Jack Hardinges
Data optimist.
Interested in: data infrastructures, governance, platforms, AI, the commons, etc.
Working with: Foresight (1m eye scans), Icebreaker One (data for net zero), Creative Commons (preference signals) + OpenMined (federated data networks).
- Smart Data (regulated data portability for UK consumers and businesses) looks like it might get quite expensive to deliver... assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/697b89...
- "Any organization building state-of-the-art LLMs needs to be a data curation and generation lab first, obsessively identifying and filling the gaps" huggingface.co/spaces/lvwer...
- "Of course, we’re also hoping to eventually offset risk by diversifying into galoots, simpletons, and outright morons. But the important thing now is to get many, many more idiots confused enough to believe they have any chance in hell of making money off this grift”
- just watched a brilliant talk by Paul Keller @openfuture.bsky.social. it includes a case for *conditional openness*, building on OF's longstanding argument that the open movement must better account for concentrations of power www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROig...
- a job posting for 'Public Sector Data Markets Lead' for the National Data Library. responsible for "interventions to test the potential commercial market for public sector data. They will identify promising opportunities for data commercialisation" www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
- "Today, OpenAI is co-founding the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, alongside Anthropic and Block, and with the support of Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare" openai.com/index/agenti...
- I've written up some thoughts on large AI models’ evolving relationship with data (with my new @openmined.bsky.social hat on): openmined.org/blog/ai-hasn...
- "Data spaces as meta-organisations" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
- “This commoditization will start to bifurcate the market into a spectrum with extremes at either end: a smaller premium market at one end, and a larger commodity market at the other. A classic barbell effect where the middle disappears" radicallyinformed.substack.com/p/beyond-the...
- "Conditional openness means that datasets are freely accessible for non-commercial, public-interest uses, while commercial access may be subject to additional conditions— such as registration, purpose declaration, and payment where appropriate" openfuture.eu/wp-content/u...
- I've written up a briefing note for @creativecommons.bsky.social on pay-to-crawl: new systems being used by websites to automate compensation for when their content is accessed by AI bots and other machines
- Pay-to-crawl systems have emerged as a possible way to help sustain the creation of content online in the wake of AI. However, overbroad use of pay-to-crawl could represent a shift towards a more tightly controlled and monetised content ecosystem. Read the full brief for more! buff.ly/h0wdhXS
- 'The Most Boring Dataset in the World' foresight.org/resource/gre...
- Wikimedia's paid-for APIs now generating £8m+ revenues, presumably fuelled by AI users diff.wikimedia.org/2025/11/24/w...
- "It’s incoherent to claim that data is extremely valuable and that it should somehow also be free. This doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to subsidize data access to make it available at no cost, but it means we need to acknowledge the costs" radiant.earth/blog/2025/11...
- "The question isn’t whether we can add integrity to AI but whether the architecture permits integrity at all. Today’s AI agents observe the Internet, orient via statistics, decide probabilistically, and act without verification" (via @peterkwells.com) www.schneier.com/blog/archive...
- 'How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time' www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1...
- the Smart Data Group has published a proposal for what the 'Future Entity' for Open Banking + all Smart Data Schemes should look like. Special Purpose Vehicles for each Scheme.. www.linkedin.com/posts/smart-...
- 'Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era' www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-p...
- "The open movement must likewise evolve from the libertarian ethos of the early internet toward a civic ethos fit for the age of AI. We must design infrastructures.. that preserve the spirit of accessibility while protecting against its weaponisation" sverhulst.medium.com/the-weaponis...
- new UK Gov study on the value of public sector data. apparently the public sector invests £30bn in data assets per year, which have an 'expected potential value' to the economy of £15bn-200bn www.gov.uk/government/p...
- "Requiring copyright licenses for training data would.. (1) create new barriers to market entry and competition in new technologies.. while (2) entrenching large copyright holders and (3) not significantly benefiting creators." www.lawfaremedia.org/article/worr...
- "AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content - and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy" www.reuters.com/world/reddit...
- "It’s already clear that the Internet’s discovery system for the next 15 years will be something different: Answer Engines.. Whether you like it or not, the future will increasingly be answers not searches" blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-2...
- Reposted by Jack HardingesThis remains the funniest way to hear about an internet outage, though.
- There's an AWS outage this morning impacting lots of services; it started around 07.30 UK time. People who use services like Alexa as their alarm clocks have just had a helpful reminder that using a device reliant on connectivity to carry out a task that doesn't need connectivity is not a good idea.
- Reposted by Jack Hardingeswikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...
- "Humanity AI, a $500 million five-year initiative.. will drive new investments toward establishing a people-driven future where AI delivers for humanity, strengthens communities, and enhances human creativity" www.macfound.org/press/press-...
- I see this in the same family of data sharing as financial reporting, Smart Data, researcher access to platform data, retailers sharing their plastic bag sales, etc etc: www.theguardian.com/business/202...
- 'Cooperative data utilities' www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B8Z...
- "For the same reason that a dog can go to church but a dog cannot be Catholic, an LLM can have a conversation but cannot participate in the conversation" mail.cyberneticforests.com/what-machine...
- 'Realising the potential of a National Data Library' - @wellcometrust.bsky.social + ESRC wellcomeopenresearch.org/documents/10...
- "China’s recently-created National Data Administration has a mandate to turn data into a new 'factor of production', alongside the traditional factors of land, labor, capital and technology" mattsheehan.substack.com/p/chinas-big...
- "TL;DR What's the point of an 'ethical' AI that burns through resources, or a 'green' AI that amplifies bias? Ethics and sustainability have to evolve together, starting with how we measure and disclose AI's real costs" huggingface.co/blog/sasha/e...
- OH: "the holy grail of AI now seems to be circularity rather than singularity” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
- "Rewilding the web means recovering what Otlet, Nelson, Hall, and Richardson all glimpsed: a civic, literary, interconnected, and collaborative commons that resists enclosure and keeps the web alive" mamund.substack.com/p/the-hyperm...
- "A global advertising infrastructure built and governed to operate in the public interest.. would be able to capture funds that currently fuel our broligarchic dystopia.. [and] reshape privacy norms and incentive structures across the entire internet" www.techpolicy.press/how-wikipedi...
- writing music: open.spotify.com/track/1YGxSg...
- "Loyal agents: - Enabling AI agents to securely transact on behalf of consumers - Defining duties of AI agents to consumers - Ensuring agents are effective and aligned with consumers' preferences" loyalagents.org#focus-areas
- 'AI-as-mom'
