The AI Industry's Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a Cliff Huge AI infrastructure deals assume that algorithms will keep improving with scale. They may not.

Huge AI infrastructure deals assume that algorithms will keep improving with scale. They may not.

“Perhaps his most fundamental heresy was the belief that the computer revolution, which Weizenbaum not only lived through but centrally participated in, was actually a counter-revolution. It strengthened repressive power structures instead of upending them.”

My book ms "The Inattention Economy: Seeing the Digital Labor of Women of Color” is in production at the University of Minnesota Press. So grateful to Anne Carter and Leah Pennywark at UMP. It's a book about how the work of digital infrastructure became women of colors' work and thus invisible

Suggestion: stop talking about AI as “hype,” start talking about AI as a (very real) political and ideological instrument.

The Hottest AI Job of 2023 Is Already Obsolete Prompt engineering, a role aimed at crafting the perfect input to send to a large language model, was poised to become one of the hottest jobs in artificial intelligence. What happened?

I don’t think anyone in tech believed that “prompt engineer” was going to be a real job. Better prompts improve results at the margins, sure, but not so much that years out we need classes of people performing that function and not at scale that replaces anything.

www.wsj.com/articles/the...

"A new dataset, visualized as maps, reveals the extent to which African workers are indirectly employed in the tech sector, doing content moderation, customer service, and data annotation for AI models, among other jobs." restofworld.org/2025/big-tec...

Returning to #DH spaces - meets - physically this April has reminded me of why I do what I do…. In multiple modes of text-il-ing …and multiple dataspaces and multiple visualizing spaces .

Time to move on to other warp experimented …

#whyreturn and #toolingaround

#DHmakes 🤩

Global DH cookie #msuglobaldh

Between the printing presses, the sheep herding, the spinning, the knitting/crochet/weaving, #DHmakes is ready to survive, rebuild, and spread the word!

Shout out to @roopikarisam.bsky.social at the #msuglobaldh

In person sessions begin #msuglobaldh2025

DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data DOGE operatives have repeatedly referred to the software company Palantir as a possible partner in creating a “mega API” at the IRS, sources tell WIRED.

SCOOP: DOGE is hosting a “hackathon” in DC next week with the goal of building one “mega API” for accessing all IRS data.

Palantir has been brought up as a potential partner.

www.wired.com/story/doge-h...

And to remind ourselves also that the textiles industry “before machines” was also complicit in settler colonialism and exploitative labor practices.

Will your data save the world or justify more settler colonialists?…

Pondering the #DH question of “but can you code” and how with a few exceptions such as #dhmakes we take that to mean we have to be engineers or “hard core” quantitative experts to do DH … I want to as … “but can you weave”? “But can you spin yarn” ?

Prepping for a keynote last minute as always….

LIVE: Cory Booker speaks on the Senate floor YouTube video by Associated Press

A Black man just beat the record for the longest filibuster, defeating the record previously held by a man who filibustered the literal Civil Rights Act.

As the time ticked over, Cory Booker announced he did it not out of hatred for who he opposed, but out of love for those who supported him.

Photo of Cory Booker in a black suit and tie

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cory Booker breaks the record for longest Senate speech, previously held by segregationist Strom Thurmond.

¡Oradora Principal highlight!
Estamos encantados de anunciar que la Dra. Radhika Gajjala @cyberdivalive.bsky.social regresa como oradora principal en el Global Digital Humanities Symposium 2025! 🎉 Presentará en persona el 8 de abril—¡no te lo pierdas! #MSUGlobalDH

Nothing to see - just me prepping for tomorrow zoom with Leeds …

And cheers to cooking up more collabs!

Thrilled to have organised this panel on Sexuality,Mobility,Belonging & to be in conversation with such brilliant, critical colleagues! The audience engagement was fantastic, with thoughtful questions on political blackness, queer joy, & activism in these challenging times @cyberdivalive.bsky.social

Was honored to be respondent to a fabulous panel at #aas convention in Columbus - panel put together by @rkdasgupta.bsky.social (with whom I’ve been in conversation for years but only just finally met in person).