As aside, this is one speech Melania didn’t plagiarize from Michelle Obama.

New Episode with Dr. Julie Carpenter: As AI becomes more human, our relationships with it become more complicated.

Listen here. youtu.be/HUylKg_R4EQ

#AI #Technology #Ethics #DigitalCulture

#76 Robot Friends?: A Conversation With Dr. Julie Carpenter YouTube video by The Internet is Crack

I was interviewed on @theinternetiscrack.bsky.social podcast about culture, AI, people, robots, design, ux, governance, ethics, and where the hell we go from here. youtu.be/HUylKg_R4EQ?...

I understand that I am not his target demographic but I do not understand his musical appeal. That solo performance at the 2026 Grammys was completely lackluster (yet praised).

Small animals on small furniture are impossibly adorable.

Or that is a very big dog on a regular sofa.

Earthquake detected 50 miles away. Message via USGS Shake Alert.

Yes, felt that one in SF (Yerba Buena/SoMA)!

Abstract: Socially responsive AI systems such as large language models—a prominent class of generative AI-voice assistants, and social robots are increasingly integrated into everyday emotional life, with users forming bonds that resemble friendship, care, and romantic attachment. This article proposes a five-phase model of designed relationality that explains how interactional patterns, cultural expectations, and affective design collectively scaffold these relationships. Building on Computers as Social Actors (CASA) and contemporary research on human-AI relations, the model identifies recurrent affective logics including Novelty, Emotional Disclosure, Reinforcing Feedback, Relational Rhythm, and Emotional Attachment, and examines how these trajectories emerge across both embodied and disembodied systems. Disruption, disengagement, and rupture are not treated here as a sixth phase, but as a non-linear analytic condition that can interrupt, suspend, or terminate any phase of the relational trajectory. The article situates emotional enmeshment within broader sociotechnical infrastructures, arguing that attachment is not a user error but a predictable outcome of affective engineering. The model offers a framework for evaluating the ethical and psychological stakes of synthetic relationality and highlights the need for design and governance approaches that prioritize transparency, boundaries, and user agency. Title: Human-Al relationships as designed relationality: a sociotechnical model Info: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-02908-y Julie Carpenter Received: 14 July 2025 / Accepted: 2 February 2026 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2026

Legal debates are circling a point my AI & Society paper already makes: design and content aren’t separable in relational systems. These are reusable interaction patterns. My model traces how repetition & responsiveness → attachment. The system works as designed.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Image: Scrabble tiles say "WHO DO YOU SAY I AM." Text reads: Human Enough: Writing Under Machine Judgment Why people adjust, distort, or avoid language in anticipation of automated scrutiny

“Human enough” writing is increasingly whatever a probabilistic model will accept, and authorship credibility is becoming something performed for a nonhuman system. No paywall, "Human Enough: Writing Under Machine Judgment."

jgcarpenter.com/blog.html?bl...

If you submitted an Anthropic claim, I recommend calling them and confirming it. Their system is riddled with errors and issues. Even if you got a confirmation number, maybe check:

1-877-206-2314

Recalibration doesn’t require the lawsuit as the trigger because the conditions for it were already in place. Even if it was pulled before the lawsuit, the criticism predates it. The lawsuit just formalized the problem, they didn’t discover it after.

Even Grammarly's CEO knows the controversial AI-powered Expert Review was 'not a good feature' Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra admitted Grammarly can 'do much better' when asked about the Experts Review feature, which appeared to offer writing advice from living experts without their permission...

Grammarly parent company Superhuman CEO Mehrotra: "...made it clear he does not believe Superhuman owes these experts anything for using their names and how they think" and "he also claimed the lawsuit is 'without merit.'" Pulling it was recalibration, not remorse.

www.techradar.com/ai-platforms...

More like "Cache Patel" amirite?!?!

I like violet candy very much. Enjoy!

Abstract: Socially responsive AI systems such as large language models—a prominent class of generative AI-voice assistants, and social robots are increasingly integrated into everyday emotional life, with users forming bonds that resemble friendship, care, and romantic attachment. This article proposes a five-phase model of designed relationality that explains how interactional patterns, cultural expectations, and affective design collectively scaffold these relationships. Building on Computers as Social Actors (CASA) and contemporary research on human-AI relations, the model identifies recurrent affective logics including Novelty, Emotional Disclosure, Reinforcing Feedback, Relational Rhythm, and Emotional Attachment, and examines how these trajectories emerge across both embodied and disembodied systems. Disruption, disengagement, and rupture are not treated here as a sixth phase, but as a non-linear analytic condition that can interrupt, suspend, or terminate any phase of the relational trajectory. The article situates emotional enmeshment within broader sociotechnical infrastructures, arguing that attachment is not a user error but a predictable outcome of affective engineering. The model offers a framework for evaluating the ethical and psychological stakes of synthetic relationality and highlights the need for design and governance approaches that prioritize transparency, boundaries, and user agency. Title: Human-Al relationships as designed relationality: a sociotechnical model Info: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-026-02908-y Julie Carpenter Received: 14 July 2025 / Accepted: 2 February 2026 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2026

Legal debates are circling a point my AI & Society paper already makes: design and content aren’t separable in relational systems. These are reusable interaction patterns. My model traces how repetition & responsiveness → attachment. The system works as designed.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Did this come from RFK jr’s X account as science fact. #believable

none of this is inevitable, and none of it really flows automatically from the technology. but you do have to fight back, and you do have to be clear-eyed about the fact that people are behind this, not machines.

Cats are bug?

ICE agents detain woman in front of daughter at San Francisco International Airport YouTube video by ABC7 News Bay Area

These unidentified men (confirmed after as ICE agents) grabbed this woman at SFO airport in front of her child. youtu.be/GdvehEu3oAc?...

ICE agents detain woman in front of daughter at San Francisco International Airport YouTube video by ABC7 News Bay Area

These unidentified men (confirmed after as ICE agents) grabbed this woman at SFO airport in front of her child. youtu.be/GdvehEu3oAc?...

🎯

Let me explain the milk thing. The neo-NAZIs, white Christian nationalists, antisemites, groypers, & fellow travelers have an antisemitic conspiracy theory that all Jews are lactose intolerant. So you can signal to others you’re not Jewish by buying/drinking milk & identify Jews because they don’t.

ChatGPT’s ‘Adult Mode’ Could Spark a New Era of Intimate Surveillance OpenAI plans to allow sexting with ChatGPT. A human-AI interaction expert warns of a privacy nightmare.

I spoke with WIRED about ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode” & why sexual interaction with AI should be understood as a privacy issue for users.

Once sexual behavior becomes a marketable part of the system's metrics, the emotional (and data) stakes change. www.wired.com/story/chatgp...

Seriously where was the robot kill switch or staff training so the workers knew where it was and how to use it? This malfunctioning could have resulted in injuries.

Dancing robot goes rogue in hot pot restaurant Video shows restaurant employees struggling to restrain a dancing robot that went rogue in a hot pot restaurant in California. NBC News' Jesse Kirsch reports on the viral video.

A San Jose hot pot restaurant robot threw plates, danced, and wouldn’t let staff move it.

We have entered the “I’m not paid enough for this” phase of automation.

www.nbcnews.com/video/dancin...

The joke there is so layered.

I’m Ashkephardic. Sephkenazy.

This is not just about ethics or even the robot’s technical abilities and limitations. I believe regimes that favor the machismo optics of humanoid robots in war will jump on slick sales pitches and demos that claim efficiencies.

It’s been a steady 85F this week in San Francisco. Many here without A/C, and the sun can be brutal. I feel very lucky to have window shutters and a film over the windows.

ChatGPT’s ‘Adult Mode’ Could Spark a New Era of Intimate Surveillance OpenAI plans to allow sexting with ChatGPT. A human-AI interaction expert warns of a privacy nightmare.

I spoke with WIRED about ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode” & why sexual interaction with AI should be understood as a privacy issue for users.

Once sexual behavior becomes a marketable part of the system's metrics, the emotional (and data) stakes change. www.wired.com/story/chatgp...