Rdg lots of stuff acknowledging mounting public *fear* of AI. Yes, I’m glad there’s more attention to the aversion — but it’s more than fear: it’s distrust, resentment, disgust, the Spectrum of Justified Bad Affect. “Fear” implies a phobia one can conquer with exposure, understanding, etc.
I just stopped by Printed Matter, where they were hosting a Parsons class. Craig, their bookshop director, told me that last year, class instructors commonly asked shop staff to pull artists’ books that exemplify 🎨 use of AI; now, students are asking to see material that offers an *antidote* to AI ✊
I think there’s a lot for Critical AI to learn from the mass society / propaganda roots of comm studies — and radical publishing + radio — of the early 20th c; the TV critics + radical media collectives / community media centers of the 60s + 70s…
I hate-read some Internet Theorist Guys’ newsletters. I appreciate this hot take from one thinker’s recent missive: “This [phenomenon] also tracks my theory that the AI era is an extension of the algorithm era, not a total sea change.” Whoa 🤯 A Brand-New Theory™️ of Historiography.
So many subway ads for genAI agents promising to make “killer pitch decks” – for more stupid AI agents, no doubt
Love the framing of this Times article: AI has *created* 13 new kinds of jobs at Box! Sure, you’ve invested so much in this crap, you now have to hire techs to shoehorn it into places it’s not needed, barkers + evangelists to talk up its use, folks to fix its errors and security vulnerabilities,,,
After Leo's AI encyclical, I saw several folks praise his (novel) framing of communication as *ecological*. The recent Atlantic article on reading has also incited calls for ecological views of technological / media change. McLuhan referenced "media ecology" in '64; Postman built a field around it.
