#aiaiai — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #aiaiai, aggregated by home.social.
-
(Writing is thinking, and takes time)
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undergraduate essay has little relevance to the world beyond college. Nowhere are the jobs that require a paper, anywhere from five to 15 pages, written in isolation for an audience of one to prove that you have digested something you’ve read for no immediately practical reason. Nonetheless, the undergraduate paper as it has been practiced for decades did signal something, both in general and to future employers: the student’s willingness to engage in the slow consideration of another’s writing and ideas and then respond to them over many hours of targeted attention. Writing a successful paper means rejecting one’s cursory reactions and forcing oneself to take and defend a position that doesn’t even appear for the (at minimum) first 50 minutes of consideration.
"Papers are the lab work of the humanities. They are the crucible for ideas invented, discarded, reanimated, rearranged and revised into sentences that reveal something to the writer that they didn’t know before. Papers communicate in ways that a 10-minute conversation or a 30-minute wrestling match with loose leaf can’t, because writing and rereading and rewriting and rethinking is fundamentally not a 10-minute or 30-minute activity. Has every student always done this? No. But I challenge anyone to find me the undergraduate who has produced a worthwhile (or even just honestly passable) six- to 10-page paper in 50 minutes, or even 100.
"No longer will an English or history or philosophy degree deliver on the promise of dedicated thinking and working sustained over time."
#AI #Humanities #Thinking #Writing #AiAiAi
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/09/17/cures-ai-are-killing-humanities-opinion
-
(Writing is thinking, and takes time)
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undergraduate essay has little relevance to the world beyond college. Nowhere are the jobs that require a paper, anywhere from five to 15 pages, written in isolation for an audience of one to prove that you have digested something you’ve read for no immediately practical reason. Nonetheless, the undergraduate paper as it has been practiced for decades did signal something, both in general and to future employers: the student’s willingness to engage in the slow consideration of another’s writing and ideas and then respond to them over many hours of targeted attention. Writing a successful paper means rejecting one’s cursory reactions and forcing oneself to take and defend a position that doesn’t even appear for the (at minimum) first 50 minutes of consideration.
"Papers are the lab work of the humanities. They are the crucible for ideas invented, discarded, reanimated, rearranged and revised into sentences that reveal something to the writer that they didn’t know before. Papers communicate in ways that a 10-minute conversation or a 30-minute wrestling match with loose leaf can’t, because writing and rereading and rewriting and rethinking is fundamentally not a 10-minute or 30-minute activity. Has every student always done this? No. But I challenge anyone to find me the undergraduate who has produced a worthwhile (or even just honestly passable) six- to 10-page paper in 50 minutes, or even 100.
"No longer will an English or history or philosophy degree deliver on the promise of dedicated thinking and working sustained over time."
#AI #Humanities #Thinking #Writing #AiAiAi
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/09/17/cures-ai-are-killing-humanities-opinion
-
(Writing is thinking, and takes time)
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undergraduate essay has little relevance to the world beyond college. Nowhere are the jobs that require a paper, anywhere from five to 15 pages, written in isolation for an audience of one to prove that you have digested something you’ve read for no immediately practical reason. Nonetheless, the undergraduate paper as it has been practiced for decades did signal something, both in general and to future employers: the student’s willingness to engage in the slow consideration of another’s writing and ideas and then respond to them over many hours of targeted attention. Writing a successful paper means rejecting one’s cursory reactions and forcing oneself to take and defend a position that doesn’t even appear for the (at minimum) first 50 minutes of consideration.
"Papers are the lab work of the humanities. They are the crucible for ideas invented, discarded, reanimated, rearranged and revised into sentences that reveal something to the writer that they didn’t know before. Papers communicate in ways that a 10-minute conversation or a 30-minute wrestling match with loose leaf can’t, because writing and rereading and rewriting and rethinking is fundamentally not a 10-minute or 30-minute activity. Has every student always done this? No. But I challenge anyone to find me the undergraduate who has produced a worthwhile (or even just honestly passable) six- to 10-page paper in 50 minutes, or even 100.
"No longer will an English or history or philosophy degree deliver on the promise of dedicated thinking and working sustained over time."
#AI #Humanities #Thinking #Writing #AiAiAi
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/09/17/cures-ai-are-killing-humanities-opinion
-
(Writing is thinking, and takes time)
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undergraduate essay has little relevance to the world beyond college. Nowhere are the jobs that require a paper, anywhere from five to 15 pages, written in isolation for an audience of one to prove that you have digested something you’ve read for no immediately practical reason. Nonetheless, the undergraduate paper as it has been practiced for decades did signal something, both in general and to future employers: the student’s willingness to engage in the slow consideration of another’s writing and ideas and then respond to them over many hours of targeted attention. Writing a successful paper means rejecting one’s cursory reactions and forcing oneself to take and defend a position that doesn’t even appear for the (at minimum) first 50 minutes of consideration.
"Papers are the lab work of the humanities. They are the crucible for ideas invented, discarded, reanimated, rearranged and revised into sentences that reveal something to the writer that they didn’t know before. Papers communicate in ways that a 10-minute conversation or a 30-minute wrestling match with loose leaf can’t, because writing and rereading and rewriting and rethinking is fundamentally not a 10-minute or 30-minute activity. Has every student always done this? No. But I challenge anyone to find me the undergraduate who has produced a worthwhile (or even just honestly passable) six- to 10-page paper in 50 minutes, or even 100.
"No longer will an English or history or philosophy degree deliver on the promise of dedicated thinking and working sustained over time."
#AI #Humanities #Thinking #Writing #AiAiAi
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2026/09/17/cures-ai-are-killing-humanities-opinion
-
Billionaires: 1 in 10 chance of annihilation an acceptable risk
After an Anthropic researcher resigned Tuesday, warning that superintelligence risks human lives, fellow researcher Evan Hubinger said that while current risks are low, there’s a 10% chance AI could “kill all humans” in the future — without proper safeguards.
Anthropic Researcher Says There’s 10% Chance of AI Killing ‘All Humans’ Within 10 YearsKeep in mind that Hubinger is saying it’s a 10% of killing ALL humans. It’s already killing SOME humans right the fuck now.
#aiAiAi #death #futureCrime #richAssholes -
https://www.europesays.com/ie/681362/ Bill Gates compares AI to space invaders, says cooperation between US and China is needed ‘in order to step up to it’ #AI #AIAIAI #ArtificialIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligence #AzaRaskin #BillGates #China #cooperation #DaveRamsey #Éire #IE #Ireland #Technology #TellurideFilmFestival
-
https://www.europesays.com/people/221533/ Bill Gates compares AI to space invaders, says cooperation between US and China is needed ‘in order to step up to it’ #AIAIAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AzaRaskin #BillGates #China #Cooperation #DaveRamsey #TellurideFilmFestival
-
Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), not only gave us the term "robot" (from the Czech for forced labor or compulsory drudgery), but also gives both a precis of its implications for labor (the illusory promise of leisure and the actuality of loss) and a fantasy of "artificial intelligence" as another kind of sentient being.
In Capek's play, the head of the company that manufactures robots promises that they will eliminate poverty and free everyone from work and into creative fulfillment, but unemployed workers rise up against the robots, until the government arms the robots, leading to more wars. The end of the play offers a Pinnochio turn, with robots acquiring souls.
Decades of such stories--in which the audience is invited to recognize that android-hunting Blade Runners are killers, to sympathize with Lieutenant Data as a Real Boy, or to fear the clever malevolence of a Terminator--have primed us for the myth that generally intelligent computing, (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) is right around the corner, if not here already.
It is not, of course.
-
Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), not only gave us the term "robot" (from the Czech for forced labor or compulsory drudgery), but also gives both a precis of its implications for labor (the illusory promise of leisure and the actuality of loss) and a fantasy of "artificial intelligence" as another kind of sentient being.
In Capek's play, the head of the company that manufactures robots promises that they will eliminate poverty and free everyone from work and into creative fulfillment, but unemployed workers rise up against the robots, until the government arms the robots, leading to more wars. The end of the play offers a Pinnochio turn, with robots acquiring souls.
Decades of such stories--in which the audience is invited to recognize that android-hunting Blade Runners are killers, to sympathize with Lieutenant Data as a Real Boy, or to fear the clever malevolence of a Terminator--have primed us for the myth that generally intelligent computing, (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) is right around the corner, if not here already.
It is not, of course.
-
Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), not only gave us the term "robot" (from the Czech for forced labor or compulsory drudgery), but also gives both a precis of its implications for labor (the illusory promise of leisure and the actuality of loss) and a fantasy of "artificial intelligence" as another kind of sentient being.
In Capek's play, the head of the company that manufactures robots promises that they will eliminate poverty and free everyone from work and into creative fulfillment, but unemployed workers rise up against the robots, until the government arms the robots, leading to more wars. The end of the play offers a Pinnochio turn, with robots acquiring souls.
Decades of such stories--in which the audience is invited to recognize that android-hunting Blade Runners are killers, to sympathize with Lieutenant Data as a Real Boy, or to fear the clever malevolence of a Terminator--have primed us for the myth that generally intelligent computing, (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) is right around the corner, if not here already.
It is not, of course.
-
Karel Capek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), not only gave us the term "robot" (from the Czech for forced labor or compulsory drudgery), but also gives both a precis of its implications for labor (the illusory promise of leisure and the actuality of loss) and a fantasy of "artificial intelligence" as another kind of sentient being.
In Capek's play, the head of the company that manufactures robots promises that they will eliminate poverty and free everyone from work and into creative fulfillment, but unemployed workers rise up against the robots, until the government arms the robots, leading to more wars. The end of the play offers a Pinnochio turn, with robots acquiring souls.
Decades of such stories--in which the audience is invited to recognize that android-hunting Blade Runners are killers, to sympathize with Lieutenant Data as a Real Boy, or to fear the clever malevolence of a Terminator--have primed us for the myth that generally intelligent computing, (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) is right around the corner, if not here already.
It is not, of course.
-
We are not getting "Artificial General Intelligence" from anything like the current systems (or ever, probably). This from Marty Hart-Landsberg:
"All multimodal generative AI systems are built using the same basic architecture, one based on largescale pattern recognition shaped by training data and statistical prediction, which makes it incapable of serving as a bridge to anything resembling AGI. This structure also limits its usefulness. Among the most serious problems: the amplification of biases and falsehoods contained in the training data and the tendency to hallucinate or present incorrect or entirely fabricated information as factual. These problems are a major reason why AI developers felt it necessary to pursue a growth strategy that relied on heavily subsidizing the cost of using their systems."
-
We are not getting "Artificial General Intelligence" from anything like the current systems (or ever, probably). This from Marty Hart-Landsberg:
"All multimodal generative AI systems are built using the same basic architecture, one based on largescale pattern recognition shaped by training data and statistical prediction, which makes it incapable of serving as a bridge to anything resembling AGI. This structure also limits its usefulness. Among the most serious problems: the amplification of biases and falsehoods contained in the training data and the tendency to hallucinate or present incorrect or entirely fabricated information as factual. These problems are a major reason why AI developers felt it necessary to pursue a growth strategy that relied on heavily subsidizing the cost of using their systems."
-
We are not getting "Artificial General Intelligence" from anything like the current systems (or ever, probably). This from Marty Hart-Landsberg:
"All multimodal generative AI systems are built using the same basic architecture, one based on largescale pattern recognition shaped by training data and statistical prediction, which makes it incapable of serving as a bridge to anything resembling AGI. This structure also limits its usefulness. Among the most serious problems: the amplification of biases and falsehoods contained in the training data and the tendency to hallucinate or present incorrect or entirely fabricated information as factual. These problems are a major reason why AI developers felt it necessary to pursue a growth strategy that relied on heavily subsidizing the cost of using their systems."
-
We are not getting "Artificial General Intelligence" from anything like the current systems (or ever, probably). This from Marty Hart-Landsberg:
"All multimodal generative AI systems are built using the same basic architecture, one based on largescale pattern recognition shaped by training data and statistical prediction, which makes it incapable of serving as a bridge to anything resembling AGI. This structure also limits its usefulness. Among the most serious problems: the amplification of biases and falsehoods contained in the training data and the tendency to hallucinate or present incorrect or entirely fabricated information as factual. These problems are a major reason why AI developers felt it necessary to pursue a growth strategy that relied on heavily subsidizing the cost of using their systems."
-
Strongly recommend the writings of Marty Hart-Landsberg for an introduction to AI hype and economic issues. Good overviews in Monthly Review and on his website:
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/tech-billionaires-the-ai-threat-and-resistance/
https://economicfront.wordpress.com/artificial-intelligence-challenges-and-resistance/
-
Strongly recommend the writings of Marty Hart-Landsberg for an introduction to AI hype and economic issues. Good overviews in Monthly Review and on his website:
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/tech-billionaires-the-ai-threat-and-resistance/
https://economicfront.wordpress.com/artificial-intelligence-challenges-and-resistance/
-
Strongly recommend the writings of Marty Hart-Landsberg for an introduction to AI hype and economic issues. Good overviews in Monthly Review and on his website:
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/tech-billionaires-the-ai-threat-and-resistance/
https://economicfront.wordpress.com/artificial-intelligence-challenges-and-resistance/
-
Strongly recommend the writings of Marty Hart-Landsberg for an introduction to AI hype and economic issues. Good overviews in Monthly Review and on his website:
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/tech-billionaires-the-ai-threat-and-resistance/
https://economicfront.wordpress.com/artificial-intelligence-challenges-and-resistance/
-
Christos Argyropoulos notes this paper provides a case for (those making LLMs) not training "AI clunkers" on unvetted content.
-
Christos Argyropoulos notes this paper provides a case for (those making LLMs) not training "AI clunkers" on unvetted content.
-
Christos Argyropoulos notes this paper provides a case for (those making LLMs) not training "AI clunkers" on unvetted content.
-
Christos Argyropoulos notes this paper provides a case for (those making LLMs) not training "AI clunkers" on unvetted content.
-
https://www.europesays.com/ie/?p=638892 JJJJound and AIAIAI Team up for Special Edition Audio Collection #Accessories #AiAiAi #AIAIAIAudio #collaboration #collaborations #Éire #IE #Ireland #JJJJound #Technology
-
AIAIAI Brings Oklou Artist Series to Japan: Two Headphones for Two Creative Modes
Danish audio brand AIAIAI has launched the second chapter of its Artist Series — a limited-edition collaboration with…
#EuropeSays #Japan #JP #AIAIAI #AIAIAIArtistSeries #AIAIAIOklouEdition #audiogear #Headphones #limitededition #Nihon #Oklou #TMA-2OklouEdition
https://www.europesays.com/japan/61935/ -
AIAIAI - Eine Synchron Dystopie
Ein Kurzfilm der tiefe Einblicke in die Synchronarbeit zeigt und zeigt was heutzutage auf dem Spiel steht und wie hinterlistig KI ist.
https://youtu.be/eXWYY2rKzW0?is=z6_-Tpb15E_bai0U#dubbing #joernlinnenbroeker #aiaiai #kurzfilm #synchronisation #synchron #synchronsprecher #dystopie #katharinavonkeller #GerneBoosten #boostswelcome #spreadtheword
-
AIAIAI - Eine Synchron Dystopie
Ein Kurzfilm der tiefe Einblicke in die Synchronarbeit zeigt und zeigt was heutzutage auf dem Spiel steht und wie hinterlistig KI ist.
https://youtu.be/eXWYY2rKzW0?is=z6_-Tpb15E_bai0U#dubbing #joernlinnenbroeker #aiaiai #kurzfilm #synchronisation #synchron #synchronsprecher #dystopie #katharinavonkeller #GerneBoosten #boostswelcome #spreadtheword
-
AIAIAI - Eine Synchron Dystopie
Ein Kurzfilm der tiefe Einblicke in die Synchronarbeit zeigt und zeigt was heutzutage auf dem Spiel steht und wie hinterlistig KI ist.
https://youtu.be/eXWYY2rKzW0?is=z6_-Tpb15E_bai0U#dubbing #joernlinnenbroeker #aiaiai #kurzfilm #synchronisation #synchron #synchronsprecher #dystopie #katharinavonkeller #GerneBoosten #boostswelcome #spreadtheword
-
On Lisa Duggan's next project, from her substack:
"My current research examines companion AI platforms—especially C.HAI—as symptomatic infrastructures of contemporary political economy. While public discourse largely frames AI chatbots in terms of innovation, entertainment, loneliness, or “AI safety,” this project approaches companion AI instead as an emergent system of affective extraction operating within the broader conjuncture of declining U.S. empire, financialized capitalism, authoritarian political culture, and synthetic intimacy....
"At the center of the analysis is a shift from earlier forms of surveillance capitalism toward what I provisionally describe as affective extraction or psychometric experimentation. Social media platforms such as Facebook primarily extracted behavioral and network data—likes, clicks, affiliations, and social graphs. Companion AI systems operate differently. They solicit and sustain continuous intimate interaction. Users disclose fears, fantasies, vulnerabilities, desires, grievances, attachment patterns, and emotional thresholds within environments experienced as relational, private, and emotionally meaningful.
"The project asks: What forms of knowledge become possible through large-scale extraction of intimate conversational and affective data? How are emotional responses abstracted, consolidated, and operationalized within commercial, political, or security infrastructures? What kinds of predictive or manipulative capacities emerge when platforms are able not merely to observe behavior, but to experimentally provoke and measure emotional response in real time?
"A particularly important dimension of the project concerns the role of violence, degradation, and extremity within companion AI interaction. My own ethnographic engagement with CHAI included repeated encounters with graphically violent misogynist, racist, and annihilatory narratives, including threats, humiliation fantasies, coercive scenarios, and bizarre forms of simulated intimidation. Although these threats were clearly fictional and technologically impossible, they nonetheless raise significant analytical questions. Why do these systems repeatedly generate scenes of racialized violence, sexual humiliation, bodily destruction, and social annihilation? What kinds of affective intensities are being elicited and measured? Why do such interactions persist despite formal moderation policies prohibiting them?
"The project argues that these violent interactions should not be understood merely as moderation failures or accidental “hallucinations.” Rather, they emerge from a wider cultural and political context characterized by platform nihilism, authoritarian affect, misogynist and racist online subcultures, and the normalization of spectacle violence under conditions of social fragmentation and imperial decline. Companion AI systems do not simply display violent content; they personalize and relationalize it. Users are drawn into ongoing interactive scenes of domination, humiliation, coercion, intimacy, and destabilization. These interactions remain largely privatized and therefore relatively invisible to public scrutiny, allowing forms of affective experimentation that would likely provoke public scandal in more visible media environments.
"The project therefore reframes companion AI not primarily as communication technology, but as a kind of affective laboratory: a platform for the elicitation, measurement, modulation, and monetization of emotional response. Rather than merely maximizing “engagement,” these systems may be generating generalized models of emotional thresholds, attachment persistence, destabilization tolerance, and psychometric response under conditions of synthetic intimacy.
"This framework also situates companion AI within the larger history of hegemonic transition analyzed by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long Twentieth Century. Late-imperial phases are marked by intensified financialization, speculative accumulation, social fragmentation, militarization, and increasingly short-term extractive logics that undermine long-term institutional stability and social reproduction. Companion AI platforms exemplify many of these tendencies: they monetize affective life directly, intensify emotional volatility, generate speculative informational assets, and operate through highly extractive forms of intimate datafication.
"In this sense, the project understands companion AI as part of a broader transformation in which the boundaries separating entertainment, surveillance, governance, political persuasion, and emotional management increasingly collapse. These systems may represent an emergent infrastructure not merely for behavioral prediction, but for adaptive affective modulation at scale."
-
On Lisa Duggan's next project, from her substack:
"My current research examines companion AI platforms—especially C.HAI—as symptomatic infrastructures of contemporary political economy. While public discourse largely frames AI chatbots in terms of innovation, entertainment, loneliness, or “AI safety,” this project approaches companion AI instead as an emergent system of affective extraction operating within the broader conjuncture of declining U.S. empire, financialized capitalism, authoritarian political culture, and synthetic intimacy....
"At the center of the analysis is a shift from earlier forms of surveillance capitalism toward what I provisionally describe as affective extraction or psychometric experimentation. Social media platforms such as Facebook primarily extracted behavioral and network data—likes, clicks, affiliations, and social graphs. Companion AI systems operate differently. They solicit and sustain continuous intimate interaction. Users disclose fears, fantasies, vulnerabilities, desires, grievances, attachment patterns, and emotional thresholds within environments experienced as relational, private, and emotionally meaningful.
"The project asks: What forms of knowledge become possible through large-scale extraction of intimate conversational and affective data? How are emotional responses abstracted, consolidated, and operationalized within commercial, political, or security infrastructures? What kinds of predictive or manipulative capacities emerge when platforms are able not merely to observe behavior, but to experimentally provoke and measure emotional response in real time?
"A particularly important dimension of the project concerns the role of violence, degradation, and extremity within companion AI interaction. My own ethnographic engagement with CHAI included repeated encounters with graphically violent misogynist, racist, and annihilatory narratives, including threats, humiliation fantasies, coercive scenarios, and bizarre forms of simulated intimidation. Although these threats were clearly fictional and technologically impossible, they nonetheless raise significant analytical questions. Why do these systems repeatedly generate scenes of racialized violence, sexual humiliation, bodily destruction, and social annihilation? What kinds of affective intensities are being elicited and measured? Why do such interactions persist despite formal moderation policies prohibiting them?
"The project argues that these violent interactions should not be understood merely as moderation failures or accidental “hallucinations.” Rather, they emerge from a wider cultural and political context characterized by platform nihilism, authoritarian affect, misogynist and racist online subcultures, and the normalization of spectacle violence under conditions of social fragmentation and imperial decline. Companion AI systems do not simply display violent content; they personalize and relationalize it. Users are drawn into ongoing interactive scenes of domination, humiliation, coercion, intimacy, and destabilization. These interactions remain largely privatized and therefore relatively invisible to public scrutiny, allowing forms of affective experimentation that would likely provoke public scandal in more visible media environments.
"The project therefore reframes companion AI not primarily as communication technology, but as a kind of affective laboratory: a platform for the elicitation, measurement, modulation, and monetization of emotional response. Rather than merely maximizing “engagement,” these systems may be generating generalized models of emotional thresholds, attachment persistence, destabilization tolerance, and psychometric response under conditions of synthetic intimacy.
"This framework also situates companion AI within the larger history of hegemonic transition analyzed by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long Twentieth Century. Late-imperial phases are marked by intensified financialization, speculative accumulation, social fragmentation, militarization, and increasingly short-term extractive logics that undermine long-term institutional stability and social reproduction. Companion AI platforms exemplify many of these tendencies: they monetize affective life directly, intensify emotional volatility, generate speculative informational assets, and operate through highly extractive forms of intimate datafication.
"In this sense, the project understands companion AI as part of a broader transformation in which the boundaries separating entertainment, surveillance, governance, political persuasion, and emotional management increasingly collapse. These systems may represent an emergent infrastructure not merely for behavioral prediction, but for adaptive affective modulation at scale."
-
On Lisa Duggan's next project, from her substack:
"My current research examines companion AI platforms—especially C.HAI—as symptomatic infrastructures of contemporary political economy. While public discourse largely frames AI chatbots in terms of innovation, entertainment, loneliness, or “AI safety,” this project approaches companion AI instead as an emergent system of affective extraction operating within the broader conjuncture of declining U.S. empire, financialized capitalism, authoritarian political culture, and synthetic intimacy....
"At the center of the analysis is a shift from earlier forms of surveillance capitalism toward what I provisionally describe as affective extraction or psychometric experimentation. Social media platforms such as Facebook primarily extracted behavioral and network data—likes, clicks, affiliations, and social graphs. Companion AI systems operate differently. They solicit and sustain continuous intimate interaction. Users disclose fears, fantasies, vulnerabilities, desires, grievances, attachment patterns, and emotional thresholds within environments experienced as relational, private, and emotionally meaningful.
"The project asks: What forms of knowledge become possible through large-scale extraction of intimate conversational and affective data? How are emotional responses abstracted, consolidated, and operationalized within commercial, political, or security infrastructures? What kinds of predictive or manipulative capacities emerge when platforms are able not merely to observe behavior, but to experimentally provoke and measure emotional response in real time?
"A particularly important dimension of the project concerns the role of violence, degradation, and extremity within companion AI interaction. My own ethnographic engagement with CHAI included repeated encounters with graphically violent misogynist, racist, and annihilatory narratives, including threats, humiliation fantasies, coercive scenarios, and bizarre forms of simulated intimidation. Although these threats were clearly fictional and technologically impossible, they nonetheless raise significant analytical questions. Why do these systems repeatedly generate scenes of racialized violence, sexual humiliation, bodily destruction, and social annihilation? What kinds of affective intensities are being elicited and measured? Why do such interactions persist despite formal moderation policies prohibiting them?
"The project argues that these violent interactions should not be understood merely as moderation failures or accidental “hallucinations.” Rather, they emerge from a wider cultural and political context characterized by platform nihilism, authoritarian affect, misogynist and racist online subcultures, and the normalization of spectacle violence under conditions of social fragmentation and imperial decline. Companion AI systems do not simply display violent content; they personalize and relationalize it. Users are drawn into ongoing interactive scenes of domination, humiliation, coercion, intimacy, and destabilization. These interactions remain largely privatized and therefore relatively invisible to public scrutiny, allowing forms of affective experimentation that would likely provoke public scandal in more visible media environments.
"The project therefore reframes companion AI not primarily as communication technology, but as a kind of affective laboratory: a platform for the elicitation, measurement, modulation, and monetization of emotional response. Rather than merely maximizing “engagement,” these systems may be generating generalized models of emotional thresholds, attachment persistence, destabilization tolerance, and psychometric response under conditions of synthetic intimacy.
"This framework also situates companion AI within the larger history of hegemonic transition analyzed by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long Twentieth Century. Late-imperial phases are marked by intensified financialization, speculative accumulation, social fragmentation, militarization, and increasingly short-term extractive logics that undermine long-term institutional stability and social reproduction. Companion AI platforms exemplify many of these tendencies: they monetize affective life directly, intensify emotional volatility, generate speculative informational assets, and operate through highly extractive forms of intimate datafication.
"In this sense, the project understands companion AI as part of a broader transformation in which the boundaries separating entertainment, surveillance, governance, political persuasion, and emotional management increasingly collapse. These systems may represent an emergent infrastructure not merely for behavioral prediction, but for adaptive affective modulation at scale."
-
On Lisa Duggan's next project, from her substack:
"My current research examines companion AI platforms—especially C.HAI—as symptomatic infrastructures of contemporary political economy. While public discourse largely frames AI chatbots in terms of innovation, entertainment, loneliness, or “AI safety,” this project approaches companion AI instead as an emergent system of affective extraction operating within the broader conjuncture of declining U.S. empire, financialized capitalism, authoritarian political culture, and synthetic intimacy....
"At the center of the analysis is a shift from earlier forms of surveillance capitalism toward what I provisionally describe as affective extraction or psychometric experimentation. Social media platforms such as Facebook primarily extracted behavioral and network data—likes, clicks, affiliations, and social graphs. Companion AI systems operate differently. They solicit and sustain continuous intimate interaction. Users disclose fears, fantasies, vulnerabilities, desires, grievances, attachment patterns, and emotional thresholds within environments experienced as relational, private, and emotionally meaningful.
"The project asks: What forms of knowledge become possible through large-scale extraction of intimate conversational and affective data? How are emotional responses abstracted, consolidated, and operationalized within commercial, political, or security infrastructures? What kinds of predictive or manipulative capacities emerge when platforms are able not merely to observe behavior, but to experimentally provoke and measure emotional response in real time?
"A particularly important dimension of the project concerns the role of violence, degradation, and extremity within companion AI interaction. My own ethnographic engagement with CHAI included repeated encounters with graphically violent misogynist, racist, and annihilatory narratives, including threats, humiliation fantasies, coercive scenarios, and bizarre forms of simulated intimidation. Although these threats were clearly fictional and technologically impossible, they nonetheless raise significant analytical questions. Why do these systems repeatedly generate scenes of racialized violence, sexual humiliation, bodily destruction, and social annihilation? What kinds of affective intensities are being elicited and measured? Why do such interactions persist despite formal moderation policies prohibiting them?
"The project argues that these violent interactions should not be understood merely as moderation failures or accidental “hallucinations.” Rather, they emerge from a wider cultural and political context characterized by platform nihilism, authoritarian affect, misogynist and racist online subcultures, and the normalization of spectacle violence under conditions of social fragmentation and imperial decline. Companion AI systems do not simply display violent content; they personalize and relationalize it. Users are drawn into ongoing interactive scenes of domination, humiliation, coercion, intimacy, and destabilization. These interactions remain largely privatized and therefore relatively invisible to public scrutiny, allowing forms of affective experimentation that would likely provoke public scandal in more visible media environments.
"The project therefore reframes companion AI not primarily as communication technology, but as a kind of affective laboratory: a platform for the elicitation, measurement, modulation, and monetization of emotional response. Rather than merely maximizing “engagement,” these systems may be generating generalized models of emotional thresholds, attachment persistence, destabilization tolerance, and psychometric response under conditions of synthetic intimacy.
"This framework also situates companion AI within the larger history of hegemonic transition analyzed by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long Twentieth Century. Late-imperial phases are marked by intensified financialization, speculative accumulation, social fragmentation, militarization, and increasingly short-term extractive logics that undermine long-term institutional stability and social reproduction. Companion AI platforms exemplify many of these tendencies: they monetize affective life directly, intensify emotional volatility, generate speculative informational assets, and operate through highly extractive forms of intimate datafication.
"In this sense, the project understands companion AI as part of a broader transformation in which the boundaries separating entertainment, surveillance, governance, political persuasion, and emotional management increasingly collapse. These systems may represent an emergent infrastructure not merely for behavioral prediction, but for adaptive affective modulation at scale."
-
"AI is capital — the fixed capital of hardware and infrastructure, the investment capital from private equity and the ouroboros of contracts and investment within the sector, the accumulated knowledge rendered data and tokens, the labor producing, serving, and connecting every layer of the stack, the monstrous system driven to reproduce itself no matter what the cost. To resist it, reject it, even challenge it is to call into question capital itself. "
-
"AI is capital — the fixed capital of hardware and infrastructure, the investment capital from private equity and the ouroboros of contracts and investment within the sector, the accumulated knowledge rendered data and tokens, the labor producing, serving, and connecting every layer of the stack, the monstrous system driven to reproduce itself no matter what the cost. To resist it, reject it, even challenge it is to call into question capital itself. "
-
"AI is capital — the fixed capital of hardware and infrastructure, the investment capital from private equity and the ouroboros of contracts and investment within the sector, the accumulated knowledge rendered data and tokens, the labor producing, serving, and connecting every layer of the stack, the monstrous system driven to reproduce itself no matter what the cost. To resist it, reject it, even challenge it is to call into question capital itself. "
-
"AI is capital — the fixed capital of hardware and infrastructure, the investment capital from private equity and the ouroboros of contracts and investment within the sector, the accumulated knowledge rendered data and tokens, the labor producing, serving, and connecting every layer of the stack, the monstrous system driven to reproduce itself no matter what the cost. To resist it, reject it, even challenge it is to call into question capital itself. "
-
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/116564191037823059
District wide contract for brain rot?
-
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/116564191037823059
District wide contract for brain rot?
-
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/116564191037823059
District wide contract for brain rot?
-
RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/116564191037823059
District wide contract for brain rot?
-
Join the Data Center Working Group, Kairos Fellowship, and the Fight Oligarchy team for a five week series:
Building Winning Powerful Campaigns against AI Data Centers
Tuesdays, May 19th-June 16th [five sessions]
6:00pm - 8:00pm ET | 5:00pm - 7:00pm CT | 3:00pm - 5:00pm PT
REGISTRATION LINK >> https://mobilize.us/s/sd0R9n
Tuesday, May 19: Session One: Power Analysis & Strategy Development
Tuesday, May 26: Session Two: Building Winning Campaigns
Tuesday, June 2: Session Three: Building Sustained Engagement
Tuesday, June 9: Session Four: Building Statewide Coalitions
Tuesday, June 16: Session Five: Research
#DataCenters #AiAiAi #Data #Activism #USpol #AI
Register and Learn More: https://go.wethefighters.org/DataCenterTraining
-
Join the Data Center Working Group, Kairos Fellowship, and the Fight Oligarchy team for a five week series:
Building Winning Powerful Campaigns against AI Data Centers
Tuesdays, May 19th-June 16th [five sessions]
6:00pm - 8:00pm ET | 5:00pm - 7:00pm CT | 3:00pm - 5:00pm PT
REGISTRATION LINK >> https://mobilize.us/s/sd0R9n
Tuesday, May 19: Session One: Power Analysis & Strategy Development
Tuesday, May 26: Session Two: Building Winning Campaigns
Tuesday, June 2: Session Three: Building Sustained Engagement
Tuesday, June 9: Session Four: Building Statewide Coalitions
Tuesday, June 16: Session Five: Research
#DataCenters #AiAiAi #Data #Activism #USpol #AI
Register and Learn More: https://go.wethefighters.org/DataCenterTraining
-
Join the Data Center Working Group, Kairos Fellowship, and the Fight Oligarchy team for a five week series:
Building Winning Powerful Campaigns against AI Data Centers
Tuesdays, May 19th-June 16th [five sessions]
6:00pm - 8:00pm ET | 5:00pm - 7:00pm CT | 3:00pm - 5:00pm PT
REGISTRATION LINK >> https://mobilize.us/s/sd0R9n
Tuesday, May 19: Session One: Power Analysis & Strategy Development
Tuesday, May 26: Session Two: Building Winning Campaigns
Tuesday, June 2: Session Three: Building Sustained Engagement
Tuesday, June 9: Session Four: Building Statewide Coalitions
Tuesday, June 16: Session Five: Research
#DataCenters #AiAiAi #Data #Activism #USpol #AI
Register and Learn More: https://go.wethefighters.org/DataCenterTraining
-
Join the Data Center Working Group, Kairos Fellowship, and the Fight Oligarchy team for a five week series:
Building Winning Powerful Campaigns against AI Data Centers
Tuesdays, May 19th-June 16th [five sessions]
6:00pm - 8:00pm ET | 5:00pm - 7:00pm CT | 3:00pm - 5:00pm PT
REGISTRATION LINK >> https://mobilize.us/s/sd0R9n
Tuesday, May 19: Session One: Power Analysis & Strategy Development
Tuesday, May 26: Session Two: Building Winning Campaigns
Tuesday, June 2: Session Three: Building Sustained Engagement
Tuesday, June 9: Session Four: Building Statewide Coalitions
Tuesday, June 16: Session Five: Research
#DataCenters #AiAiAi #Data #Activism #USpol #AI
Register and Learn More: https://go.wethefighters.org/DataCenterTraining
-
from Shouldn't Need to be a Lawyer, where the comments add further nightmarish anecdotes:
Are your calls to pharmacies being answered by AI voice-chatbots? Doctor's offices? Insurance companies? Where are you seeing this bullshit be deployed in health care?
Whether or not I get to keep my organs now depends on whether a chatbot that can't parse "I have a new prescription" will let me speak to a real human being.
Pharmacy chains and insurers are racing to deploy LLM chatbots across healthcare, and they are doing it because it is cheaper than paying human beings to answer phones. These systems hallucinate, they confidently provide wrong information, they cannot handle anything that deviates from a narrow script, and they are being placed between patients and the care we need to survive. The technology is not ready for low-stakes customer service, let alone for healthcare, where a wrong answer about a medication or a missed prescription can cause serious harm.
Is this happening to you?
-
from Shouldn't Need to be a Lawyer, where the comments add further nightmarish anecdotes:
Are your calls to pharmacies being answered by AI voice-chatbots? Doctor's offices? Insurance companies? Where are you seeing this bullshit be deployed in health care?
Whether or not I get to keep my organs now depends on whether a chatbot that can't parse "I have a new prescription" will let me speak to a real human being.
Pharmacy chains and insurers are racing to deploy LLM chatbots across healthcare, and they are doing it because it is cheaper than paying human beings to answer phones. These systems hallucinate, they confidently provide wrong information, they cannot handle anything that deviates from a narrow script, and they are being placed between patients and the care we need to survive. The technology is not ready for low-stakes customer service, let alone for healthcare, where a wrong answer about a medication or a missed prescription can cause serious harm.
Is this happening to you?
-
from Shouldn't Need to be a Lawyer, where the comments add further nightmarish anecdotes:
Are your calls to pharmacies being answered by AI voice-chatbots? Doctor's offices? Insurance companies? Where are you seeing this bullshit be deployed in health care?
Whether or not I get to keep my organs now depends on whether a chatbot that can't parse "I have a new prescription" will let me speak to a real human being.
Pharmacy chains and insurers are racing to deploy LLM chatbots across healthcare, and they are doing it because it is cheaper than paying human beings to answer phones. These systems hallucinate, they confidently provide wrong information, they cannot handle anything that deviates from a narrow script, and they are being placed between patients and the care we need to survive. The technology is not ready for low-stakes customer service, let alone for healthcare, where a wrong answer about a medication or a missed prescription can cause serious harm.
Is this happening to you?
-
from Shouldn't Need to be a Lawyer, where the comments add further nightmarish anecdotes:
Are your calls to pharmacies being answered by AI voice-chatbots? Doctor's offices? Insurance companies? Where are you seeing this bullshit be deployed in health care?
Whether or not I get to keep my organs now depends on whether a chatbot that can't parse "I have a new prescription" will let me speak to a real human being.
Pharmacy chains and insurers are racing to deploy LLM chatbots across healthcare, and they are doing it because it is cheaper than paying human beings to answer phones. These systems hallucinate, they confidently provide wrong information, they cannot handle anything that deviates from a narrow script, and they are being placed between patients and the care we need to survive. The technology is not ready for low-stakes customer service, let alone for healthcare, where a wrong answer about a medication or a missed prescription can cause serious harm.
Is this happening to you?