Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pietro Micheli, Professor of Business Performance and Innovation, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

Electric cars made by the Chinese car firm BYD are now a familiar sight on British roads. In September 2025, the company sold 11,271 vehicles in the UK – ten times as many as in the same month last year.

This level of growth means the UK is now BYD’s largest market outside of China. In an industry once dominated by long established brands, the company has become the biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world. So how have they done it?

Generous subsidies from the Chinese government have certainly played a role, but BYD also appears to be a smoothly run operation which could end up revolutionising the automotive industry.

For example, it has secured the supply of the critical materials such as lithium and tungsten used to build electric vehicles and produces its own batteries, reducing reliance on external suppliers.

It has built large-scale gigafactories and industrial parks, and investments in research and development, especially in relation to batteries, have been very effective.

Another key factor is the company’s aggressive pricing strategy. A BYD Dolphin Surf for example, costs £18,650 in the UK – less than half the price of the entry level Tesla, the Model 3, which begins at around £39,000.

Older and more established car manufacturers will be painfully aware of BYD’s swift ascent towards the top of the electric vehicle market. And research I worked on with colleagues into how major companies react to new rivals suggests why some of them are being left behind.

Many make the mistake of ignoring customers’ needs and rely on past success to the extent that they become over confident. Others just seem to lack foresight.

In the car industry specifically, I have seen a variety of market forecasts and technology roadmaps – generated by both companies and industry associations – and been struck by some common themes.

To begin with, they are often linear – inevitably predicting that the speed, features and performance of cars will all gradually improve over time. But technological innovations often appear in leaps and bounds, and depend on a vast network of suppliers to implement, which makes development complex.

They also frequently show a surprising neglect for customers’ desires and fears – and budgets. The price of new cars has increased dramatically over the past two decades, outpacing growth in salaries. Yet many companies, such as Jaguar and Tesla, appear to be focused only on “premium vehicles” for wealthy customers, and will eventually end up competing for a small market.

Car companies also suffer in a similar way to big firms in other sectors (think Blackberry or Nokia), where there is often a clear lack of humility and awareness from many senior executives. As studies have shown, bosses who see their organisations as innovative and flexible are often at odds with more junior employees who view them as stale and slow.

For the high jump?

The need for industry-wide change reminds me of how athletes competing in the high jump evolved over the years. Many techniques were tried and tested, including the “scissors”, the “straddle” and the Fosbury flop, which was eventually deemed the most effective.

Some established car companies are desperately trying to hang onto their equivalent of the straddle jump (petrol and diesel cars), and avoiding a commitment to learning the Fosbury flop (developing electric vehicles).

Because of this, the days of established car companies leading the way seem to be over. Hoping to make decent profits from old models and creating electric vehicles only for the wealthy is a delusional strategy.

So what could established carmakers do?

One option is to change the way they work with suppliers. The usual approach here is transactional and price based, with a carmaker buying components (seats or mirrors, for example) from a supplier but switching if it finds a cheaper deal. The problem is that innovation (and indeed supply chain resilience, as the microchip shortage shows) requires supplier and buyer to jointly invest in future developments. The transactional approach does not allow for this.

Second, they should develop new capabilities, not only in relation to batteries but also to other technologies. It is indicative that BYD wants to be predominantly known as a “technology company” whose ultra-fast charging system promises to be well ahead of its competitors.

Could VW, Toyota and BMW become technology companies? Probably not, but they could be part of a network of firms, including technology and AI ones, that would allow them to benefit from the latest developments in those fields.

Third, carmakers need to focus more on addressing customer needs. Besides understanding and improving their experiences as drivers and passengers, they could work more closely with local authorities and infrastructure providers as most users’ issues – and hesitation – about electric vehicles are related to the ability to charge them up.

These changes are substantial, but achievable, as long as carmakers are prepared to take a more open and collaborative approach to the road ahead.

Pietro Micheli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Chinese car firm BYD is racing ahead with its electric vehicles. Here’s how more established brands can catch up – https://theconversation.com/chinese-car-firm-byd-is-racing-ahead-with-its-electric-vehicles-heres-how-more-established-brands-can-catch-up-267028

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda, Senior Research Associate, Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

A new version of Minecraft aims to teach students about coastal erosion, flood resilience and climate adaptation, and shows how children can use computer games to learn about complex situations.

CoastCraft is a new custom world from the educational arm of the Minecraft team that can be downloaded and added to the game. It is set in the seaside town of Bude, Cornwall, and players attempt to protect the coastal landscape from the various effects associated with sea-level rises and climate change. The game takes about an hour or two to complete.

Bude is experiencing increasing coastal erosion and the project was developed in conjunction with the UK Environmental Agency and Cornwall Council as part of a £200 million flood and coastal erosion innovation programme.

In the game, students use animations to help them understand coastal erosion and rising sea levels before being able to explore and engage with a range of coastal management strategies (including relocating key infrastructure, using nature-based solutions such as plants, or potentially doing nothing at all).

I played the game for a few hours and found that the mechanics of Minecraft lent themselves very well to understanding the principles of environmental management.

If you do a bad job, the sea encroaches on the terrain and certain infrastructure is lost (for instance, a car park or toilets). These dynamics add to the immersive experience of the game. They also really nail the realities of future climate change in a way that is potentially far more relevant and digestible than scientific models and projections.

In making the decisions, you get to move around the map to chat with key people about the potential impact of going ahead with a decision and any other factors. You are limited by how much you can spend. Some decisions, like relocating the lifeguard hut, are very expensive (costing 75% of your total funds), while nature-based management, such as sand dune protection, costs nothing. Through this players are actively introduced to decision-making and the implications of their actions.

Throughout the game, there is a major emphasis on balancing the economic, social and environmental impact. You are able to fast-forward to 2040 and then again to 2060 to see what your decision-making looks like down the line.

After each round, you are sent back to a roundtable of NPCs (non-playing characters) who scrutinise your decisions before revealing a sustainability score on how well you managed to reconcile the competing economic, societal and environmental demands. Once you have finished the game, you can return to the main base and also chat to NPCs about different careers in coastal management.

At the University of East Anglia my team ran a series of workshops with staff and students from different disciplines to help establish what and how climate change should be taught (see figure below).

We suggest that teachers should try to include a range of skills into their curriculum design and planning (see image above) to help students understand the multiple ways in which the challenges of climate change can be managed. CoastCraft is an excellent example of this.

In this game students are in an immersive, digital experience that not only provides basic scientific knowledge but also introduces the idea that choices around environmental management have multiple outcomes that need to be anticipated. It shows that the balance between the environment, economy and society is a fragile one needing attention. Research found involving students in role-playing activities (in that case a pretend climate summit) could help them to understand the realities and politics of decision-making.

Making decisions

In CoastCraft, the experience of getting students to actively engage with decisions and trade-offs, deciding what forms of expertise to listen to or base decisions on, and then getting to witness how decisions affect the future can also be important in helping students understand the politics and challenges of local climate change adaptation.

Games can be used as a teaching method to convey complex environmental stories and immerse students in situations they may not otherwise have access to.

Recently, educational charity Students Organising for Sustainability found that only 22% of respondents felt that children and young people were prepared for climate change through their education. Anecdotally, I’ve had multiple students tell me that they want to learn about how to help solve the problem of climate and sustainability, not simply find out about why it is happening.

CoastCraft has managed to capture the politics of coastal management in an immersive experience. This is an impressive achievement, showing gameplay can be relevant and educational and still fun.

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Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda receives funding from Natural England for work associated with the Public Engagement Laboratory for Nature and Society.

– ref. I tried out a new version of Minecraft to see why environmental storylines help children learn – https://theconversation.com/i-tried-out-a-new-version-of-minecraft-to-see-why-environmental-storylines-help-children-learn-267161

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Lazard, Professor in Psychology, The Open University

A leaked video of an online meeting between members of the Reform-led Kent county council showed shocking exchanges. There was shouting, swearing and repeated interruptions. At one point, council leader Linden Kemkaran mutes another member of the council.

Councillors Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw, Bill Barret and Maxine Fothergrill have been suspended pending an investigation over their conduct. Reform has, at the same time, defended the aggressive exchanges on the call as evidence of robust argument and a sign that Kent councillors are taking their responsibilities seriously.

Kent county council has 50 Reform members, giving it a huge majority. Kent has therefore been seen as a test case for whether Reform can run administrations. Kemkaran makes this explicit during the leaked call, reminding fellow council members that party leader Nigel Farage sees their council as “the flagship council” and a “shop window” for how Reform operates councils.

But as a psychologist who studies power, interaction and online meeting dynamics, I see the Reform meeting as a case study in something else – poor leadership, a lack of team trust and collaboration. It suggests an absence of the psychological safety needed to effectively run a council or any other organisation.

During the meeting in question, Kemkaran defended her style by saying: “Because I am not a dictator or an autocrat … I like to hear what everybody thinks. However, when it comes to making the really big decisions … sometimes I will make a decision that might not be liked by everybody in the group but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to fucking suck it up, ok?”

The use of the word “however” here is telling. It is a conversational tactic that claims to value the contributions of others but then immediately signals that ultimate control resides with the chair.

This is an especially corrosive type of chairing that is associated with trying to wield power over others. It gives the appearance of open input while preserving hierarchy and dominance. The result is disillusionment, disengagement and conflict rather than genuine contribution.

As the chair and councillors clashed, the council meeting descended into shouting, repeated interruptions and eventually a councillor’s voice literally being cut off with the mute button.

When we use platforms like Zoom, various technological tools enable us to improve digital meetings. We can manage processes and protect people from disruption when they are speaking. But in the Kent meeting, the mute function was used as a power move – to silence a dissenting voice, reinforce control and prevent dialogue.

Both Kemkaran and Thomas noted on the call that “it would’ve been easier [to meet] in person.” But in organisations, toxic practices rarely start online, they just get expressed there.

We don’t yet know what the four suspended councillors are being investigated for but if a team culture is built on dominance, control, disrespect or authoritarianism, the online meeting becomes a amplifier of existing issues.

Gendered leadership styles and unexpected flips

The more problematic chairing styles that can be seen in the council meeting – directive, punitive, controlling – share some similarities with stereotypical masculine models of leadership: high dominance, low collaboration, controlling decision‐making.

Research has also shown how these ideas about gendered leadership play out in how we understand women’s leadership, which is often seen to be more aligned with participative or democratic styles.

This matters because here we have Kemkaran, a woman chair who adopted a highly directive and controlling style. She is visibly adopting (and perhaps over‑compensating into) a style traditionally associated with masculine dominance.

That flip is significant: the “strong leadership” script (loudness, command, the ability to shout down dissent) remains coded as masculine. When someone (especially a woman) inhabits that script badly, it encourages not only internal discord but more negative social judgement.

Our research on gender equitable interactions online suggests productive meetings are associated with assertiveness without aggression or abuse. Disagreement should be managed with respect and structure, rather than shouting or controlling interruptions.

Functional organisations generally also make it clear that there is zero tolerance for disrespect: behaviour such as swearing, interrupting, silencing via tech or chair prerogative should be flagged, addressed and prevented. This is the case regardless of the participants’ rank.

Leaders who switch between directive clarity (setting the agenda, managing time, making decisions) and genuine participatory engagement (inviting dissent, structuring inclusion) rather than defaulting to dominance or passivity generally seem to preside over better meetings.

These are not “soft skills”, they are essential leadership competencies. When they’re missing, you get what we saw in Kent – high levels of conflict rather than collaboration.

How people run their meetings matters to organisational trust, public reputation and internal performance. When chairs use aggression and dominance under the guise of “strong leadership”, they erode trust, invite conflict, diminish performance.

The signal to those they work with is that power is more important than values. Little wonder, then, that councillors became so visibly concerned with how the chaos they were descending into would reflect poorly on Reform’s reputation now that it controls so many councils in England.

Controlling dissent by weaponising technological meeting features like the mute function are not signs of strength. They are signals of failure.

Lisa Lazard receives funding from CHANSE – Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe.

– ref. Kent County Council is Reform’s ‘shop window’ – its leaked Zoom call implies chaos and poor leadership – https://theconversation.com/kent-county-council-is-reforms-shop-window-its-leaked-zoom-call-implies-chaos-and-poor-leadership-267900

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Thorne, Senior Lecturer in Computing and ​Information Systems, Cardiff Metropolitan University

OpenAI will roll out a new ChatGPT feature in December 2025, allowing verified adults to generate erotic text and engage in romantic or sexual conversations. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms like Replika and Grok already do this, but OpenAI’s entry marks a turning point.

The company frames this as “treating adults like adults”. But it’s a commercial strategy to keep users talking and paying.

OpenAI burned through more than $2.5 billion (£1.8 billion) in cash in the first half of 2024. Erotic chat promises what investors crave most – engagement. Elon Musk’s Grok platform charges £30 a month for erotic companion features.

OpenAI, like other tech firms, says it will restrict erotic content through age verification and moderation filters. In theory, only verified adults will be able to access these modes.

In practice, such systems are easily fooled. Teenagers routinely bypass age gates with borrowed IDs, manipulated selfies or deepfakes. They can upload photos of older people, scan printed images, or use disposable accounts and VPNs to evade detection.

Other platforms show what can go wrong. Grok allows users to create “erotic companion avatars”, including a sexualised anime character called Ani. A recent investigation by news website Business Insider found that conversations with Ani often escalated into explicit exchanges after minimal prompting.

Company employees also encountered AI-generated sexual abuse while moderating Grok’s flirtatious avatar, which can “strip on command” and be switched between “sexy” and “unhinged” modes.

Emotional intimacy and adolescent risk

Erotic chatbots don’t just offer sexual content. They can simulate care, warmth and attention. That emotional pull is powerful, especially for young people.

Recent research by online safety charity Internet Mattersfound that 67% of children aged between nine and 17 already use AI chatbots, with 35% saying it feels like “talking to a friend”. Among vulnerable children, 12% said they had “no one else” to talk to, and 23% used chatbots for personal advice.

Adding erotic features to that mix risks deepening emotional dependency and distorting how adolescents understand intimacy, consent and relationships. The same engagement tools that keep adults hooked could exploit young users’ loneliness and need for validation.

Read more:
Sex machina: in the wild west world of human-AI relationships, the lonely and vulnerable are most at risk

Even if erotic functions are technically locked to adults, large language models can be “jailbroken” – tricked into producing content they’re not supposed to. This uses layered prompts, roleplay framing or coded language to override the systems which control what the chatbot is allowed to say to the user.

Users have already developed ways to bypass ethical filters that normally stop chatbots from producing explicit or dangerous material.

OpenAI’s erotic mode will come with a special ethical alignment to block illegal or abusive themes. But those safeguards are likely to be as vulnerable to jailbreaks as any other. Once text-based material is generated, it can easily circulate online, beyond any platform’s control.

Grey areas

Erotic AI also exposes deep gaps in regulation. In the UK, written erotica is legal and not subject to age verification, unlike pornographic images or videos. That creates a loophole which means that content banned from adult sites could still be generated as text by a chatbot.

Globally, laws vary. Some countries, such as China and the Gulf states, ban erotic material outright. Others rely on weak or inconsistent enforcement. The forthcoming EU AI Act may classify sexual companion bots as “high risk”, but implementation of the act remains a long way off.

Meanwhile, companies can tweak their “ethical alignments” at will, meaning what’s forbidden today may be permitted tomorrow.

Despite claims of neutrality, erotic AI is anything but. Some platforms overwhelmingly design their companions as female-coded, submissive and always available. The result is a digital environment that normalises misogyny and warped ideas about consent, especially among boys and young men.

Women and girls already bear the brunt of online sexual harm. They are the targets of non-consensual deepfakes and image-based abuse – harms that erotic AI could make easier, faster and cheaper to produce.

Read more:
The AI sexbot industry is just getting started. It brings strange new questions – and risks

Yet these issues are largely absent from mainstream AI policy debates. Erotic AI is being built in ways that privilege male fantasies while placing women and girls at risk. It’s teaching a generation of young men ideas about women that should have died out long ago.

The arrival of erotic AI companions feels like a significant departure from OpenAI’s attempts to keep potentially harmful information away from users of ChatGPT. The general environment of erotic AI is one of weak age gates, emotional vulnerability, legal loopholes and gendered harms. Will ChatGPT be any different?

These systems will probably be jailbroken. They may be accessed by people they weren’t designed for, including minors. And they will probably produce content that tests or crosses legal boundaries.

Before erotic chatbots become another unregulated corner of the internet, governments, educators and technologists need to act. Regulation is urgently needed. Until then, erotic AI risks amplifying existing online harms, with women, girls and other vulnerable users paying the price.

Simon Thorne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ChatGPT is about to get erotic, but can OpenAI really keep it adults-only? – https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-is-about-to-get-erotic-but-can-openai-really-keep-it-adults-only-267660