Author: The Information Badger

Digital slop…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Information Technology, Life, social media, Technology

Over the years, the Badger’s been involved in company acquisitions, and he’s also been on the receiving end when his employer was itself acquired by another company. Experiencing both sides of the equation has been valuable and educational. Acquisitions normally follow standard processes. When the transaction is finally agreed and completed, the subsequent integration activities also follow fairly standard processes. This week the Badger was asked about his view on ‘digital slop’, and – oddly – this triggered a memory from way back in 1997 when the Badger attended a post-acquisition leaders conference following the purchase of a Dublin-based company in the telecommunications software market. This company had products in the short messaging services (SMS) sector, and the conference took place in a rural hotel in the Irish countryside some distance from the city.

Why did ‘digital slop’ trigger this particular memory? Probably because a memorable element of the conference was a presentation by a leader from the acquired company on their vision of the future for mobile phones and telecommunication software products. They described a vision of the future in which everyone had an internet-connected mobile phone which enticed them to enter a shop every time they walked past one in a shopping mall or on the High Street! It was an interesting presentation which occurred during the year of Amazon’s IPO, before Facebook existed, and shortly before Google was founded. Most conference attendees could see its technological feasibility, but most questioned why people would want to be bombarded with ‘marketing and adverts’ as they walked through a mall or along a High Street. Most, including the Badger, thought members of the public would say ‘I don’t need this, I don’t want this, and I don’t trust this’.

It was these 1997 words that underpinned the Badger’s answer about today’s ‘digital slop’, a phrase that’s emerged in recent years to describe the huge growing volume of dubious online content produced using AI tools. Digital technology has changed the world since 1997, AI continues to change it under our feet, and AI-enabled ‘digital slop’ does little for humanity except add to the mass digital exploitation of people. People have come to learn with social media over the years that dubious content, online misinformation, and addictive scrolling are not bugs but features of the system, and that they are becoming ever-more slaves to algorithms that don’t have their best interests at heart. Countering this requires an iron will and some disciplined personal behaviour. In relation to AI produced ‘digital slop’, perhaps ‘I don’t need this, I don’t want this, I don’t trust this, and I don’t consume this’ is a better mantra for today than the 1997 words. AI is a powerful technology that cannot be ignored, but the general public probably need more attitude and behavioural alignment with these words if humanity is to resist its mounting digital slavery…

Studying at University, the electronic pocket calculator, and AI…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Education, Engineering, Information Technology, Learning, Opinion, Technology, universities

Last week the Badger wrote about his nephew’s burst of doubt about whether AI renders going to university pointless. He messaged this week to say thank you for the Badger’s guidance and to confirm that AI is not going to get in the way of fulfilling his dream of studying a STEM subject at university. Good! The Badger has no doubt that he’ll get to university and do well in his chosen subject. The Badger say’s this not through optimistic rose-tinted glasses of family connection, but because his nephew ended the message saying ‘I’ve concluded that while AI provides an additional set of tools, I don’t expect to use them to cut corners and do the thinking and work for me because this technology won’t help me be me, or help me develop the independent thought processes, behaviours, and skills that people like Tim Berners-Lee acquired when they did their degree at university’. This sentence got the Badger thinking.

When Tim Berners-Lee did his undergraduate degree at university there were no laptops, tablets, smartphones, or desktop personal computers, and no AI. In fact, the pocket calculator was a recent innovation! It’s easy to forget that it was only ~50 years ago that the emergence of electronic pocket calculators started to make rapid calculations accessible to a wide personal and professional audience. When they first hit the market, the Badger was just starting his degree course. He and most other students on the course had soon bought a pocket electronic calculator. The Badger purchased a Sinclair Cambridge for £19.95. Others bought a Sinclair Scientific costing £49.95, a price that was beyond the Badger’s means. By the end of his degree, however, the Badger had upgraded to a Texas Instruments SR-51, which served as a great workhorse for many years. But here’s the point. Calculators became an essential tool, but they didn’t fundamentally change the content of our degree course, or the concepts, methods, processes, practices, ways of thinking, practical skills, and interactions that were at the heart of the subject matter.

Many of today’s tech leaders went to university in the 1980s and 1990s when every student had an electronic pocket calculator, and rudimentary personal computers were very limited compared with those of today. They’ve all done well without AI. Of course, AI is different to the pocket calculator, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s a tool. Those studying for a degree today should use this tool responsibly, because outsourcing your thinking and development to this technology just to gain a qualification serves no useful purpose, especially if you value your independence, freedom of thought, personal creativity, and the maximisation of your career options. As the Royal Observatory recently put it, AI can ultimately trivialise human intelligence. The whole point of going to university is ultimately to grow human intelligence, not trivialise it.

AI and deciding to go to University…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Education, Information Technology, Learning, Life, university

What do you say when a youngster comments that it’s pointless taking on a Student Loan to attend university when AI will deliver knowledge faster, cheaper, and on demand? The Badger faced this dilemma a few days ago when his nephew, an intelligent, motivated, tech-savvy youngster striving for good exam results to study a STEM subject at his first-choice university, said exactly this. He’s starting to doubt if university is the right path given the expense, the ever-developing and impressive capabilities of AI, and the potential struggle of finding a graduate-level job after graduating. Many youngsters in the same position probably have similar bursts of doubt, but what did the Badger say in response to his nephew’s comment?

It seemed essential to respond with something objective, balanced, and relevant to the fast-changing world of today and the foreseeable future. The youngster is completely digital native and already dealing with the day-to-day reality of AI. He’s finding this makes decisions like going to university more difficult, but the Badger thinks deciding to go to university is something that should not be influenced by advancing AI capabilities. The gist, therefore, of the Badger’s response to his nephew’s comment was as follows.

Youngsters would be nuts to go to university if the only thing they wanted was to accrue expert knowledge/information, because AI will deliver that faster, cheaper, and conveniently on a device in their bedroom at home! The real value of university is in the accrual of knowledge/information with everything that’s wrapped around this. AI can tell you facts and help you learn, but university teaches you how to argue, critique, question, navigate institutions, defend a position, collaborate with strangers, work with those who disagree with you, and to handle stress, deadlines, and ambiguity. It’s the dealing with pressure at university that gives you identity and self-discipline. These aspects are very important because graduating with a degree signals to others, especially employers, that you can operate in a structured system, work with others, and apply yourself to achieve deadlines and good results. Furthermore, you don’t become a mature adult by sitting in your bedroom with a chatbot! You become a mature adult by leaving home, negotiating shared living, budgeting, dealing with conflict, failing and then recovering, gaining exposure to ideas that you didn’t choose, and discovering who you really are. AI gives you answers, but university provides answers and an environment that shapes your identity.

The Badger’s nephew was thoughtful for a moment before admitting that their main worry was how long it takes to find a graduate-level job after graduation (see here and here). He’s especially worried that AI means dire employment prospects when he graduates. The Badger’s advice? If university is your dream, then follow it and become an educated, disciplined adult with the strength of character to face the challenges ahead, if and when they arise…

It’s not wrong to be rewarded for working hard…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Backlash, Business, Human Resources, Information Technology, Life

Over the years, the Badger’s been an independent observer in numerous formal meetings dealing with an employee performance or disciplinary issue, or employee complaint. There were robust procedures for these, and HR always ensured that a record was kept of what was said at the meeting. Many of those the Badger attended were memorable, not because of the particular issue, but because they provided an insight to the character and attitude of the employee concerned.

With elections in the UK imminent, the Badger recalls one employee complaint meeting which highlighted that people not only make different life choices, but they also have different reasons for why they work. The Badger was asked to be the company’s independent observer at the meeting which involved HR, the complainant’s boss, the complainant, and a friend supporting them. The Badger didn’t know any of them; they were all from a different part of the company. The complaint seemed straightforward. The complainant had asserted that they were being unfairly treated because another colleague of the same age and length of service working on the same project had a higher salary. There’d been a previous meeting, but the issue was unresolved because the interactions between the individual and their boss became antagonistic.

The Badger quickly tuned into the complainant’s attitude to work and life. They were intelligent, articulate, likeable, and passionate about their many costly interests and hobbies outside of work. They always arrived for work on time and always left on time. They never worked extended hours even when incentivised financially to do so. It was obvious that their hobbies and interests outside of work were their priority and that work was simply the vehicle to fund them. Also, they had no interest going the extra mile at work to earn a higher salary because they believed that salary progression came primarily with length of service. Their project colleague with a higher salary was the opposite and motivated to do what needed to be done to build a career and accumulate the benefits that come from going the extra mile.

The meeting concluded with the HR person pointing out that the complainant and their higher-paid colleague had made different lifestyle choices, and that a complaint about someone else’s choices had no validity. They added ‘It’s not wrong for your colleague to be rewarded for going the extra mile. This country and this company were built by people who did just that’. The complaint was closed with no further action. For the Badger, it was memorable because it highlighted that people make different choices and have different motivations, attitudes, and views about working hard to build wealth. As the UK goes to the polls, the Badger senses that the HR person’s words capture a sentiment which the country needs to revive in order to be great again…  

AI in the dock?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Information Technology, Legal matters, Life, Technology

Consider this scenario. Someone approaches an individual and asks them to provide answers to some questions. The individual performs some Google searches of the internet, consults books in a local library, and then pieces together the answers to the questions. These are then communicated to the requestor face to face, or by phone or video call. The requestor uses the answers to commit a wicked crime for which they are prosecuted. The person providing the answers to the requestor’s questions is deemed by law to have some culpability for the crime and so they are prosecuted too. Now consider the same scenario but with the perpetrator directly asking ChatGPT (or similar) the same questions. The AI’s answers are used to commit the same wicked crime for which the perpetrator is prosecuted. The AI, however, does not have the same legal culpability for the crime as the individual noted above.

Reports that Florida’s attorney general has opened a criminal investigation into whether ChatGPT provided advice to a murdering gunman last year, see here for example, made the Badger wonder about the following question: ‘Are people using AI professionally or personally really aware of where the boundaries of responsibility sit?’ Probably not, was the conclusion after musing in the Spring sunshine. If a doctor follows a wrong diagnosis delivered by an AI, is the doctor responsible or the hospital, the engineers who built the AI model, or some other organisation in the chain? Some who build and deploy AI models appear to think such responsibility questions can be sorted out later when something goes awry and causes a crisis. This is never a sensible approach.

The more AI develops, the more it impacts important aspects of everyone’s life. However, it isn’t obvious, at least to the Badger, that professionals or the public understand much about how AI arrives at its answers. The Badger, who’s not a lawyer, thus spent a little time exploring how the law deals with the question of responsibility when someone takes action guided by AI’s output. It appears that you – not the AI vendor nor the algorithm – but you the user are legally responsible. This means that anyone – organisations, professionals, or members of the general public – using AI is always responsible and liable for the actions taken on guidance from AI. Organisations and humans can be sued, but AI cannot. When AI makes a mistake, liability flows to the humans and organisations that deployed it and used it,

That’s not really a surprise, but it’s a reminder for all users that they are more likely to find themselves in the dock than AI. It’s also a reminder that proper human consideration and diligence is imperative before acting on AI’s outputs. The Badger also thinks it’s a reminder that we must never allow AI to autonomously rule the world…

Digital backlash…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Backlash, Digital technology, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, social media, Technology

The Artemis mission around the dark side of the moon, the sight of humanoid robots running a half marathon (here and here), Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI model and comments by ex-PM Rishi Sunak, all illustrate the power and relentless advance of digital technology. Having a decades-long career in the IT industry, it’s been routine for the Badger to deal with perpetual change in digital technology. The rapidity of that change kept the Badger and his colleagues motivated, challenged, learning and eager for new skills, and greatly satisfied when systems were delivered to clients and put into operational use. With this background you might think the Badger is an ardent digital technophile today, but he’s not. He’s ‘neutral’ with no strong affinity for, or aversion to, digital technology. He’s not overly enthusiastic about digital technology’s constant impact on our lives, but not overly critical of it either. Why is that?

The answer lies in three points: there’s no putting digital advances back in the box once they exist, not all digital technology is good for society, and digital technology dominated by a handful of individuals, corporations, or countries does not lead to a focus on benefiting humanity as a whole. Regarding the first point, innovation is a human attribute that will always produce advances, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the second and third points which have moved the Badger to ‘neutral’ over the last decade, because digital technology has taken over our lives by stealth, driven ostensibly by agendas set by giant US and Chinese corporations controlled by a handful of individuals. Regulators have been slow, and tech giants have strongly resisted the introduction of sensible new laws that benefit wider society at every turn because of the threat to their own agendas. Digital advances have infiltrated society by default and diffusion without too much regard for the impact on the public. AI simply illustrates the point. Philosophical objectivity is thus at the heart of why the Badger’s become a neutral rather than ardent technophile.

Everyone today is more aware than ever before of digital technology’s downsides. There’s a growing willingness for the public to push back on the digital world. The UK government backtracked on Digital ID ambitions after a backlash, there’s a growing backlash against AI in the US (see here, here, and here), Swedish schools are cutting back on digital learning and returning to books, pen, and paper, numerous countries are  moving to ban social media for under 16s, a ban on children using smartphones at school has just been announced in the UK, and big tech has just lost a landmark social media addiction case. Society’s pushing back and questioning an unrestrained digital world more and more, and this backlash seems likely to grow with time. Indeed, with the world as it is today, the Badger’s unlikely to move from a neutral affinity any time soon…

OpenAI pausing Stargate UK is hardly a surprise!

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business, Data Centres, Delivery, Energy, Information Technology, Technology

As widely reported (see here for example), OpenAI is pausing its multi-billion-dollar Stargate UK project. The project was first announced in September 2025 with the declared purpose of ensuring ‘OpenAI’s world leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for UK – particularly for specialist use cases where jurisdiction matters. This will help power the UK’s future economy, boost its global competitiveness, and deliver on the countries national AI Opportunities Action Plan’. The UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan had been announced in January 2025 as a focus for ramping up AI adoption to boost economic growth, jobs, and improvements to people’s everyday lives. A year later, in January 2026, a seemingly positive  progress update was published. The government’s thus likely to be wringing its hands about OpenAI’s pause. Why? Because it puts a dent in the country’s desire to be an ‘AI superpower’, especially when the company asserts that regulation and high energy costs are obstacles. The Stargate UK pause, however, is hardly a surprise given that the holistic situation faced by OpenAI today is really no different to when the project was announced last September.

OpenAI announced the project on the date President Trump started his state visit to the UK. With tariffs as a backdrop, the pressure on the UK government to make the visit a success was huge, and a centrepiece during the visit was the signing of a technology partnership involving new investment and cooperation on AI. Domestically, the government needed this to promote its growth agenda, but a ‘technology partnership’ and tangible realities are different. Given the pressure for the visit to be a success, OpenAI’s Stargate UK announcement was part of an overall joint PR strategy – at least that’s what the Badger senses. At that time, the UK had some of the highest costs for electricity in the world, and that’s still the same today! If there’s one thing an aspirant AI superpower needs, it’s economically competitive electricity and so it can hardly be a surprise when a commercial company focused ‘on the business case and numbers’ decides to hold off further investment. Additionally, there’s uncertainty about changes to UK law to allow AI firms to train their systems using copyrighted works, ongoing investor anxiety about an AI bubble, the fact that OpenAI hasn’t delivered a profit yet and is forecast to make losses of ~$44 billion before becoming profitable in 2029, and that OpenAI is facing massive competition from Google (and others) which is raising significant questions about its future. All of these points were material when Stargate UK was announced 7 months ago, and they remain so today.

A sceptic could thus be excused for thinking that the project was driven by a geopolitical public relations necessity in the first place. For the Badger, with his instincts rattling from experience, it’s thus hardly a surprise that Stargate UK is paused…   

Required leadership qualities – Competence, Consistency, Clarity, Communication and Charisma…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Education, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Project Management, social media, Training

Early in the Badger’s IT career before the internet arrived, training for delivery people – project and team leaders, and technical staff – took place face to face in a group led by a senior delivery person and a professional trainer. Such training was often a one or two-day event conducted away from the hubbub of the workplace so that participants were not distracted by their normal work activities. At one course the Badger attended, participants were challenged to express the qualities that the members of project teams look for in their delivery leader. Participants, all team, or project leaders with various levels of experience, had ten minutes to produce five words for discussion with the course leaders and the wider group.

Many found it more difficult than expected because they struggled to think about delivery leadership from the perspective of team members who were not, and never aspired to be, leaders. Nevertheless, at the end of the exercise and subsequent discussion, the group converged on the following five words as required leadership qualities: Competence, Consistency, Clarity, Communication and Charisma. These words became known as the 5Cs and provided the theme underpinning the rest of the course. Whilst their context related to what delivery people look for from their delivery leader, the Badger’s found over the years that they are a good reference point for what to look for in leaders more generally.

The Badger’s worked for, and with, many senior leaders of all kinds over the years. They all had different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Some were more competent than others, some were more consistent and clearer than others, and some were better and more inspiring communicators than others. None were extroverts, but they all had a charisma that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Underpinned by the 5Cs, the Badger considered some as much better leaders than others. There’s lots of broader and more detailed information available about the traits of good leaders, but the Badger’s routinely used the simple, qualitative, 5Cs as his mental ‘initial leadership quality’ checklist over the years to shape an initial opinion – which sometimes has subsequently changed. Sometimes, however, that initial opinion has not been very flattering and has not changed.

With the 5Cs concept in your psyche, you can’t help but use it to judge leaders who regularly appear on broadcast or social media even though you’ve never met them. Inevitably that’s unfair, but rather than relying on instinct alone, the 5Cs provides some structure in forming an opinion about where that person is on the POOR to GOOD leadership qualities spectrum. Ego, wealth, and having a powerful position is not the same as having good leadership qualities. For example, any leader who rants publicly and profanely on social media is unprofessional and sets a bad example for online behaviour. Someone with GOOD leadership qualities would never do this…

Will AI experience a ‘tobacco moment’?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Information Technology, Legal matters, social media

The Badger smiled and then sighed when Meta and YouTube were recently found liable for harming a young woman through the addictive design of their products and their failure to warn users of the risks. The smile was because it’s good to see tech giants not getting their own way. The sigh was because it’s taken far too many years to get to this point. Sensible people have known for years that these apps are designed to keep users compulsively engaged for as long as possible because it’s the clever monetisation of this that underpins their business models.

The Badger recalls the early days of social media when it simply helped people stay in touch, share milestones, and reconnect with old friends. In those days there was a clear divide between real and online life. Conversations ended on leaving a room or putting the phone down, photographs lived in physical albums, and social media was used as a harmless tool and not something that shaped or dominated how we lived. Today things are quite different. Social media has grown in power, profitability, and influence, to such an extent that the average person spends more time online using it than is prudent. What’s changed since those early days is the design of the apps and platforms. Endless scrolling, algorithm-driven recommendations, push notifications, and short video loops aren’t accidental. They’re features engineered to keep people engaged for as long as possible. Indeed, the BBC was reporting way back in 2018 that social media apps were deliberately addictive to users. The Badger thinks all this has certainly eroded the real-world routines, relationships, and boundaries for users over the last decades.

In the Meta and YouTube case, the prosecution lawyers have cleverly focused on how platforms are designed rather than what’s posted on them to win. The two giants plan to appeal but it’s debatable whether the appeals will succeed. Social media is thus having to grapple with the fact that this could be a reckoning similar to that experienced by the tobacco industry some decades ago. This ‘tobacco moment’ prompted the Badger to muse on whether AI will ultimately experience such a moment too. He concluded that it will. AI has the potential to harm institutions, elections, markets, information ecosystems, and critical infrastructure, and so its reckoning moment could happen faster, globally, and structurally. The possible triggers might relate to bias, misinformation, autonomy, and safety failures. Like the ‘tobacco moment’ for social media, AI’s moment will not be about banning it, but about liability.

A ‘tobacco moment’ isn’t about a single lawsuit. It happens when society collectively decides that an industry has externalized too much harm and the legal, regulatory, and cultural tides all turn at once. It seems foolhardy, therefore, to think that AI will be immune to a ‘tobacco moment’ of its own at some stage in the future…

Rage against the screen…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Engineering, Information Technology, Learning, Lego, Life, Online Safety, social media, Transport

The Badger’s 6-year-old grandson likes trains! Books about trains, Brio train sets, and Lego trains are favourite toys, but seeing and riding on real trains brings a special sparkle to his eyes. He loves to watch steam engines chuff along the Watercress Line, see historic locomotives in museums, ride miniature railways at visitor attractions, and travel on the regular trains that commuters use every day. He’s fascinated by how trains work, which is great, but his persistent questions about ‘how’ and ‘why’ can sometimes be wearing!

Last weekend the Badger and his grandson did something that didn’t relate to trains. We visited the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, a small place with a number of static military jets as well as memorabilia from when Tangmere was a World War II RAF fighter base. The visit spawned an observation about 6-year-olds that he had not anticipated. At each exhibit there’s a computer that can be used to engage with the exhibit’s story, pull up photographs, and watch film clips. At many exhibits it’s possible to sit in the cockpit, peer into the fuselage, and use a computerized simulator. The Badger’s grandson observed that planes are engineered and work differently to trains!

It was all fun, but the Badger noticed that his grandson preferred using the computers rather than engaging physically with the exhibit itself. For example, the Canberra has part of the fuselage removed so visitors can easily lean in to see the environment around the pilot and crew. Adjacent to the jet is a computer showing images streamed from a camera mounted inside the fuselage. The camera can be panned through 360 degrees using a mouse and the user can zoom in on any part of the pilot and crew area. This 6-year-old used this computer rather than physically looking inside the fuselage. This preference was clear with other exhibits too. Seeing that ‘the screen’ had a greater pull with the youngster than exploring the exhibit physically made the Badger uneasy. If youngsters in their early formative years prefer screens to engaging with the physical real world, then we should surely all be worried.

On the car radio driving home, the Badger listened to the CEO of Mumsnet, being interviewed about Mumsnet’s ‘Rage against the Screen’ campaign which is calling on politicians to ban social media for under-16s, stop Big Tech using data to target children with addictive algorithms, and to put children’s safety and wellbeing ahead of platform profits. The Badger found himself agreeing with the points made. In the UK, you must be 16 years or older to do many things (see here), so why not ban social media for under 16s? If the Badger’s grandson is already ‘virtual rather than physical world first’ at the age of 6, then ‘Raging against the Screen’ is surely a campaign that needs to succeed…