Many congratulations to Dr Anneli Jefferson
who has been awarded a
✨ Leverhulme Fellowship ✨
to work on her book
📕 Responsibility Through the Lifespan
Llongyfarchiadau mawr, Anneli!
#philsky @annelijefferson.bsky.social
Exeter’s got a two-year teaching stint for someone into philosophy of data and related - the job’s pretty plush as far as non-permanent ones go - and Exeter is an amazing place to do this kind of philosophy - please pass around! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQZ094/l... #philsci
Lucy Osler at the Exchange
At the AI psychosis, Hearing Voices, & Suicidality workshop, Lucy Osler talks about the interaction between users & chatbots, the narration process that shapes our experiences, the emotional import of the evaluative lens that AI imposes on distressing situations #BPF2026 #philosophymatters #philsky
Celebrating the sunshine finally emerging in Exeter with Another Sad Philosophy Workshop today!
New paper in @autisminadulthood.bsky.social exploring autistic adults embodied experiences of offline and online sociality.
The paper is co-authored with @joelkrueger.com, and funded by @carlsbergfondet.dk.
#Autism #Neurodiversity #Phenomenology #Embodiment
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Dr @lucyosler.bsky.social from @exeterspspa.bsky.social spoke to BBC Radio Devon about why people turn to AI to find love and build relationships❤️
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
more work in progress stuff on my end. I recommend Archer & Robb’s paper on the ethics of parasocial relationships. Also not a Phil paper but I’ve been teaching Kuwort and Emory Jr.’s work on one and a half sided PSRs.
#philsky
Call for papers ::
Speech and Society: Contemporary Philosophy of Language
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Emma Borg
Professor Jennifer Mather Saul
Conference dates: 24-25 June
Abstract deadline: 2 April
Full details:
Bright red book cover with the title and author's name in black.
Dr Daisy Dixon's new book ––
DEPRAVED: The Story of Dangerous Art
–– an analysis of the varieties of immoral art and the ways that we should respond to it ––
is now available to preorder!
Waterstones are offering a 25% discount until 20 February – used code FEB26: bit.ly/Dixon-DSDA
#philsky
Now out in Philosophy & Technology!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
😮 I’m flattered!
Currently on a bus in Bristol, heading to this awesome event -- great poster, for starters!
Attendance is free and hybrid but does require registration.
Programme in the registration links ✨
In person registration (limited spaces): docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Online registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Just one week til our “Social AI: A Philosophy Workshop”
🌟We will be joined by Pii Telakivi, Rob Clowes, Kris Goffin, Shahd Omar, Kesavan Thenagopal, Mike Barnes, Mercedes Corredor, Ben White, Leda Bario, Allister Lee, Àger Pérez Casanovas, Shane Glackin, Tom Roberts, & Joel Krueger 🌟
✨ Many congratulations to Thom Hamer, whose PhD viva was this afternoon and was passed with flying colours!
Thom’s thesis title is:
Rethinking the Absurdity of Life: A Metaexistential Inquiry
Llongyfarchiadau mawr, Dr Hamer! Gefeliciteerd! 🎓
The CFP for the one-day pre-conference workshop “The Power of (Dis-)Placing: Affect, Practice and the Political” is open until the 15th of feb. Send your abstracts (500w) to imke.von.maur[at]ku.de with the subject ‘EPSSE 2026 Pre-conference’
Coming soon: my new book *The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction*. More info - including three very generous blurbs from @davidgunkel.bsky.social, @briandavidearp.bsky.social, & Crystal L'Hote, PhD - here: hackettpublishing.com/new-forthcom...
#aiethics #philosophy
“feral gossip” is such an excellent coinage from @lucyosler.bsky.social and @joelkrueger.com to describe the way LLMs amplify gossip about real people as they pass slop back and forth between training sets.
www.vice.com/en/article/a...
We use @kevinroose.com’s wild experience with Sydney as our core example
Full article here link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#philsky
The AI gossip paper @joelkrueger.com and I wrote got picked up by Vice! We argue that chatbots generate gossip about people and consider how this gossip becomes ‘feral’ without the social constraints that usually moderate human rumor-spreading
🗣️🤖💬🫢
www.vice.com/en/article/a...
Daisy Dixon and I have a friendly-critical review of Dominic Lopes’s *Aesthetic Injustice* out in the new issue of Ethics.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
We’re at the 63rd Maudsley Debate on ‘The Chatbot will see you now: This house believes AI will do more harm than good to the nation's mental health. #MaudsleyDebate
Loving the anachronistic mood of getting ready for a Christmas debate later today! Paired with a good old fashioned risk of a family argument, as my dad’s attending 🫣
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/63rd-mauds...
Three AHRC PhD Scholarships available for Humanities subjects at Exeter, including Philosophy! February deadline, see link for details:
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...
Cheeky little chapter on Knowing oneself with and through AI for an edited volume forthcoming in 2026 🤗
Had fun playing around with the move from Clark and Chalmers’ Otto to Rob Clowes’ Cloud-Otto to my LLM-Otto 📓☁️🤖
Really excited to be organising this one. Such a fantastic group of speakers. I can’t wait to discuss with them about what atmospheres are, how they unfold and why they matter.
With @lucyosler.bsky.social @keithallenyork.bsky.social @reaveyp.bsky.social
@joelkrueger.com
@reaveyp.bsky.social
Can’t wait for this!
New from the band formerly known as Hearing the Voice...a short paper about felt presence and early psychosis.
We report some basic links to things like fear and quoted examples from our "Voices in Psychosis" study 1/3
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Abstract deadline tomorrow if anyone is interested in joining us in Exeter in February to talk all things Social AI!
I totally agree and I don’t want to suggest that only bad things happen in interactions with social AI, I’m interested in the wide variety of experiences people have. My broader interest, though, is how we can all construct realities with AI that are increasingly personalised and self-involving