Madhumita Murgia
@madhumita29
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Artificial Intelligence Editor @FT . My book, CODE DEPENDENT, out @picadorbooks & @henryholt JUNE 18, shortlisted for Women’s Prize for NonFiction ‘24
London, England
Joined November 2010
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Pinned Tweet
So, so proud to be on this inaugural
@WomensPrize
list of non-fiction by 16 amazing women, many of whose work I have read & loved. Such breadth of storytelling, and grateful to have Code Dependent among them. It’s out March 28, & I hope it makes you think about AI differently..
Here they are in all their glory... the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist!
A big thank you to our judges
@sixteenthcgirl
,
@profnicolarollock
,
@venetialamanna
,
@annesebba
and
@kamilashamsie
plus our sponsor
@findmypast
#WomensPrize
:
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Very excited to start this global role at a time when a story I’ve worked on for a while has leapt into the mainstream imagination. Promise it’s just a coincidence that it comes in this week of AI one-upmanship..
Financial Times appoints Madhumita Murgia as its first Artificial Intelligence editor
@madhumita29
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SCOOP: London’s Kings Cross has installed facial recognition cameras without consent throughout the public areas that it owns (incl office buildings, Central St martins, schools and shops.) Canary Wharf is looking to follow suit. My
@FT
story -
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Of all the AI conversations I’ve been having recently, this was one of the most thought-provoking. For
@ftweekend
, I had lunch with Ted Chiang, whose stories I encourage you all to read to expand your idea of what is possible.
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China is quietly proposing a new architecture for the internet to be built by Huawei, in the UN. Western delegates are deeply concerned about the top-down design that cld give owners inc govt granular controls. My
@FTMag
cover story with
@AnnaSophieGross
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NEW: Our visual in-depth explainer of how a “large language model” works - & what makes it such a powerful, general cognitive engine. Months in the making from dream team
@samjoiner
@sam_learner
@Dan_Clark5
@inari_ta
et al
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What does surveillance look like in a modern democracy? London provides a glimpse into a future where a public/private network of cameras in hospitals, schools, shops, loos turns the city itself into the eyes and ears of law enforcement. My big read in
@FT
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We know personal data is the currency of the internet, but turns out health websites in the UK are some of the most egregious data traders, sharing medical symptoms, diagnoses, fertility/period info and more. Our
@ft
investigation
@maxharlow
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I did a talk
@TEDxExeter
about piecing together my online identity - most nerve-racking 12 mins ever!
@FT
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JUST IN: Columbia prof Dan Richman confirms he shared info about Comey's mtg w/ Trump with press, as requested by his friend.
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SCOOP: Facebook content moderators at an Accenture-run facility in Europe were made to sign a form acknowledging the job could give them PTSD. Multiple instances of people w/mental breakdowns and other issues, exacerbated by work culture. My
@FT
story
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Meet
@timspector
- epidemiologist and Covid data doctor who managed to get 4.6m Britons to log their health every day for over a year. Is this the future of our NHS? My profile for
@ftweekend
magazine.
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I’ve emerged from my holiday-induced stupor to some very exciting Christmas post - the first
@picadorbooks
proof of my book, CODE DEPENDENT. It’s about nine ordinary people across 8 countries whose lives have been changed by their encounters with artificial intelligence.
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IT’S PUBLICATION DAY! To celebrate, (1) my kids are taking in Code Dependent for show-and-tell (all publicity is good publicity..) and (2) I am spending all day writing about AI giants and power, which is perfect. Here it is, in amongst my bookshelf chaos.
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Almost every EU govt site (inc ) as well as sensitive public health pages on NHS & others (HIV, abortion, mental health sites) have dozens of ad trackers on them that haven’t been disclosed to users. My
@FT
story here -
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Microsoft, Duke and Stanford unis have quietly deleted large datasets of people's faces that were pulled from the internet without their consent after the FT reported on their commercil usage in April -
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The story of the Transformer and its inventors was the first one I began to report when I took on my role as AI editor earlier this year - it helps encapsulate the current moment we are in with generative AI, and where we are going. 👉
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SCOOP: Microsoft has published multiple papers on facial analysis and machine comprehension with researchers from a Chinese military-run universities without restrictions on how that research is used
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With the
@oneplus
2 coming soon, co-founder
@getpeid
tells
@wireduk
about plans to make money via new OS Oxygen
http://t.co/i1r2RTvcsh
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SCOOP: WhatsApp expands its 400-person staff by a quarter in Europe, to build payments and safety products in London. This will be its first product office outside its Californian HQ.
@FT
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Fundamental AI research is now primarily the purview of large tech companies - a trend that’s becoming more relevant as money & attention are showered on large language models. My piece, with insights from
@NurAhmedB
&
@mer__edith
’s brilliant 2021 paper
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Absolutely wild to wake up to this. THANK YOU to all of you who have read and supported and evangelised my little book in a time overwhelmed by AI stories.
No 9!
Huge congratulations to Madhumita Murgia on entering the Times bestseller list today with CODE DEPENDENT, her incisive analysis of the human cost of AI.
A big hurrah also to everyone at Picador UK, notably Ravi Mirchandani, Siobhan Slattery and Emma Bravo.
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Kings cross has still not responded to me regarding how many cameras they have, how long facial recognition has been operational in the area or how they obtain explicit consent.
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Great to sit down with
@ylecun
for the first time, to discuss the nature of intelligence, the direction AI development is moving and why the corporate race is going to slow it down..
If you are a student interested in building the next generation of AI systems, don't work on LLMs
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Woohoo! The FT is expanding AI coverage and we’ll have the brill Cristina out in SF. Tell us what we should be doing more of..
🇺🇸 I am moving to San Francisco this summer to cover AI 🇺🇸 please do get in touch with tips and to set up meetings 📧 Cristina.criddle
@ft
.com
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Emotion recognition has picked up in pace since the pandemic, as more people worked & studied at home. We built an interactive to show how the tech works - and how it fails. For the privacy-aware, no data saved and it’s all browser based! Try it out here -
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Delhi, thanks for the warmest of welcomes! Such fascinating conversations and questions, was a joy to be discussing my book here this week
@TeestaGuha
@Rachna70
@TheDeshBhakt
The CODE DEPENDENT India Tour has officially kicked off! Here are some snippets from the launch at
@inBritish
where
@madhumita29
was in conversation with
@TheDeshBhakt
.
Mumbai, see you next!
#WomensPrize
#ArtificialIntelligence
#CodeDependent
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Can we agree we don't want AI making up/telling bedtime stories to children, using generated voices? Or am I in the minority on this, which is why we constantly see this held up as an eg/demo of a cool application?
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So much of what we see as automated is really powered by humans in hidden corners of the world. A student I spoke to in Bulgaria used to watch old people in a US geriatric ward and trip an “AI”alarm if they fell. As
@AnjliRaval
says, this is Chapter 1 of my book Code Dependent.
Amazon billed its "Just Walk Out" stores as some triumph of AI. In reality, it was powered by thousands of low-paid Indian workers manually adding up items in your cart as you shopped.
How insanely dystopian.
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Phew, what a day. Thank you to all at
@WomensPrize
for honouring CODE DEPENDENT with a place on this pioneering list. What a privilege.
“A chilling and essential read about AI and the way it imports and exacerbates existing social inequalities.” ~ Professor Nicola Rollock
Absolutely thrilled that Madhumita Murgia’s CODE-DEPENDENT has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction!
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Going head-to-head with
@mustafasuleyman
in
@WaterstonesPicc
! A lovely mini-review, if you squint..
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Well this is exciting!
Congratulations to:
Madhumita Murgia /
@FT
Robin McKie /
@ObsMagazine
Tom Whipple /
@thetimes
on being shortlisted in
#ThePressAwards
Science and Technology Journalist of the Year category (2/2)
View the full shortlist:
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Here’s our news story, with links to documents that form the basis of the proposal that critics are calling “radical” and “worrying” China and Huawei propose reinvention of the internet
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A lovely staff recommendation in Waterstones Glasgow for Code Dependent - these are the reviews that usually get me to buy a book, so I’m honoured to be up there!
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NEW: A former employee of DeepMind has accused the company of mishandling sexual assault and misconduct allegations, suggesting institutional failures in how the org deals with serious grievances (1/3)
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After 60 years of operating in NHS maternity wards, Bounty gets caught for gross misuse of mother and baby data. When I asked for stories, so many of my mother friends, colleagues and I myself had experienced their sneaky tactics first-hand.
@FT
@ftweekend
New-Borns' Data Sold To Marketers. Bounty shares 30m maternity records. Hospital 'goody-bag' provider fined £400,000 -
@madhumita29
#frontpagestoday
#UK
#FinancialTimes
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Online gambling firms, & the data brokers serving them, collect targeted behavioural data, marketing to gamblers at their weakest point, a new ICO complaint says. My
@ftweekend
piece on an unregulated industry profiting from data and addiction
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Over weeks of speaking to current & former employees, analysts, critics and competitors,
@FT
’s account of what is holding Google back from capitalising on generative AI, an area it was primed to dominate. Today’s Big Read w/
@RichardWaters
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High-quality data is a major limiting resource in advancing AI - it’s expensive, hard to obtain & increasingly being locked down. So what do AI companies do? My
@FT
piece on the trend of creating “synthetic data” to push forward AI development.
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SCOOP 👀 Employees of OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere met with Chinese AI experts in Geneva to find common ground on AI policy and safety
Great story from
@madhumita29
US companies and Chinese experts engaged in secret diplomacy on AI safety via
@FT
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What a week it’s been! Huge congrats to
@NaomiAKlein
, and a delight to meet and spend these evenings reading and speaking with the NF sisterhood
@NoreenMasud
,
@SafiyaSinclair
,
@TiyaMilesTAM
and
@LauraCummingArt
. New York, i’m coming for you next week!
Huge congratulations to Madhumita Murgia, editor Ravi Mirchandani, publicist extraordinaire Siobhan Slattery, and the whole team at Picador UK on CODE DEPENDENT shortlisting for the Women’s Prize for Non Fiction.
A truly wonderful night.
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African workers filtering violent & horrific content on Facebook are suing the company + its local outsourcer Sama in Nairobi. What does this trio of cases mean for how Meta & its algorithms will operate? My piece with the brilliant
@davidpilling
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SCOOP: Google claims to have achieved quantum SUPREMACY which might sound like a Bond film but is really a landmark moment in the history of computing.
@FT
piece w/
@RichardWaters
-
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Five days to pub date for
#Codedependent
- but some lovely friends have already spotted my book in the wild! Such a delight to see on real bookshelves, so keep pinging me if you spy them out and about..
@picadorbooks
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SCOOP: Apple plans to proactively scan American iPhones for photos of child abuse, using an algorithm on your phone. Researchers warn that it could lead to “bulk surveillance” of populations. Story with
@tim
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The largest democratic vote in the world is ongoing in India and WhatsApp is a central campaign tool, as it was in Brazil. My
@ft
read with
@SJFindlay
on Whatsapp’s India challenge & the eerie parallels between Modi and Bolsanaro’s social media strategies
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No one - not the creators of the datasets, the academic beneficiaries and least of all the owners of the faces - can control what these are building. Academia has become a huge blind spot for privacy, and arguably even worse, potential gross abuse of human rights
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Kings Cross has done an about turn from yesterday and said it will, in fact, be installing a new & updated facial recognition system to match people to a watchlist of criminals and missing persons, in a letter to
@MayorofLondon
. My
@FT
piece here:
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I should say the area was developed and is privately owned by Argent.
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The most popular VPNs that handle all your internet traffic are a set of dodgy outfits selling your data, many in mainland China
VPNs do not encrypt your data - they simply channel your data to a third party proxy server, whose owner can have full purview of said data: “We even found that in some cases they stated they would share your data with third parties in mainland China"
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.
@FT
splash on a new generation of models with partial “reasoning” capabilities. W/
@CristinaCriddle
ft
@bradlightcap
,
@ylecun
and
@jpineau1
Just published: front page of the Financial Times, UK edition, Wednesday 10 April
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Red was in the air!
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This gives me so much joy!
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@jeffjarvis
The responses in the screen grab are clearly pretty concerning, so not sure how they support your point..
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My column: how misinformation spreads like the plague (mathematically) and what we can do to interrupt the superspreaders without taking down content
@FTMag
@ftweekend
The image of minds infected by falsehood is a powerful one. The question is: can we interrupt these waves of hyper-transmission, just as we do the spread of viruses?
@madhumita29
investigates
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The most terrifying, personal Covid thing I’ve read in the past year. FT food writer
@timhayward
’s searing account of being hospitalised with the virus
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Israeli spyware Pegasus can access a target’s entire digital history via cloud platforms owned by Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, raising major concerns about security of products we all use every day. Huge scoop from
@MehulAtLarge
and
@tim
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SCOOP w/
@pmdfoster
and
@javierespinosa2
- UK mulls removing/amending right to human review of algorithms, in areas such as loan decisions & recruitment, as currently enshrined in GDPR. This, as other govts seek to give citizens MORE algorithmic control.
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The biggest “privacy deathstars” aren’t Facebook and its ilk but shadowy data brokers who’ve been around for decades. My piece with
@aliya__ram
on these cos, their recent explosion and shady methods
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@mackenzief
@JetBlue
This might shed some light on access to your photos and also the consent issue - Who’s using your face? The ugly truth about facial recognition
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We’ve all got an advertising algorithm war story - unwanted ads following us online. But for some, it can be cruel & crippling. My
@ftweekend
column on FB’s algorithms & why user controls don’t work. Thanks to
@panoptykon
&
@sapiezynski
for their research.
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In the lion's den, waiting for Mr Comey. Not a bad first week in Washington.
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I’ve said this to him a few times but I can never repay
@MalcolmMoore
for the freedom, trust and unwavering confidence he gave me after two 12mo-long maternity leaves, allowing me to do my best work during my most vulnerable times. A true feminist and team player.
Three-and-a-half years ago, the
@ft
asked me to set up a new team in London to boost our tech coverage. Today is my last day as tech news editor...🧵(1/10)
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As an adoring fan of basically every indie bookshop I’ve ever been in, this is wonderful. CODE DEPENDENT is one of the dozen most-sold books by Britain’s indies!
Thrilled to share this week's Official Litalist Indie Non-Fiction Bestseller Chart!
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Almost every woman I know (including myself) who has had a child in the NHS has normalised stories like this. Surely means something must change. A damning report.
I have three children. My eldest nearly died because nobody believed me when I said I was in labour.
I nearly died delivering my third. I asked for a C-section 48 hours after my waters had broken and induction had failed, having been told both mine and my son’s lives were at
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My delightful (for me) chat with
@margaretatwood
for the launch of her new book The Heart Goes Last in
@wireduk
http://t.co/vVTHMldIQU
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Can academics ignore the reality of the dangers of artificial intelligence and open-source all algorithms? My
@FTMag
column on why this is naive
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I’ll be in Cambridge on Saturday, in conversation with
@ginasue
about my book CODE DEPENDENT and its themes of human agency and power in an age of
AI - come say hi! Details here:
Congratulations
@madhumita29
- shortlisted for the inaugural
@WomensPrize
for
#NonFiction
! You can catch Madhumita speaking on her insightful book, Code Dependent, in Cambridge next month.🌟
Tickets:
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@chrismoranuk
Yes I’ve found anecdotally it generates fake urls of real news websites (including ours) when referencing information..
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Go pick up an
@FTMag
today, for an opus by
@antoniacundy
, and this extract by me, on one man who took on a capricious algorithm
How a Tech-Savvy Delivery Rider Took on the Algorithms that Control How Gig Workers are Paid.
Financial Times’ Weekend Magazine today with a fascinating story from Madhumita Murgia’s brilliant new book, CODE DEPENDENT - out on Thursday from Picador UK.
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The ICO has launched an active investigation into Kings Cross’ use of facial recognition cameras, revealed by
@FT
, as part of its broader scrutiny of police and private use of the technology.
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This study by
@CookiebotCybot
shows how completely broken the adtech world is when EU governments can’t respect the privacy of citizens who are protected by data protection laws they themselves wrote
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What a wonderful and generous thread. My favourite thing about being a part of th
@WomensPrize
experience has been the discovery of these brilliant voices outside of my regular orbit, which have opened my mind to so many new ideas and possibilities. Writing at its best.
it’s Women’s Prize week; the wildest and most unexpected ride of my life is nearly over. I’ve read the whole shortlist and I’m stunned all over again to be listed alongside these books. It would be an honour to be beaten by any one of them 🧵
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Code Dependent is on the
@FT
’s summer list by brilliant FT colleagues and authors. It’s an eclectic, smart and deeply reported set of books (yes, I’m biased..)
Best summer books of 2024: from our own stable
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Ever felt manipulated by a digital service’s design? Maybe you’re paying for a subscription you didn’t sign up for, or gave your details to an unknown app.There’s a name for this ploy- dark patterns- & its only goal is your attention. My
@ftweekend
column
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SCOOP: Widespread collab between western AI academics and Chinese entities supplying surveillance equipment to the Beijing security state raises fears about academia fueling human rights abuses. My piece with
@cdcshepherd
for
@ftweekend
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In this dark time, my four-hour Lunch with
@DameStephanie_
gave me real perspective. Do read our 80-year-spanning conversation about her pioneering leadership, philanthropic philosophy & how she overcame life's most extraordinary challenges in
@ftweekend
-
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Hello 🇮🇳- I’m coming for you! If you’re in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore in early May, do come and join the conversation on how AI changing our lives all over the world
Madhumita Murgia, the
@womensprize
-shortlisted author of CODE DEPENDENT, is coming to India for a three-city book tour! Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore readers, register for the book launches by clicking on this link: .
Hope to see you there!
@madhumita29
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Microsoft's
@satyanadella
on leadership, jobs of the future and how to keep on learning. My
@FT
interview -
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Parameters for "inappropriate" in a business setting shld be obvious to men&women - avoiding female entrepreneurs is NOT a solution
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Panels like this - 1838592 men in suits and a token female moderator - make me involuntarily switch my brain off.
#AISummit
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Thank you for having me, and to
@_FelixSimon_
, and our audience for being so warm and engaged with the themes in my book. Three weeks to go…!
Great to welcome the AI Editor
@FT
@madhumita29
to Oxford for a talk on her upcoming book Code Dependent, hosted by
@_FelixSimon_
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If you're a woman on Twitter, you knew it already, but the numbers are here - more than 1m abusive tweets directed at well-known female journos and politicians on Twitter last year -
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Inspired by the courage and entrepreneurialism of
@SaraWahedi
whom I interviewed for this
@FT
piece on her app
@ehtesabaf
, which is trying to bring real-time city-wide info to Afghans during this crisis
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What do Tesla’s Autopilot, Alexa and uncovering war crimes in the
@syrian_archive
have in common? They all use ‘synthetic data’ - simulated data to fill in the gaps for real life - to train their AI systems. Thx to
@adamhrv
for helping me tell this story.
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Deep reporting for this great
@FT
piece by
@CristinaCriddle
on the clash of cultures at Tiktok Shop in the UK, which has kicked off an internal investigation at the company.
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I’ve never been on *this* side of an interview before - but it was fun…Thanks
@NiemanLab
and
@SarahScire
for the opportunity to chat AI and journalism
"It’s really difficult not to anthropomorphize—I struggle with this too—because it’s a very evocative way to explain it to audiences. But I do think we should strive to describe [AI] as a tool, rather than as a 'brain' or a companion of some kind."
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The ICO is quietly working on a reg that could go through as soon as Nov, that would transform the UK internet as we know it. My
@ft
piece on the response from tech, media, gaming cos big & small on the privacy, innovation and access implications.
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My first review! Thanks to
@tkbeynon
for the ⭐️s and for engaging with the stories in Code Dependent deeply. “A penetrating look at how we’re allowing artificial intelligence to infiltrate all parts of society, from policing, welfare, justice and health”
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This fascinating thread is very persuasive that we should all be invested in the outcome of this particular battle..
My god, they *hate*
@linakhanFTC
. This once-in-a-generation brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, slayer of
#Reaganomics
, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any predecessors in living memory.
She must be doing something right, huh?
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A rabbi, an imam and the Pope walked into a room - and agreed that artificial intelligence needed to embody human values. My
@ftopinion
column on my visit to Rome to witness this weird and wonderful union.
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The most fun I can have in my day job is being able to talk to lots of interesting people about the big questions in AI, and then discuss it all with John Thornhill. Do listen if you want to figure out what all the fuss around superintelligence and AGI is about..
New podcast alert🚨🚨🚨
Latest
@FinancialTimes
Tech Tonic series on superintelligent AI in which
@madhumita29
and I interview several of the world's leading researchers, including the doomers and the boomers. Opinions vary!
via
@ft
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One of my favourite bookshops of all time will host an event for Code Dependent in April. If you’re in or around Edinburgh, come say hey.
It's with great excitement that we welcome
@madhumita29
to present her first book Code Dependent: Living in the shadow of AI. Join us for a timely talk on how automated systems are reshaping human lives.
📅Thurs 4th April
🕐7:30pm
📍The Bookshop
🎟️⬇️
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Beautiful and sorrowful
Along a 10-mile stretch of road, now devastated by fire, a California truth is revealed. Me from Napa/Sonoma.
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