It’s time to declare the political and imaginative failure of the hype-shouting school of critical AI.
16.09.2025 15:00
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It’s time to declare the political and imaginative failure of the hype-shouting school of critical AI.
Worker: I sell my labor for a wage. They determine my wage.
Leonardo Journal's explanation of Art History vs. What they publish: Is the artist dead? --> then Art History. (Why did I never think of it this way??)
Almost every contemporary critique of technology and society that I read can be traced back to Haraway’s ideas but takes too long to say so or never does. I think we need to just call it Harawayism or ‘Harawayist critique’ as shorthand to move forward. Similar to how Marxist critique is used etc
Moral rights of an artist — in some countries (not the US) —is the recognition that an artwork is the extension of the personhood of an artist. To defile an artist’s work is to defile their personhood.
The Ghibli AI filter brings up Moral rights - an artist’s personal and reputational connection to their work, distinct from copyright's economic rights. They include the right of attribution (to be recognized as the author) and the right of integrity (to prevent distortion or mutilation of the work)
Umich shut down all of its DEI programs yesterday. And I can't stop thinking about how a couple of years ago when grad students were striking, the admin spent top dollar to lawyer up and fight grads at all costs and the president hired a security outfit to protect him from grads.
I’m still trying to understand why so much money went into developing AI image generators. To replace the niche field of illustration? Bunch of companies sat down and said “you know what could make us a lot of money?? Automated illustration!”
AI image generators make the same mistakes that Intro Drawing students make in the 1st art class. They think that it is a word, or a concept, that is to be drawn. Human students quickly learn words get in the way. AI is programmed so that words are always the route to the image.
Things that happen in the Netherlands that would never happen in the US. Imagine ALL faculty at in a single state going on strike together, let alone across the whole country
Key takeaways.. lots of ideas around analog: analog as intervention, analog computing, analog as pessimism, pessimism as the new norm, creative writing as archiving against google maps, microtonal hauntology, and performance art as rage against the attention-economy machine
This past weekend I gave keynote lecture on Promiscuous Ontologies and Making VR Art in Times of Crisis at the SUNY Buffalo Media Study Grad conference held at Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art. The grad presentations were excellent!
www.thebica.org/events/world...
Presden rump s Delverng on Hs Commmen o Proec our Kds February 3, 2025 Las week, Presden Donald J. rump ook execuve acon o proec Amercan chldren from rreversble chemcal and surgcal mulaon.
A reminder that I made a Chrome extension that removes the letters T, Q, and I from every .gov website, since Trump banned those letters from appearing in conjunction with LGB on U.S. government websites. github.com/samplerealit...
The best thing on social media right now is the reddit thread by federal workers r/fednews www.reddit.com/r/fednews/co...
ARRG! (The Algorithmic Resistance Research Group) has a paper on critical artistic misuse of gen AI in the Critical AI journal (@criticalai-journal.bsky.social). Here's a pre-proofed copy of the paper, co-written with @carolinesinders.bsky.social and @supercomposite.bsky.social! #criticalAI
Another way that Musk is definitely a fascist is his leadership of the secular anti-abortion pronatalist movement, which is basically a recreation of Mussolini's Battle for Births program. Secular pronatalism as nation building rather than as religious dogma is a hallmark of fascism
Trump’s anti-trans Executive Order is bad BUT it technically defines everyone as female. It states:
“'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell."
Since all fetuses "at conception" are female, Trump just defined EVERYONE as female.
that moment when gender is definitely an unchangable biological truth so you have to enforce it via fascistic law
In any case, my heart goes out to all of the people of LA ... I love this city too. And my heart goes out to the people everywhere who live in a place that has been burning down. And thanks to the taxi driver for reminding me to think about this.
I love Detroit, but it is crazy that we don't talk about how many people have died in house fires in the past few years. Except this one guy who chases every fire and documents the death toll. www.metrotimes.com/news/consume...
Everyone wanted to get away from the post-apocalyptic Robocop reputation, Detroiters love their city. It's an amazing place and I love it. My parents emigrated to Detroit. My dad worked in a car factory. My grandfather is buried in Mt Olivet cemetery. It's the only US where I have ancestors buried.
Fires in Detroit are so normal that I forgot about it until the LA taxi driver asked me about it tonight. No one really talks about it in the local media even. There's a saying in the city now "don't say bad things about Detroit". Detroiters got sick of talking about how down and out Detroit is.
And the fire hydrants are broken. The fires are listed often as arson but they aren't investigated. A lot of times it's from people using space heaters or from old knob & tube wiring. My friend's house burned down a few years ago when she wasn't home because of knob & tube wiring.
Between 2015-2017, 10,000 structures burned down in Detroit and 120 people died. Things got better for a while then in 2022 fires went up again. They're not wild fires so they aren't listed in wild fire stats. The fuel is not dry forests, it's empty houses brought about by economic devastation.
Actually Detroit has been the #1 city with the most house fires per capita for a long time. There were 4 house fires on my street in the past few months. My neighbor died. It was 5 houses down from me, the ashes fell on my front porch. It wasn't even on the local news.