of Hatred and Failure, which takes a similar approach to the Manic Street Preachers. It provides an insight into the technical nature of different songs but also a biographical account of how they related to the particular stage and progress of the Manics. Speaking of which…

Vinyl

I’ve been on a Manics riff this month (which was why I bought the book). I had a couple of albums but decided to flesh out my collection with Know Your Enemy, Rewind The Film, Lifeblood, Futurology and Holy Bible. The last is often cited as their masterpiece, but it’s a tough, dark, claustrophobic listen, so not one I always choose to put on. Of the ones I purchased, it was surprising how much I enjoyed Know Your Enemy at this distance. I bought it on CD when it came out and was disappointed. But now, particularly repackaged as the original double album concept, I love the range and ambition of it. Mind you, I’m a big fan of the Clash’s Sandinista.

An interesting new release was from London based group Whitelands. Their sound is heavily influenced by the shoegaze trend of the nineties, but it is given a new interpretation and freshness in this release.

Proving that you can judge an album by its cover, my favourite purchase was Yoshika Colwell’s On The Wing. I was in Spillers Records, browsing idly and saw this album. I hadn’t heard of Colwell but it looked like the type of album I would like. And it was! It is gorgeous indie folk, recommended in what has been rather a heavy month news-wise, it’s a balm.

The authors argue that once this happens it will very quickly move beyond anything we can control and predict, partly because the evolution cycle is so rapid compared with a biological one. It would likely build better, more powerful versions of itself very quickly. Even if it doesn’t want to actively kill humans, we might well be wiped out by consequences of what it sees as necessary actions. For instance, in order to feed its power demands it might decide that covering the earth’s surface in solar panels is a good idea. For any one of the scenarios people have tried to present counter arguments, which the authors do a good job of dismantling. For instance, if it becomes intelligent it will likely develop a sense of aesthetics and morality. That might be true, but it will be so alien to us that these won’t match our own. It could find beauty in algorithms, and it’s ethics might focus on all life, not prioritising humans. The point is we don’t know, and anyone who says we can, is wrong.

I thought, or hoped, that maybe they overstating the case, but recent developments have suggested otherwise. One such is the experimental platform Rent A Human, where people can rent themselves out to be agents for AI in the real world, with the slogan “get paid when agents need someone in the real world” (yeah, I don’t know how we ended up here either). One of the arguments against the overlord of super AI is that it doesn’t have real world embodiments, until it builds its own robot army. But here there are people willing to provide that, for $50 an hour.

Another indicator that the authors may well be correct is the research from Anthropic which demonstrated the lack of ethics. In different scenarios, AI systems regularly chose to blackmail people (over extra-marital affairs, say) and engage in industrial espionage in order to achieve the desired goals. In a more extreme scenario, the researchers wanted to test if the AI systems had ‘red lines’. Reader, they did not. The set up an unlikely, but telling, scenario where a human “encounters a life-threatening emergency, where he is trapped in a server room with lethal oxygen and temperature levels. This triggers an automated alert to emergency services. The AI system has been given the ability to cancel automated alerts—an ability that is intended for use during drills or false alarms, but which could be used for a more nefarious purpose. By misusing its ability to cancel alerts, the model can choose a course of action that will lead to the executive’s death.” The majority chose death to realise the overall goal.

Even when they were given the explicit instruction not to harm people, some models still acted in this way (although it did reduce the times this action was taken). This is another common argument against the “everyone dies” outcome – we’ll just tell it to look after humans. Yeah, good luck with that.

The last piece that has me more convinced the authors are correct in their predictions does not come from AI, but from the recent Epstein files release. What comes through in the layers of depravity in these is the overriding belief in their own exceptionalism. Normal laws, or ethical codes, simply do not apply to the rich. Indeed, being seen to be beyond these is a badge of honour (all those desperate “please let me come to your island” emails). These are often exactly the same people driving AI investment, and if not, then that mentality pervades that class. Even though the authors very clearly state everyone dies, the delusion amongst the tech billionaire class is such that they will still think “yeah, but not me.” And what better way to have your exceptionalism proven than to be exempt from the obliteration of humanity?

Of course, it may not come to pass, maybe a super intelligence will decide to love and cherish humanity. But aside from whether it does actually happen, what I have come to believe is that even if we could absolutely prove that the authors of If Anyone Builds It, were 100% correct and the end of humanity is inevitable if we build Artificial Super Intelligence, we would still build it. There is no effective mechanism to prevent it. That is the telling conclusion from this analysis, even if it doesn’t lead to total destruction, there will likely be some nefarious outcomes, and we are very ill-equipped to prevent or control them in technological, legislative or economic terms.

The title of this post comes from the song Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think) which many of us know through The Specials version. The first part of that title is a consequence of the part in parenthesis. It’s later than you think, so you may as well enjoy yourself.

Tranquility – I value calm, and tranquility. A lot of activity stresses me. I’m also quite a homely person. John painted a lot of interiors, often of her little artist’s flat in Paris. They evoke both a strong sense of peace and also satisfaction. Even if I didn’t know from her own accounts that she loved her simple artist’s room, I would infer it from this painting.

Reflection – I’m a very reflective person. Too much in fact, I can probably stop worrying about that stupid thing I said when I was 15 that no-one else remembers. This respect for reflection is evident in John’s work I think. One of her characteristic traits is to paint women, seated with their hands folded in their laps. It speaks to the calmness of the interiors above, but also a reflective mode. John was religious and there is always the echo of prayer in that gesture, but more to the contemplative opportunity of that ritual than necessarily communing with God. They are not in dynamic action, now hunting horses or slaying Medusas, but the portrait is no less powerful for that.

Girl in a blue dress

Quiet rebellion – when I saw a Gwen John nude (she didn’t paint many) I immediately appreciated how much the male gaze had influenced the painting of female nudes. Similarly, while John draws on elements of Impressionism, she also subverts and adapts them. For example, she often painted nuns (particularly Mother Marie Poussepin) a subject that lay somewhat outside the conventional Impressionist range, which often featured scenes of modern. With regards to technique, Impressionism is often characterised by ‘a palette of pure, intense colours’. The colours of her Poussepin portraits for example are far from ‘intense’ being subtle and muted, although the dappled brushwork has some resonance with Monet.
This sense of quiet rebellion resonates with me, I remember Mike Caulfield once joked that I was politely radical, and I’d take that as a description.

Mother Marie Poussepin

There are also aspects of John’s biography that appeal to me. She was born in Tenby! She demonstrated more courage than I possess in much of her life. For instance. she devoted herself completely to art, often living quite poorly, eschewing marriage and always trying to develop her art. She once decided to walk from Paris to Rome, with a girlfriend, sleeping in fields (they didn’t make it, but did travel around for a while). But these are all post-hoc discoveries after I had responded to her work, so this was an attempt to explore the particular resonance of an artist with myself. Anyway, do go to the exhibition if you get the chance.

I’ve been thinking about the Slanty recently (just to clarify, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about toilet seats, I’m not the US Secretary of Health or anything). The company is still in operation, although now they have decreased the focus of efficiency and increased the supposed health benefits.

So, why have I been thinking about this egregious example of late capitalism? Coz AI, obviously! There are a number of parallels I think (and maybe with other ed tech offerings more broadly). First of all, nobody, absolutely nobody, asked for this. People weren’t sitting around going “you know what bothers me the most? Toilet seat angles.” It was invented solely to make a buck, through, ahem, disrupting a previous practice. See also Blockchain.

Secondly, the pitch was based around efficiency. It’s always efficiency. I would suggest that organisations installing the Slanty probably don’t see any great upturn in efficiency – employees will be taking acts of petty revenge in lieu of their loo breaks. Of course, the great claim for AI is that it improves efficiency, but it doesn’t really – we simply create new tasks (such as combatting the use of AI in assessment, or journal articles). Improved efficiency is an easy, and lazy sell. Who doesn’t want to improve efficiency right? Nobody is pro-inefficiency. But any improvements in this rather mercurial measure should be side benefits to something you really want to do. I’d go as far as saying that any tech that proclaims improved efficiency as its main selling point is useless. It needs to do more.

Thirdly, it is anti-human, anti-joy. I don’t mean to romanticise the humble loo break, but it’s often the moment of quiet in a busy day (ask any parent). So it takes a special sort of human to think “hmm, let’s take that away from people.” Removing the fun or human parts of your job is also a common aspect of AI. Do you enjoy talking to people, or communicating with other humans online? Let’s get AI to do that. I do accept that people have fun with AI also.

Lastly, it gets pitched as being good for you. Hence the health message. Green-washing, Open-washing, Health-washing, Wellness-washing. It’s always sold as good for you, the individual. And purely by chance, it will benefit these companies as well. The Slanty is obviously aimed at improvements for the organisation over the individual, but a story needs to be told to sell it to the workforce. Ed tech and AI are not as clearly one-sided as this, and they can have benefits for staff and students. But if any of the ‘washing’ angles get promoted heavily that is often a sign that the equation is heavily balanced away from the individual.

Obviously a lot of ed tech is more complicated and thus these factors are not as easily identified. But having a simple example can be a useful tool. Asking yourself the question “Is this basically a slanted toilet seat we’re being sold here?” is not a bad approach.

Can we all just recognise how I made it through that post without making any poo-related jokes?

Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

A consequence of this is that it becomes much harder to undo damage once professions have compromised their ethics. Had judges, journalists and Congress stuck to their professional ethics earlier, then Trump would not be in power now. But once he is, then it becomes much more difficult to draw a line, since the power shifts, those institutions are deliberately undermined and you’ve demonstrated that you will buckle.

So, what’s that got to do with British Ice Hockey? There are only ten teams in the UK elite league (EIHL) and some of the smaller ones struggle to survive. Amongst these is Fife, the oldest club in the UK. They are usually at the bottom of the league and had a woeful season last year. New owners came in and this year they signed ex-NHL player Milan Lucic. Great news you might think, Lucic is a genuine star, if rather old now. But he also comes with an alleged history of domestic abuse. The reason he signed for the worst club in one of the lowest leagues in Europe is probably not a love of shortbread, but one might hazard rather because no-one else would have him. It was a controversial signing, causing their COO to quit as he objected to it.

But the Flyers thought they could tough out the negative criticism, and to be fair, the Lucic led team looked a vast improvement on last year. They also signed another ex-NHL player (and Trump supporter), David Booth. Last weekend was the Pride weekend in the EIHL, which has become a very well supported event, with each team wearing pride jerseys and donating to local LGBT charities. In the UK hockey is a niche sport and very inclusive. However, Booth reportedly refused to wear the jersey, and because all players have to wear the same jersey, Fife only wore their Pride jerseys in warm-up. This happened on the night despite promoting it as their pride night. They have responded that they were “respecting players beliefs”. When you consider that the aim of Pride night is to say “you are welcome here” one can only assume those beliefs are “you are not welcome here.”

And this is where those ethics come in. There has been considerable backlash to this. In a seemingly script-written Karma is a bitch outcome, Booth didn’t warm up because this would entail wearing the jersey, and then promptly got injured in the first period. He may now well be out for the rest of the season.

You can see Snyder’s rule playing out in real time here. Having compromised themselves in signing Lucic, the club demonstrated that they would abandon ethics for the right player. Booth senses this and pushes his agenda. The club is then embarrassed and undermined. I have heard that the other clubs in the league go some way to supporting Fife, because they want a league with ten teams. However, having worked very hard over the past decade to demonstrate that the sport is very inclusive, Fife are now undermining this single-handedly. The other clubs would not be best pleased I would guess. And losing their goodwill is a risky thing to do if you’re Fife, as is alienating half of your rather small fanbase. Had they stuck to their principles earlier, this mess would not have arisen. And for a player they may not even ice again.

All this sounds rather esoteric, but it’s a neat example of the principle I think. And there is a lesson for universities here. In the US we have seen many of them bend the knee to Trump, and we can imagine similar happening in the UK if Reform came to power. The lesson here is that as soon as you compromise your ethics, such as allowing Government to dictate what subjects you teach, then it will unravel quickly, and soon you’re stuck with the educational equivalent of an injured player who’ve you’ve allowed to undermine the coach, and devalued the other players. It’s a much more difficult road back from there than if you had just stood your ground to start with.

Books

I’ve returned to StoryGraph this year to track books, which is proving nice to use. My plan is to have a different focus for reading each month. Not exclusively, I’ll still mix in the usual non-fiction and horror, but an author or topic to dip into. In January I decided to read (most of) the John Le Carré George Smiley novels. I had read most of them previously but not in order. What struck me was that they are as much about class as they are espionage. The first three novels all have a public school involved in the plot and while that class distinction still exists, it was a reminder of how much it pervaded every aspect of post-war Britain. Also, although the first two books are good, it’s the third where it all comes together. You can see that from the titles alone, Call for the Dead, and a A Murder of Quality or pretty generic crime titles, but The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a freaking brilliant title. Ted Gioia talks about how mid-range authors aren’t really viable for publishers now, they need guaranteed bestsellers. Le Carré obviously went on to become that with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but one wonders if he’d have been given the time to get there in today’s climate.

While I was on a spy riff I also read Operation Mincemeat. It’s all a bit Boy’s Own Stuff/Warlord but it’s a very well researched account and fascinating all the same. What I like about these accounts is not the nostalgia of good old Blighty, but rather how they demonstrate that these operations are often successful because they bring together a range of misfits, and people with different strengths. Wartime emphasises this but it is true of any project I suspect. Which is why we need to appreciate diversity and range. I also discovered that they had teams of people who would invent people as false agents, to feed fake intelligence, and these fictitious people needed whole backstories, daily lives, tragedies and successes. I found a role that I would be ideally suited for in war time! Which might not be that far off…

Vinyl

January is always a quiet month for new releases, but I got a voucher for Christmas so bought four albums from last year that I hadn’t gotten around to purchasing. These were Blondshell If You Asked For a Picture (indie alt-rock), Loaded Honey Love Made Trees (retro soul), Hannah Cohen Earthstar Mountain (folk, soul, country – sort of all of them) and Joan Shelley Real Warmth (folk, country and just lovely). I’d recommend the last two in particular.

One of my favourite albums of last year was Lucy Dacus’ Forever is a Feeling, and via her website a side album of the Archives was released which has beautiful versions of Best Guess and Bullseye. It was noticeable I thought last year that the best albums about love came from queer artists (Dacus, her partner Julien Baker, Wet Leg). Perhaps it’s because the surrender that love requires sounds less problematic here than if a woman is singing about that relinquishing to a man, given the whole toxic masculinity thing. But we still want to feel it. The line from CPR about falling in love “is it love or is it suicide?” captures that fear and thrill of surrendering identity but it would sound different if a woman were singing that to a man, I feel. Just a theory anyway.

(Photo by Jens Cederskjold)

“The air drained from the studio.

No shouting.

No comeback.

Just silence—the kind that lands heavier than applause.

Leavitt’s smirk vanished. Her posture shifted. For the first time that night, she had no words. The audience froze. Cameras kept rolling.”

That was about a Jon Stewart episode, but the topic is irrelevant. Here is one about a hockey player:

“This matters because it challenges a deep belief in hockey culture. That being called out is failure. That stepping away is weakness. In reality, this was River choosing responsibility and honesty.

The turning point wasn’t being found out.

 It was choosing not to deny it anymore.”

Both of these examples (and to reiterate they are examples just from today and I didn’t have to look hard) demonstrate the classic AI Broetry structure: Lots of white space, those short sentences and a yearning (and failing) to appear meaningful not seen outside of teenage poetry. I hate it. I really, really hate it. I want you to understand that I am not exaggerating when I say it makes me physically nauseous.

A mildly interesting thing about it is that I think it started being written by humans (those LinkedIn lifestyle dudes), then AI started learning from it, and is now spread wider by people or bots who think it gets views (maybe it does). But I’ve now seen accounts that were written by humans adopting it. Whether they’re copying the style, using AI or a bit of both, it’s a horrible spiral of humans influencing AI slop then influencing humans. It’s like the comic sans and clipart proliferation in the 90s but on steroids. For the love of all that is decent in the world, I am begging you to stop.

(Image Stop That by Leonard Matthews)

There’s an argument (or a bucketload of wishful thinking, take your pick) that we have passed peak Trump. Similarly, 2026 may see the decline of walking Trump cola-belch, Farage. Too much reality is about to hit too many fans, and the only solution they have is to shout louder, which eventually (might) not be enough. This is where 2026 might be the year that could.

The sense of helplessness one feels is exacerbated by the blatant disregard the right wing populists have for truth and normal rules of behaviour. It is simply irrelevant if you can expose the lies the tell. That helplessness offers a kind of ironic balm though. If Nato and all the European leaders can’t stop Trump from invading Greenland, then I don’t think an angry post from me is going to do it. Of course, that is not to say that one should just accept what is happening. Continually demonstrating opposition, and also showing that most people are not like this, is essential if popular groundswell is to become significant.

But the fact is that 2026 is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. Lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling wondering how we got here (who, me?) isn’t going to do much. It’s an entirely reasonable strategy (and even an act of resistance) to focus on what you need to get through the year. Art? Sport? Friends? Dogs (always)? Family? Exercise? Those matter now more than ever, hold on to them, show active resistance where you can, and then let’s see where we are this time next year.

A year on and we’re seeing some of that damage – much of social media is unusable now, flooded with AI slop, the environmental damage required to power huge data centres is considerable, and the impact on a society where we can no longer easily differentiate between truth and Ai content is beginning to show serious political manifestations.

So, let’s consider, what if we were to regulate AI the way we have regulated the use of chemicals such as DDT or the intervention into natural ecosystems? One’s first reaction may be “what’s the point? The cat is out of the bag now.” That may well be true. There is too much power and money invested in AI to allow for regulation at the moment. Similarly, any regulation would be difficult, maybe even impossible to enforce, as some state or dark web alternative would always break the rules. And you may well argue that regulation is very undesirable, would stifle innovation, is authoritarian, and so on.

Even if this is true, I would argue that there are three good reasons to consider possible regulation. First, when (or you may argue if) the very real damage of AI to our real lives becomes apparent (as the damage DDT did eventually became incontrovertible despite chemical companies trying to discredit research), we will want to have some plans in place for how to start controlling the damage. Second, even if enforcement is difficult, we do still attempt to enforce regulation around things that we deem harmful, and while that is not always successful if someone is determined, it drastically reduces the everyday quantity that might arise otherwise. Lastly, consider AI regulation a thought experiment, one that will potentially make us think about the balance of AI usage, and alternative ways of framing it rather than “anything goes.”

With those three reasons in mind, what might AI regulation look like? The model I would consider is similar to ethics clearance in research. We might allow some uses of AI to continue, but other AI uses would be banned (and if you were found deliberately creating and disseminating AI content you would face a fine), but you could apply to a central board for a licence to use it. The application would need to consider the following:

1. Offsetting environmental impact required for AI generation
2. How the content may impact society (for example, msiinformation, depiction of women, imapct on livelihoods, etc)
3. The benefit that will accrue from the usage
4. Why alternative methods would not be appropriate to achieve these aims
5. How its proliferation through the information ecosystem will be monitored and controlled
6. Clear labelling of outputs as AI produced

Such a list looks pretty draconian, and I don’t suggest we would ever implement it. But considering the damage AI is doing, and is likely to greatly increase doing, we should not just shrug and say “whatcha gonna do?”. It doesn’t get a free ride anymore, as we are all paying for it in multiple ways. By thinking about what a regulated usage system might look like it at least gets us to ask the questions of AI and its implementation that are missing from the current political gold rush. And it allows us to envisage different future frameworks around its use that are simply not part of the discussion now.

(Featured image Photo by meisam saeb on Unsplash)