Ashley Scarlett
ashleyscarlett.bsky.social
Ashley Scarlett
@ashleyscarlett.bsky.social
Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts researching/writing about intersections between art and algorithmic culture.
Pinned
New publication with Philosophy of Photography questions what it means to look at images of atrocity within contexts defined by their financialization, instrumentalization, and deployment within machine learning and AI applications.

intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...
Learning from atrocity: When machines regard the pain of others | Intellect
The images that have emerged from Gaza, capturing catastrophic violence inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, are atrocious, haunting, injurious. Gaza-based photojournalist Mot...
intellectdiscover.com
UNREAL. A very well-written and rather unsettling must-read...

harpers.org/archive/2025...
The Goon Squad, by Daniel Kolitz
Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation
harpers.org
October 24, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Yet another *excellent* episode of The Data Fix!
September 8, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
“Any attempt to encourage people to treat AI systems with respect should be understood as an attempt to make people defer to corporate interests. It might have value to corporations, but there is no value for you.”
lareviewofbooks.org/article/life...
Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem | Los Angeles Review of Books
Julien Crockett speaks with Ted Chiang about the search for a perfect language, the state of AI, and the future direction of technology.
lareviewofbooks.org
September 2, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
My follow-up article on synthesis in gen AI is now out 💥💥💥
 
Responding to @shanedenson.bsky.social
response, I expand on my transcendental argument about LLMs and develop the case for a structuralist reading of Kantian synthesis.

Available Open Access ⬇️

journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/ph...
July 10, 2025 at 9:39 AM
A remarkable archive of early computer art (80 individual works!?) up for auction, drawn from Grace C. Hertlein's personal collection. Very curious where this will end up...

www.sothebys.com/en/buy/aucti...
Algorithmic Art | History of Science & Technology, Including the "Romkey" Apple-1 | Science | Sotheby's
<p>Algorithmic Art&nbsp;</p><p>An Extensive Archive of Early Computer Art, 1950s-70s</p><p><br></p><p>Comprising of approximately 80 works: 53 unframed works on paper, 17 unframed works on paper under...
www.sothebys.com
July 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
Full Statement by UK FM Lammy:

"Israel’s actions are intolerable"

"repellent"

"monstrous"

"I condemn it"

"morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counter-productive"

"The world is judging. History will judge them."

"This is indefensible and it must stop."
May 20, 2025 at 3:15 PM
An accessible and informative read for anyone interested in learning more about the particularities of the housing crisis in Canada. Highly recommended!!

Thank you @cwhitzman.bsky.social !!

www.ubcpress.ca/home-truths
Home Truths
Home Truths - Fixing Canada's Housing Crisis; With Canadians burdened by the world’s highest household debt after decades of failed housing policy, Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis shows wh...
www.ubcpress.ca
May 16, 2025 at 7:02 PM
New publication with Philosophy of Photography questions what it means to look at images of atrocity within contexts defined by their financialization, instrumentalization, and deployment within machine learning and AI applications.

intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...
Learning from atrocity: When machines regard the pain of others | Intellect
The images that have emerged from Gaza, capturing catastrophic violence inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, are atrocious, haunting, injurious. Gaza-based photojournalist Mot...
intellectdiscover.com
May 8, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Somehow managed to miss this when it first came out:

knowingmachines.org/models-all-t...

Well worth the read, if you haven't already!

And many thanks to @bildoperationen.bsky.social and/on The Data Fix podcast (@melhogan.bsky.social) for bringing it to my attention!
Models All The Way Down
LAION-5B is an open-source foundation dataset. It contains 5.8 billion image and text pairs—a size too large to make sense of. We follow the construction of the dataset to better understand its conten...
knowingmachines.org
May 8, 2025 at 4:47 AM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
Promise vs reality: "Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests" arstechnica.com/ai/2025/05/t...
Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests
Survey of 2023–2024 data finds that AI created more tasks for 8.4 percent of workers.
arstechnica.com
May 4, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
As we talk about Microsoft and Amazon pulling back on data center projects, don’t ignore what’s happening in China, where “projects are failing, energy is being wasted, and data centers have become ‘distressed assets’ whose investors are keen to unload them at below-market rates.”
China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused.
The country poured billions into AI infrastructure, but the data center gold rush is unraveling as speculative investments collide with weak demand and DeepSeek shifts AI trends.
www.technologyreview.com
May 1, 2025 at 3:36 AM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
Nothing captures the pathologies of mainstream media quite so clearly as the intimate relationship between the New York Times and far-right activist Christopher Rufo - who relies on the NYT to launder his disingenuous crusades, has said so himself publicly, and yet they keep obliging.

Great thread:
Rufo would "like to see that prototype [what's happened at Columbia and elsewhere] industrialized and applied to all of the universities as a sector" and that he would like "to reduce the size of the [higher education] sector itself."
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/p...
The Conservative Activist Pushing Trump to Attack U.S. Colleges
Christopher Rufo has helped inspire Republican messaging and bills on hot-button issues.
www.nytimes.com
April 11, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
The below walks you through how to delete your DNA data from 23andMe before it goes bankrupt.
March 24, 2025 at 3:27 AM
Anyone know of dataset audits/analyses that consider inclusion/use/role of non-photographic images within machine vision modelling?
February 7, 2025 at 8:01 PM
I was sick with the flu recently and tried to cure myself with rest and a generous dose of bad reality tv. I still can't get into housewives series/spin-offs/similar, but whenever I try, I'm reminded of this fun and worthwhile NYT read from about six-ish years ago: www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/s...
The Sound of ‘Housewives’ Everywhere (Published 2018)
Behind the scenes with the men who make America’s favorite “ladies” into drama queens.
www.nytimes.com
January 17, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Ashley Scarlett
I am collecting examples of the most thoughtful writing about generative AI published in 2024. What’s yours? They can be insightful for commentary, smart critique, or just because it shifted the conversation. I’ll post some of mine below as I go through them. #criticalAI
December 2, 2024 at 4:09 AM
Special Issue of Afterimage on Art and the Algorithmic (Summer 2023) now open access!

online.ucpress.edu/afterimage/i...
Volume 50 Issue 2 | Afterimage | University of California Press
online.ucpress.edu
November 27, 2024 at 4:59 AM
We're hiring! Open expertise! Application due in 5 days - DM with any questions!

can242.dayforcehcm.com/CandidatePor...
Job opportunity at Alberta University of the Arts - Permanent Faculty, School of Critical and Creative Studies - Liberal Studies
can242.dayforcehcm.com
November 25, 2024 at 6:39 PM