@hoytlong
Scholar of Japanese literature, media, cultural analytics. Now working on platforms, television, cultural AI. "The Values in Numbers" (2021). Offline: cooking, ceramics, watercolor. Professor at University of Chicago. https://hoytlong.github.io
I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines".
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...
New paper on Why Slop Matters w/ great group of co authors (@hoytlong.bsky.social @eduede.bsky.social @ari-holtzman.bsky.social + others not on Bluesky) from ACM AI Letters. We try to move the debate re: AI Slop past normative, neg claims & towards parsing its social uses. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Huge congrats, Aarthi! Can't wait to read this.
New paper in AI & Society w/ @hoytlong.bsky.social + @teddyroland.bsky.social! We simulated 101 "AI authors" to see how LLMs imagine creativity & cultural distinction + compared them to real historical authors. What do AI authors want & how do they pursue success? link.springer.com/article/10.1...
New article in AI & Society with @richardjeanso.bsky.social and @hoytlong.bsky.social 🎉
We wanted to know how AI might affect cultural fields like literary publishing. But cultural production is complex! So we piloted a new method we call “social simulation.”
rdcu.be/eTkMy
Honored to be part of this initiative to explore "Humanistic AI"! Hosted at the University of Chicago and led by @hoytlong.bsky.social and Chris Kennedy, we're collaborating in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and projects to think about how the humanities can contribute to AI and vice versa.
In case you missed it, this "Doing AI Differently" funding call should be of interest to humanities scholars with technical experience, computer scientists with humanities grounding, or anyone whose work spans both domains. Take a look and please consider applying! www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
New preprint on "Computational Hermeneutics," co-authored by too many people to list in one post. TL;DR: GenAI is a cultural technology, and needs to be evaluated in ways that recognize situatedness, plurality, and ambiguity as the conditions of meaning — not noise to be minimized.
Donald Trump does NOT want you to share this footage of his pathetically tiny birthday parade crowd.
Screenshot of the first page of preprint, "Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research," by Lauren Klein, Meredith Martin, Andre Brock, Maria Antoniak, Melanie Walsh, Jessica Marie Johnson, Lauren Tilton, and David Mimno
Excited to share our preprint "Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research”
We're open to feedback—read & share thoughts!
@laurenfklein.bsky.social @mmvty.bsky.social @docdre.distributedblackness.net @mariaa.bsky.social @jmjafrx.bsky.social @nolauren.bsky.social @dmimno.bsky.social
Aaaaah good timing, published today!
"we introduce Mini Worldlit, a manually curated dataset of 1,192 works of contemporary fiction from 13 countries, representing nine languages"
By @andrewpiper.bsky.social, @dbamman.bsky.social, Christina Han, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, @hoytlong.bsky.social, et al.
📌
Is it for himself? Or for Frog? Either way an ominous turn...
📌
If you're depressed that non-expert readers prefer AI-written poetry to the classics, perhaps try Matt's quiz.
You may discover that the real finding here is the huge gulf between your own taste and that of non-expert readers ... a gulf that has likely existed at least since, oh, IA Richards?
Thanks for setting this up! A 9/10 for me. I work with LLMs and literature, so I've learned some obvious tells. Limited diction, that preening, adolescent tone. LLMs just trying too hard to be "one with it all." The LLM poem in the style of Butler threw me off.
Interested in writing with AI? ✍️
Please apply to be a **postdoc** in my group through the UChicago DSI Scholars program! 🤠
- Research in my group: minalee-research.github.io/research.html
- Application: datascience.uchicago.edu/research/pos... (review begins on Dec 6)
A photo of Boulder, Colorado, shot from above the university campus and looking toward the Flatirons.
I'm recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work with me at the University of Colorado Boulder! Looking for creative students with interests in #NLP and #CulturalAnalytics.
Boulder is a lovely college town 30 minutes from Denver and 1 hour from Rocky Mountain National Park 😎
Apply by December 15th!
📌
Internet studies people unite!
Internet studies starter pack is here - incomplete, skewed etc etc but some fantastic folks, to help us all rebuild our social networks. Happy to add you if I left you out! Please circulate, and here it is:
go.bsky.app/KHmxfWf
I'm recruiting a PhD student to join my group in 2025-2026. If you like the mountains and interdisciplinary research that blends data and culture, this could be a good fit!
UW iSchool PhD apps due Dec 2nd: ischool.uw.edu/programs/phd...
More info about my group: melaniewalsh.org/mentorship
"Based on what you know about me, draw a picture of what you think my life looks like."
I don't ask Chat many personal questions, so it thinks I live a cozy, data-filled life. And well organized, too! Although wall-of-monitors is not my idea of cozy.
My group just finished up a new paper that I'm excited to get out into the world: "On Classification with Large Language Models in Cultural Analytics" (to be published at CHR): github.com/bamman-group...
Maybe you were thinking of Jordan Pruett? He was in English at Chicago and is now a data scientist at Lyssn, which does AI tools development for the health industry.
We're excited that UChicago Humanities Division has approved 2 searches for Assistant Professors in Korean Studies this year. One is in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and includes the fields of media, performance, literature, and popular culture: apply.interfolio.com/153011. EOE/Vet/Disability
The last four years have been the best for nonwhite fiction writers in US history, Richard Jean So & I found. But all signs point to backlash. What would it take actually to sustain—& grow? We wrote about it for @theatlantic.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
Vernon Lee's "The Handling of Words" and Edith Rickert's "New Methods for the Study of Literature" offer some other great examples from the 1920s of early quantitative thinking about literature. The latter is discussed in Rachel Buurma and Laura Heffernan's "The Teaching Archive"
Web-based fandoms are intimate publics at scale. @richardjeanso.bsky.social and I use close reading/stats to study the narrative/rhetorical features of fanfic and commentary on AO3. Fandoms are part of literary history, and we show how to study these living archives of reader-response. No paywall!
Can't recommend it enough! She wonders at one point if the black-boxedness of algorithms will throw us into a "New Dark Age," where we must accept algorithmic decisions like "Job accepting his punishment." It's tongue-in-cheek, but she's great at channeling the religious overtones of the discourse.
