Temporalities of AI What are the temporalities of neural networks? How do machines encode time, and how do they structure our experience of time? What are the consequences of a neural network’s attempt to simulate tempor...

Our “Temporalities of AI” symposium starts tomorrow in Rome, and will be free to stream over Zoom on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. Here’s more info & the schedule! www.biblhertz.it/events/45218...

As OpenAI makes the same sort of restricted release for 5.5, I think it’s important to remember that what David is saying here about evading distillation could be the really significant shift — even if it’s also true that these systems find a lot of vulnerabilities in code.

Verhaltensscanner und Palantir: Was das Wahlergebnis in Baden-Württemberg sicherheitspolitisch bedeutet Das baden-württembergische Landtagswahlergebnis gibt der grün-schwarzen Koalition freie Hand für ihre Überwachungspläne. Geht es nach den Spitzenpolitikern, kann bald jedes Dorf videoüberwacht werden,...

«Beide Spitzenkandidaten, Cem Özdemir von den Grünen und Manuel Hagel von der CDU, wollen Palantir-artige Datenanalysen. Nur will Özdemir aufgrund ethischer Bedenken nicht die Original-Software aus den USA nutzen, sondern lieber mit Partnern aus Europa eine Alternative entwickeln.»

Just Published: 'The Infrastructural Unconscious: Do Computers Dream of Carbo-Silico Pipelines?' in "Reckoning with Everything: The Becoming-Environmental of Computing" edited by Bernhard Siegert and Benedikt Merkle, and published by @mesonpress.bsky.social .

Dylan Riley (@rileysociology) I may be a bit late to the game on this, but I saw something today that alarmed me. Two professors on line were essentially boasting about how they use AI to make decisions about what constitutes a “s...

Agreed.
substack.com/@rileysociol...

✨ We’re excited to share the first articles from AI & ARCHIVES — a special issue of the new journal Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society (Cambridge University Press). www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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#2 Critical AI Seminar Series: Vector Media January 13, 17:30-19:00 (CEST): Vector Media This talk presents a new history and theory of the vector space in contemporary artificial intelligence systems. I will argue that the inevitable bias of s...

✨Welcoming Fabian Offer for the next #CriticalAI Seminar (online) on his upcoming book "Vector Media" on January 13, 2026 5:30-7 PM (Amsterdam)✨

The talk presents a new history and theory of the vector space in contemporary #AI systems

🗓️ Register here: www.create.humanities.uva.nl/events/2-cri...

CfP ✨Consider submitting to this fantastic panel on Deep Learning and Culture at the STS NL Conference ✨

Organised by @louravn.bsky.social @annaschjoett.bsky.social Dasha Simons, Paula Helm and Tobias Blanke (@d-eepculture.bsky.social)

❗ We are urgently looking for a new Lecturer in Cultural Data & AI at the University of Amsterdam: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

The deadline for applying is very soon: Jan 4th.

You’ll work with @tpoell.bsky.social, @riederb.bsky.social, @dluitse.bsky.social, @louravn.bsky.social, me, & more

I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...

🚨 Call for presentations: “Deep Learning and Culture” panel

🔍 We're organizing a panel on “Deep Learning and Culture” at the STS NL Conference (Uni of Twente, 17-19 April 2026).

📮 Please submit your abstract here: www.utwente.nl/en/bms/sts-n.... Deadline: 07 Jan. 2026.

See you there :)

We are excited to report that we have started developing our first *Little Tools of Difference*.

While deep learning has been driven by a culture of uniformity, we asked: What if we used these same state-of-the-art architectures to do the opposite?

More prototypes are coming soon, so stay tuned!

What happens when synthetic data are used in development contexts? My new article examines this question, arguing that critical research on synthetic data should consider data justice issues. Accordingly, the paper outlines avenues for #syntheticdatajustice.

🔗: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Want to know more about #syntheticdata #assetization, #blockchain and #cloudinfrastructures in #finance? In this paper for @financeandspace.bsky.social , I talk about those topics, plus how synthetic data might be reworking financial #subjectivities! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨 CfP: Boundaries & boundary concepts in/as datafication 🚨

🔍 Together with the amazing @dropsmops.bsky.social and Sarah Davies, I'm organizing a workshop on boundaries & boundary concepts in datafication. Please see our flyer below for more details.

📅 19-20 Feb. 2026, University of Amsterdam.

Keywords are not neutral.

With Tobias Blanke, we investigate the power of keywords as interpretive tools in our work "Keywords in Digital Humanities: A critical assessment of computational techniques for mapping security and freedom in historical debates".

You can read the article now on DHQ!

Interview with Louis Ravn Louis Ravn is a PhD Candidate on Deep Culture at the University of Amsterdam, working in the fields of science and technology studies and critical data/AI studies. Moreover, he is assistant editor for...

Super fun to contribute to this brief interview with Terminally Online, a student-led organization on New Media at the University of Amsterdam.

We spoke about my wonderful team‘s research (@d-eepculture.bsky.social), who inspires me, and some of my own work.

🔗: www.linkedin.com/pulse/interv...

New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.

I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say The company’s lawyers intervened to shape research that might have shed light on risks in virtual reality, four current and former staffers have told Congress. Meta denies the allegations.

this is the industry governments want to hand over education and other societal infrastructure

www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

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no way, is this in NL?

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We are starving My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid.

“My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza's children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them.”

www.972mag.com/hunger-gaza-...

Weil gerade wieder davon die Rede ist, dass «Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion» ja gar keine «echte» Diversität schaffe: So schaut der faschistische Kampf gegen DEI in den USA aus. Es beginnt mit Zensur und endet in der Verfolgung von Marginalisierten bsky.app/profile/bild...

Das Fahrlässige an Kaubes Text ist, wie er der eigenen Frage ausweicht: «Hat Thiel einen Masterplan?», fragt er zu Beginn – um mit der These zu schliessen, die «politischen Thesen und theologischen Spekulationen» Thiels seien «nur private Marotten». Doch diese «Marotten» haben politische Effekte
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Artificial Intelligence and the ethics of navigating ambiguity - SJ Bennett, 2025 This paper examines ambiguity within AI practice, arguing for an ethics of AI which stays with fundamental ambiguities and accounts for their complex socio-mate...

🎉 A lovely wedding present from Big Data & Society! I bring together an ethnographic study of AI practitioners with Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, exploring how ambiguity shapes AI practice and ethics
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very excited to share this. It was an absolute joy to work with @louravn.bsky.social @velocitygravity.bsky.social and my good buddy @matthewarcher.bsky.social

🌞 We are hugely grateful that our commentary is part of the exciting thematic collection on “Politics of Machine Learning Evalustion“, awesomely edited by @dluitse.bsky.social, @annaschjoett.bsky.social, and Tobias Blanke. Also, we warmly thank the two anonymous reviewers!

Unraveling the Regimes of Synthetic Data Metrics: Expectations, Ethics, and Politics - Digital Society Synthetic data - artificially produced data used for various data science tasks - have become the subject of intense scholarly interest, engendering both hope and hype in fields like machine learning ...

🌟 New commentary “Unraveling the Regimes of Synthetic Data Metrics“ in Digital Society: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📚 In it, @velocitygravity.bsky.social , @matthewarcher.bsky.social, @danishanley.bsky.social, and I argue that synth data metrics are linked to the politics of synth data.

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