tpp
Future Fatigue: How Hype has Replaced Hope in the 21st Century
Gaining traction in the bleakest depths of 2020, Generative AI offered something more than just a tech product. It proposed a way of reimagining the future.
Eryk Salvaggio
Nixon Called
Over at Tech Policy Press, I wrote about the government commission that lead to the creation of the 1974 Privacy Act, and how an expanding AI state puts the values of privacy from government surveillance at risk. The Privacy Act was created as a response to the growing presence of
What's the point of AGI?
It's been a busy few weeks, but I'm on a panel for the latest podcast of Tech Policy Press' "Sunday Show" alongside Borhane Blili-Hamelin and Margaret Mitchell to discuss a paper we co-authored – with a slew of additional authors – called "Stop Treating
Pollen
Einstein Gazing at the Water
New work inspired by the history of diffusion and pollen.
Anatomy of an AI Coup
Elon Musk and DOGE's AI plans are not at all about efficiency, but about centralizing power to a small group of technical elites. A sample:
A Fork in the Road
AI is an excuse that allows those with power to operate at a distance from those whom their power touches.
spawning
Are Other AIs Possible?
We are seeing a generation of tools built without critically rethinking the purposes they are meant to serve or their role in the broader world. Could we do it differently?
The Ugliest Thing San Francisco Ever Built
I have a new article in Tech Policy Press about infrastructure, AI, urban renewal projects and other public works efforts that ended up creating social and physical burdens due to overreach. Here's how it starts: A day after his inauguration, President Donald Trump was joined in the White
A Culture Inside
On David Lynch, AI, and the Myth of Automated Interiority My closest real-life encounter with David Lynch was getting into a Lyft that had just dropped him off at the premiere of Twin Peaks: The Return. A friend and I had planned a trip to Snoqualmie, WA to go to
barthes
Data Prior to Language
If the author is dead, why isn't the LLM?
Dance Like You Don't Have a Body
When Disembodied Systems Want You to Move Note: The following video contains images of AI-generated bodies which some have found deeply un-nerving. If that's not your bag, don't click. In my early 30s I came to realize I had lived through severe bouts of depersonalization growing
It's Interesting Because
On NotebookLM, Fauxthority & Science Fiction 💡Design is storytelling meant to orient people to strange new tech by anchoring them in familiar terms. In that sense, it is a kind of science fiction. Whenever I talk positively about Gen AI, it means going very narrow, at the exclusion of a