ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape

Can a ChatBot break up with you? It turns out it is happening en masse this weekend, as OpenAI deprecates its companionship-friendly ChatGPT "4o" model. This week: a mix tape.

What Language Models Can Do Without Thought

Claims of “intelligence” in AI focus on function: if AI behaves as-if it has a mind, it’s “intelligent.” But behavior is a useless framework when these models are designed explicitly to pass these behavioral tests. Instead, labeling – and debating whether to label – these language machines as AI or AGI

Unreasonable Effectiveness

Seriously: Machines Do Not Need to Think to Be Thought About 💡As I am immersed in PhD research I am at risk of becoming increasingly dense and nerdy. So I am adding a "nerd rating" to posts from now on, evaluating my estimation of how niche a post

Some Things I Did in 2025

In this post I'm highlighting some of my writing, artworks and talks from 2025. If you've been following, I hope you find something worth revisiting. If not, I hope you find something worth checking out. And if you find something of interest, please share it! One

What I Read About AI in 2025

From AGI to Workslop It's time for our annual tradition: a very long list of pieces written about AI this year that have stuck with me, for better or for worse. I've sorted them in alphabetical order by keyword. I acknowledge some weak spots here, chiefly

From Interactive to Interpassive

Where AI Art Meets Cognitive Offloading There is the joke about AI: we wanted robots to do our dishes so we could have time to make art, but we got robots that make art while we do the dishes. We can unpack this joke a bit: somebody is making the

What Was ChatGPT?

A Chatbot Optimized for Social Distance Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, we can finally speak in hindsight about what it was and how it came to be. Its meteoric rise shocked the world, gathering more users in less time than any product launch in history. But that specific

Keeping Secrets From The Numbers

Presenting my latest and final album as The Organizing Committee. The new record, "Keeping Secrets From the Numbers," is available today on Bandcamp, and will be streaming on most platforms (aside from Spotify) in the coming weeks. It will be the last record as The Organizing Committee. When

Thoughts on Hinton

On Consciousness in Programs Geoffrey Hinton recently won a Nobel Prize for his work on backpropagation, a foundational piece of research that contributed to the emergence of contemporary artificial intelligence systems – particularly generative AI systems such as Large Language Models. I recently served as a panelist at the "Who&

Colors and Numbers

I don't identify as neurodivergent, per se, though I’m what’s called a synesthete, which sounds like I am trying to be fancy. Synesthesia is a bit of a superpower – music seems to be much cooler for me than for most other people. On the flip side

Trespassing into Language

I'm Actually At Capacity Right Now I have to apologize for nearly any invocation of Slavoj Zizek or Jacques Lacan, so fair warning. But I want to highlight a point made by Yuxuan Zhang in a paper on the LLM "Unconscious," where he draws on a

What Machines Don't Know

Imagining Language Without Imagination It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterization of LLMs as "next-word predictors" by many anti-AI proponents, and the pro-AI advocates who act as if the model

Is the Media Studies Cabal in the Room With Us Right Now?

I read Benjamin Bratton's book, The Stack, in 2020 as a grad student in ANU's Applied Cybernetics program. I give it credit for directing my attention to the interaction between layers of digital and physical infrastructures. Trained as a social scientist in media studies, my mind

Human Conversation

Technology's Distortions of Language Language is a vessel through which meaning is mutually constructed. From this shared imagination, we learn how others understand and aim to understand them. We also navigate how much of ourselves to put into this space. The imagination space is therefore negotiated through language:

The Audience Makes the Story

Puppetry as Dream Analysis for AI Anxiety This is a discussion between Camila Galaz, Emma Wiseman, and Eryk Salvaggio, collaborators behind an experimental workshop linking puppetry and generative AI that took place at RMIT in Melbourne this summer at the invitation of Joel Stern and the National Communications Museum. We

Human Literacy

Something I Can Tell Students Now That I Am Not Teaching You and I probably both keep hearing that students should be working toward AI literacy. That you should know what to type into prompt windows, because it will save you time. That will get you jobs in the economy

My Father's Data

My father died on June 30 while rescuing a bird trapped inside his garage. While closing a window behind it, he fell from a ladder, lost consciousness, and died. It was the week of his birthday, and he had gone out with three groups of friends over the week. He

net art

Is AI Art Net Art?

Video & prepared remarks for the symposium with Vladan Joler, Valentina Tanni & Eryk Salvaggio examining the transformation and consolidation of the Web from the 1990s up to the age of generative AI.

policy

In Copyright ‘Wins’ for AI, Judges Leave Room for Future Defeats

My latest piece in Tech Policy Press examines two AI copyright rulings and the legal rationales that will likely be setting precedent beyond the the short-term legal victories.

The Black Box Myth

If you missed it, my piece in Tech Policy Press tackles the relationship the AI industry has with uncertainty: using what they don't know about AI as evidence that they're right, or that it should be feared, or that it can't be properly regulated.

Complete Accuracy Collapse

A new paper from Apple proves what I've discussed before – that so-called "reasoning" models aren't doing much reasoning at all – but now that is clear even by the bizarre industry definitions of the term. The researchers created a series of puzzles with similar problem-solving

talks

The Decision Not to Decide

Interfaces, and design of all kinds, exercise decision-making. Decision making is a form of power. What, then, is generative AI for design?

democracy

Democracy & the AI Question

Remarks from an in-person debate, 'L’IA en question, questions à l’IA', a two-day event at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on May 24/25. The event focused on debates about the role of AI in contemporary society.

talks

Human Noise, AI Filters: "Mr. Watson, Come Here."

Remarks on AI, Noise, and Creative Misuse for the Artificial Intelligence & Contemporary Creation conference, 24 May 2025 at the Jeu de Paume, Paris.