The TIP Newsletter: The University of Zurich’s AI Ethics Controversy, Counting the Cost of US Government Cuts to our area, #PSA25, and more
In this newsletter we do a journalistic deep dive into the recent research ethics controversy – asking both sides about their perspectives and opinions, and what lessons we can learn.
Good Morning TIPers!
Liam here, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the recent heatwave here in the UK. As I’m writing this I’m watching my dogs rolling with their paddling pool in the garden thoroughly enjoying it. Anyway, In this newsletter, we’ve got a bit of cornerstone content for you, as we conducted our first ever journalistic(ish) deep-dive into the recent University of Zurich’s AI Ethics Controversy. Please do tell us if this works for you, or if you have any comments you’d like to contribute to this debate. Other than that there has been *lots* of AI news, so sorry about that.
We’re also asking you to help contribute to a brief policy paper to sparked by a request of policy practitioners at the Dept of Education in the United Kingdom about the issues and troubles, but also opportunities your research has highlighted in the use of AI for policymaking. So please do contribute, even if it’s 250 words!
We’ve also got our normal TIP and member news, it’s fellowship time, to there’s plenty of opportunities there too, alongside our normal selection of jobs. So as normal, grab yourself a coffee and read about all the latest news in our area over the last month.
If you’re reading this and not a member of TIP, make sure to sign up through the PSA’s website. You can join a membership of nearing 400 other members, and it helps with our funding, and we can keep you up to date with all our events, news, and more!
TIP News
Save the date - TIP’s AGM is on 16th July at 2-3pm
For those of you who don’t know, our constitution mandates that we have an open session of our members to vote through our budgets and new committee members every year. This time round will be especially important, as Kate, Giulia, Declan, and Amber will be leaving once their term runs out at the AGM, with new positions opening, and I’ll be up for being re-elected too. So hopefully it’ll be an exciting one. We will be running this through Zoom, and members will get an email about this nearer the time!
Your thoughts on AI in policy making? Policy breif for a Dept of Education session
Later on in the year, I’ll be running a session on the use of AI in policymaking and evaluation to policy makers at the Department of Education. In aid of this, I’m hoping to utilise the wisdom of the crowd to develop a TIP-branded policy document about the potential of, and issues with, using AI within policymaking. If this is your area of expertise, please get in touch with me via my email or TIPs with a breif overview of what you’d like to cover by May 14th. I’m looking for contributions of 250-600 words.
TIP at PSA25
I just want to give a big thank you to all the panellists at our events at the 75th Political Studies Association’s conference early this month. We had 5 panels and 22 papers, which is a great turnout all.
We’ve collected all images we took at our panels on our website here if you’d like to use them! https://psatip.uk/tip-news/tip-at-psa25-photos/
We’ve had a few inquiries about our fairly provocative Make Tech Fun Again hats. Sadly we only ordered a small batch, but if you’re really interested, let us know and we can consider getting a few more ordered (although it would have to be charged).
MPG X TIP Conference, Bournemouth Jan 2026
At the conference, we also announced our new joint conference with the MPG group in early 2026 in Bournemouth! As a new group, we’ve really focused on online events and participation at the PSA conference. But to give our members (and to create a space more welcoming to policymakers) a more specialised space to discuss our subject area we have partnered with the MPG Group to host a joint conference. We will soon be launching a full CFP - so look out for that. Exciting times!
Co-opting Blackness and pretending to be victims of rape: How a research project to assess the ability of AI to change people’s views on Reddit went terribly wrong and lessons to be learned
For 4 months, a research team at the University of Zurich (UZH) posted AI-generated comments to the /r/changemyview subreddit as part of an experiment to evaluate the persuasiveness of Generative AI across 1,783 posts. This research was nether disclosed to users or the community moderators at the time. When the existence of this research was known, a flurry of critique, angry users, ethical investigations, and legal threats followed.
In this piece, we do a deep dive into the subject speaking to the academic president of the ethics commission at the University of Zurich, and the moderation team at the subreddit to find out more about this case to explore the need for research on this topic, ethical issues, and how researchers should proceed in the future.
This was a big one, so to read the full piece, click below!
Counting the cost of DOGE’s grant termination to our research area
The US’s National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency which funds research into non-medical science and engineering fields. In 2023, it funded $9.9 billion worth of projects, and accounted for 25% of the US’s federally supported research. Some of which fall within the TIP remit.
However, the second Trump administration has sought to cut government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency – including cutting research projects related to climate change, and diversity, equality, and inclusion. This has resulted in previously awarded grants being cut.
A list of all 546 National Science Foundation grants that have been cancelled under the US’s Trump administration has been collected here
They include at least $5,879,446 on topics related to digital media, internet politics, and platforms, $3,768,753 worth of projects surrounding Artificial Intelligence, $998,317 on projects relating to disinformation, and $1,786,624 deepfakes.
So to save your mental arithmetic, that is at least $12,433,140 worth of projects within the TIP area cancelled in the US. This is pretty grim reading, and probably not too much speculation to say this is going to harm the subject area.
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Ok let’s have some optimism now. Where there is a downturn in one space, other’s will see opportunity. Universities, such as Aix-Marseille University has opened it’s doors to American scholars whose work has become untenable following the above cuts. Meanwhile, Canada is seeing a bump in applications to their universities from American perspective students. So there is seemingly some pulling of the slack!
Member News & Research
Farkas, J., & Maloney, M. (2025). Digital Media Metaphors: A Critical Introduction. Routledge.
This edited book looks at how we make use of metaphors to explore and explain digital media. These metaphors can be found through both research and policy makers, but as this book captures, these can be both usefulness and limitations of this approach.
Hacker, P., Mittelstadt, B., Hammer, S., & Engel, A. (2025). The Oxford Handbook of the Foundations and Regulation of Generative AI. Oxford University Press.
This edited book is being released chapter by chapter online, and looks at a range of topics including Generative AI and law, transparency in AI, and Generative AI and Content Moderation. There’s some TIP faces to look out for here in future chapters👀👀👀!
Gianfranco Polizzi gave oral evidence to UK House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee following their research on digital inclusion. The session has been recorded here: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/d6945519-c351-40ae-849b-8467fb4edd38
José Marichal has book coming out in October with Bristol University Press entitled "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem" In the book, he argue that we have a socio-technical contract where we allow ourselves to be algorithmically abstracted in exchange for the security and anxiety-relief this abstraction provides. Link: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/you-must-become-an-algorithmic-problem
Dommett, K., Luke, S., Gordon, H.C. (2025). Making elections more transparent? Lessons from the implementation of digital imprints at the 2024 UK General Election. Policy Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2025.2482869
Threlfall, D. (2025). “Technology” in UK Conservative Party rhetoric, 1979–2019: An integrative dual-method conceptual and ideological analysis, BJPIR. https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481251331504
Blair Attard-Frost has shared their all lecture slides, syllabi, & reading lists from their of my AI policy courses at University of Toronto. “All course materials are available for educational, personal, or nonprofit use under a Creative Commons BY-SA-NC license. Feel free to use, adapt, or build upon them for your own teaching or learning.”. You can access them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Bm_yfOsPbC0ztuTqwhIdD7QSkyY3mhfD
Make.org and ifok have released their roundtable synthesis report on AI & Democracy, available here: https://about.make.org/articles-en/roundtables-ifok-make-org
Opportunities/Grants
One for your students! The PSA’s Student Blog Competition on the topic of “Can social media help save democracy?” open to 16–19-year-olds. The winner will be invited by Kirsty Blackman MP, on behalf of the APPG on Political and Media Literacy and Shout Out UK, to “Have I Got Fake News for You” in the Thames Pavillion, Houses of Parliament on 10 June. This event will feature Cathy Newman, Channel 4 News, Claire Hazelgrove MP, Baroness Carmen Smith and Stephen Bush. The winning student will also be given the opportunity to read out their blog, and will have it published on the PSA and Financial Times Education websites. Deadline 25th May. More details here: https://www.psa.ac.uk/2025-student-blog-competition
The King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence 2025, 20-24th May, London. The festival explores the latest developments in AI, including on education, healthcare, the creative industries, sustainability and business. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/the-kings-festival-of-artificial-intelligence-2025
Express interest in collaborating with UK AISI on alignment research. https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=BXCsy8EC60O0l-ZJLRst2Nclfpx228VCom0tHbugb_lUNU1WSFVETEQwSlE2OUkzTDRRN0FJWlFSRi4u&route=shorturl
CFP: he 11th edition of The International Journal of Press/Politics conference (Singapore, 19-21 November). Deadline for abstracts 16th May. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1P94afH3EL0p0fsK49I6BIgSB7eqbAHQwE6T_wKtYjCI/viewform?edit_requested=true
CFP: Sailing Towards a Brave New Era: Technological Innovation, Industrial Policy, and Digital Entrepreneurship in the Techno-Developmental State at the Asian Review of Political Economy. https://link.springer.com/journal/44216/updates/27773194
New interdisciplinary Book Series ‘AI Politics’ to be published by Intellect and University of Chicago Press. Edited by Andrew Hoskins (University of Edinburgh) and Ben O’Loughlin (Royal Holloway, University of London). The series is open to a range of formats and lengths to ensure responsiveness to emerging debates and accessibility to diverse academic and policy audiences. These include 30-60k agenda setting texts, 50k+ monographs, and textbooks. Link for the full call here: https://lnkd.in/e7R3p8eV
Jobs
Academic jobs/fellowships:
Assistant Professor in Digital Journalism, KIMEP University. (Deadline 20th May). https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMV809/assistant-professor-in-digital-journalism
Director – Responsible AI, Microsoft (New York). https://microsoft.ai/job/director-responsible-ai-3/
King's AI+ Academic Fellowships (leading to an open-ended academic post), KCL. (Deadline 19th May). https://www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/kings-ai-academic-fellowships
Lecturer in Digital Innovation, University of Bristol (Deadline 11th May). https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMT696/lecturer-in-digital-innovation
Research Fellow / Snr Research Fellow, Safe AI Forum (Remote). https://saif.org/opportunities/research-fellow-senior-research-fellow-special-projects-fellow/
Research Scholar - Youth in Tech, Stanford University. https://careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/research-scholar-youth-in-tech-28221
Postdoctoral Researcher - Causal Systems Modeling for AI Governance, University of Oxford (deadline 4th June) https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMZ522/postdoctoral-researcher-causal-systems-modeling-for-ai-governance-oxford-ai-governance-initiative
UKRI policy fellowships 2025 (deadline 15th July) https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/ukri-policy-fellowships-2025/
University of Zurich invites applications for a Senior Lecturer position in “Digital Public Governance” https://www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns/offene-stellen.html
Policy/Industry Jobs:
Staff Product Manager, Trust & Safety, Lyft (San Francisco) https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/lyft/job/7646433002?gh_jid=7646433002
(UK) Policy Advisor - AI Safety & Security, Control AI (London) https://jobs.eu.lever.co/controlai/1278d31e-37e9-49c8-8b2f-3d43ba6c25fc
Head of AI, Labor & Economy, The Partnership on AI (Remote US/Canada) https://ats.rippling.com/en-GB/pai-job-board/jobs/1eb6fcdb-879f-40b7-a82b-26e0a57fe0d5
Principal Content Analyst, Trip Advisor (London- Hybrid) https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/tripadvisor/jobs/6618555
That’s all for this months newsletter. As always if you have any questions, comments, or something to add to the newsletter, please do get in touch! And if you know anyone you who think will enjoy this, and are not currently TIP members, why don’t you go ahead and smash that share button below?