BlogFlock
I have to apologize for nearly any invocation of Slavoj Zizek or Jacques Lacan, so fair warning. But I want to highlight a point made by Yuxuan Zhang in a paper on the LLM "Unconscious," where he draws on a favorite joke of Zizek:…
Greetings all,
Well it’s officially fall here in LA. You can tell because we have experienced our annual day of rain and the city’s infrastructure nearly collapsed in on itself as a result. Always a good time! This week, we tally up the AI law scorecard in California and consider…
In my update over the summer, I had to make an admission: I’d only read eight books so far during the year — well behind my goal. Over the past three months, I’m happy to say I’ve made some progress. My tally has risen to eighteen, with more to come…
It's important to acknowledge that Large Language Models are complex. There's an oversimplified binary in online chatter between the dismissive characterization of LLMs as "next-word predictors" by many anti-AI proponents, and the pro-AI advocates who act as if the model is a perfect replica of the…
In late 2024, billboards and bus stop posters bearing the slogan STOP HIRING HUMANS started showing up in San Francisco and New York. The ad spots, which turned out to be the handiwork of the enterprise AI company Artisan, went viral, buffeted by an outpouring of rage on social media.…
I read Benjamin Brattons book, The Stack, in 2020 as a grad student in ANU's Applied Cybernetics program. I give it credit for directing my attention to the interaction between layers of digital and physical infrastructures. Trained as a social scientist in media studies, my mind must have been filling…
OpenAI has been on a desperate quest to build an AI monopoly from just about the moment that ChatGPT blew up. Its CEO, Sam Altman, has been following the playbook of his mentor Peter Thiel, who has long held that the best way to succeed in tech is to create…
Greetings all,
Hope everyone’s hanging in, hammers at the ready. So, I know I promised a podcast in the last newsletter, but, well, I blew it on the recording. I am not, I regret to inform you, an audio engineer, and the sound quality just wasn’t there. However! The…
Hello friends, fam, and luddites -
Speaking of luddites, I was completely and pleasantly surprised to see the last post blow up. It turns out there is a lot of interest in and support for a Luddite Renaissance, as the organizers of one event described it; for organized protest…
Greetings all,
Hope everyone’s hanging in there. Another week, another slipslide into fascism. The Kirk killing has, as many anticipated, served as a pretext for the Trump administration and its allies to begin a concerted attack on its critics and opposition. Trump designated ‘Antifa’ as a terrorist group, despite…
Tech critic Paris Marx provides the critical take on Silicon Valley you’ve been missing
1 post last monthA newsletter about taking control of our attention and finding a more human side of the internet. Featured in Wired and Rolling Stone.
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