There’s a story we tell ourselves, a lullaby, really, which is that science fiction is a predictor of the terrain of that magical land, always just over the horizon, ‘the future.’ This story is deeply embedded in the consciousness of US’ians, (no, I’m not calling people from the US alone ‘Americans’ as if the rest…
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In this essay, published for The Nation magazine, I argue that the primarily purpose of the application of generative methods to the production of images (what some insist upon calling AI art) is the creation of an assembly line. Art without artists, produced via automation. Fordism Comes to the Gallery
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When we think about the tech industry, images of smoothly functioning machines, moving the world inexorably towards a brilliant future, may dance across your mind. This is no accident; the industry, since its birth in the 1990s (in its present form, deriving profits from software and the proliferation of software methods as broadly as possible)…
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Several years ago, there was a mini-trend of soft documentaries depicting what would happen to the built environment if humans somehow disappeared from the Earth. How long, for example, would untended skyscrapers punch against the sky before they collapsed in spectacular, downward cascading showers of steel and glass onto abandoned streets? These are the sorts…
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What should we think about AI? To corporate boosters and their camp followers (an army of relentless shouters) , so-called artificial intelligence is a world altering technology, sweeping across the globe like a wave made from the plots of forgotten science fiction novels. Among critics, thoughts are more varied. Some focus on debunking hyped claims,…
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[In this post, I imagine that I’m writing to a researcher who, disappointed, and perhaps confused by the seemingly unstoppable corporate direction their field is taking, needs a bit of, well, not cheering up precisely but, something to help them understand what it all means and how to resist] My friend, Listen, I know you’ve…
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I’m writing this quickly, as if it’s a dispatch from the front because ideas – and memories – are flowing rather freely and I want to get it all down while synapses are hot. A bit of establishing preamble… This post is inspired by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank – today’s topic for social…
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A few years ago, I started this very blog, devoted, as the subtitle reads, to “AI industry analysis without hype and techbro-ism.” Writing, when seriously pursued (whether money is exchanged or not) is a demanding activity, requiring time and often, a reduced number of social interactions, things that are becoming ever scarcer in our decaying…
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I have avoided writing about ChatGPT as one might hurriedly walk past a group of co-workers, gathered around a box of donuts who’re talking about a popular movie or show; to avoid being drawn into the inevitable. In some circles, certainly the circles I travel in, ChatGPT is the relentless talk of the town. Everyone…
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There’s a temptation, if you are, or were, a Twitter user (and perhaps, even if you aren’t since we all must comment on everything, everywhere all the time now) to have an opinion about that platform and its current state. For some, it’s a tale of paradise lost, of all yesterday’s parasocial parties, ruined by…
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