Cybernetic Forests
@cyberneticforests.bsky.social
Alt feed of @eryk.bsky.social focused on sharing good things I am reading lately (arts x critical tech x media) https://mail.cyberneticforests.com/
Pinned
This account exists but will likely be an automated announcement feed for future newsletters — for the most part I’m just @eryk.bsky.social!
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In two weeks from now, on May 13 at 6:30pm, the amazing Eryk Salvaggio @cyberneticforests.bsky.social will come to Zurich to speak about «Embodied Generativity: Critical AI, Art & the Body» at ZHdK, presented by @zkk-zurich.bsky.social
www.zentrumkuensteundkulturtheorie.ch//veranstaltu...
www.zentrumkuensteundkulturtheorie.ch//veranstaltu...
April 29, 2025 at 1:40 PM
In two weeks from now, on May 13 at 6:30pm, the amazing Eryk Salvaggio @cyberneticforests.bsky.social will come to Zurich to speak about «Embodied Generativity: Critical AI, Art & the Body» at ZHdK, presented by @zkk-zurich.bsky.social
www.zentrumkuensteundkulturtheorie.ch//veranstaltu...
www.zentrumkuensteundkulturtheorie.ch//veranstaltu...
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Most researchers don’t believe AGI is coming any time soon. But policy makers are steering policy toward AGI anyway. In this article for Tech Policy Press, a look at the distortions the AGI Frame introduces to policymaking. #ai #criticalai #aipolicy In @techpolicypress.bsky.social
Most Researchers Do Not Believe AGI Is Imminent. Why Do Policymakers Act Otherwise? | TechPolicy.Press
Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio says it is dangerous to the public interest for policymakers to center the pursuit of AGI in AI policy.
www.techpolicy.press
March 19, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Most researchers don’t believe AGI is coming any time soon. But policy makers are steering policy toward AGI anyway. In this article for Tech Policy Press, a look at the distortions the AGI Frame introduces to policymaking. #ai #criticalai #aipolicy In @techpolicypress.bsky.social
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A Nixon-era report warned of data-driven surveillance before AI even existed. Today, the government is linking databases & using “fraud detection” as a cover for targeting citizens, writes Eryk Salvaggio. What happens when free speech is redefined as a “threat”?
The AI State is a Surveillance State | TechPolicy.Press
Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. We publish opinion and analysis.
buff.ly
March 12, 2025 at 6:00 PM
A Nixon-era report warned of data-driven surveillance before AI even existed. Today, the government is linking databases & using “fraud detection” as a cover for targeting citizens, writes Eryk Salvaggio. What happens when free speech is redefined as a “threat”?
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"generative AI, is built on a long-standing regime of extracting wealth from information, and a reliance on cheap labor to maximize the information it has collected. Treating generative AI as a revolutionary new tool,...
Finally, the roots of thinking about predictive analytics and distance, and the uncomfortable adjacencies of eugenics, composite photography and statistical correlations that seeded the dangerous tendencies AI use can encourage & that we need to resist. www.cyberneticforests.com/news/social-...
The Hypothetical Image — Cybernetic Forests.
The history of AI images as data analytics, and AI art as the aestheticization of Big Data’s politics.
www.cyberneticforests.com
February 12, 2025 at 12:52 PM
"generative AI, is built on a long-standing regime of extracting wealth from information, and a reliance on cheap labor to maximize the information it has collected. Treating generative AI as a revolutionary new tool,...
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My latest for @techpolicypress.bsky.social, “Anatomy of an AI Coup.” With the takeover of the US government by tech elites underway, we must examine its goals and next steps — and how we will know if it has succeeded. www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-a...
Anatomy of an AI Coup | TechPolicy.Press
DOGE is gutting federal agencies to install AI across the government. Democracy is on the line, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Eryk Salvaggio.
www.techpolicy.press
February 9, 2025 at 5:32 AM
My latest for @techpolicypress.bsky.social, “Anatomy of an AI Coup.” With the takeover of the US government by tech elites underway, we must examine its goals and next steps — and how we will know if it has succeeded. www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-a...
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Helloooooo BlueSky! 🌤️ We have just landed and will share more here soon 🥠 meanwhile find us and updates at -> aixdesign.co + linkin.bio/aixdesign-co/
AIxDESIGN
We’re a Global Community and Lab Nourishing Alternative, Feminist + Participatory Approaches to AI for the Rest of Us 🐛
aixdesign.co
February 7, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Helloooooo BlueSky! 🌤️ We have just landed and will share more here soon 🥠 meanwhile find us and updates at -> aixdesign.co + linkin.bio/aixdesign-co/
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Another fantastic read and lots of ‚food for thought’ by Eryk Salvaggio 👌🏻 @cyberneticforests.bsky.social
‚ChatGPT is not a decision-making technology, it is a decision-removing technology. It creates text to fill the space where a decision is needed’ mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...
‚ChatGPT is not a decision-making technology, it is a decision-removing technology. It creates text to fill the space where a decision is needed’ mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...
A Fork in the Road
AI is an excuse that allows those with power to operate at a distance from those whom their power touches.
mail.cyberneticforests.com
February 2, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Another fantastic read and lots of ‚food for thought’ by Eryk Salvaggio 👌🏻 @cyberneticforests.bsky.social
‚ChatGPT is not a decision-making technology, it is a decision-removing technology. It creates text to fill the space where a decision is needed’ mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...
‚ChatGPT is not a decision-making technology, it is a decision-removing technology. It creates text to fill the space where a decision is needed’ mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-fork-in-th...
From 2021 — when it was still benign — a revealing bit of satire aimed at the “intellectual movement” that is currently shaping the policies of the United States.
How to Become an Intellectual in Silicon Valley | Aaron Timms
You now have ideas, an all-purpose acknowledgments section, and a font. How should you present everything? “Write like you talk,” Paul Graham once said, but he forgot to add: “And talk like an asshole...
thebaffler.com
January 30, 2025 at 12:32 AM
From 2021 — when it was still benign — a revealing bit of satire aimed at the “intellectual movement” that is currently shaping the policies of the United States.
“This study presents a structured examination of chatbots across three societal dimensions, highlighting their roles as objects of scientific research, commercial instruments, and agents of intimate interaction.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Three Social Dimensions of Chatbot Technology - Philosophy & Technology
The development and deployment of chatbot technology, while spanning decades and employing different techniques, require innovative frameworks to understand and interrogate their functionality and imp...
link.springer.com
January 28, 2025 at 5:29 AM
“This study presents a structured examination of chatbots across three societal dimensions, highlighting their roles as objects of scientific research, commercial instruments, and agents of intimate interaction.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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We are seeing a generation of AI systems built without their designers critically grappling with their role in the broader world. Could we do it some other way?
Are Other AIs Possible?
I believe AI is a political tool. I believe this because I believe that AI, and much other technology, is something of an ideological frame: a set of social fictions that is deployed to justify certai...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
January 26, 2025 at 1:06 PM
We are seeing a generation of AI systems built without their designers critically grappling with their role in the broader world. Could we do it some other way?
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
I wrote about David Lynch’s practice, in contrast to the model of creativity at the heart of the Gen AI image industry. I ask if the culture we cultivate inside of us could ever connect to Gen AI’s world of endlessly rearranged surfaces. mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-culture-of...
A Culture Inside
On David Lynch, AI, and the Myth of Automated Interiority
My closest real-life encounter with David Lynch was getting into a Lyft that had just dropped him off at the premiere of Twin Peaks: The Retu...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
January 19, 2025 at 1:15 PM
I wrote about David Lynch’s practice, in contrast to the model of creativity at the heart of the Gen AI image industry. I ask if the culture we cultivate inside of us could ever connect to Gen AI’s world of endlessly rearranged surfaces. mail.cyberneticforests.com/a-culture-of...
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I was added to a “MAGA Trash” blocklist. I am not at all MAGA. While I don’t care about blocklists, this is a reminder to everyone to be wary of using blocklists from accounts they don’t trust.
January 19, 2025 at 2:49 PM
I was added to a “MAGA Trash” blocklist. I am not at all MAGA. While I don’t care about blocklists, this is a reminder to everyone to be wary of using blocklists from accounts they don’t trust.
This account exists but will likely be an automated announcement feed for future newsletters — for the most part I’m just @eryk.bsky.social!
December 2, 2024 at 2:47 AM
This account exists but will likely be an automated announcement feed for future newsletters — for the most part I’m just @eryk.bsky.social!
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
New 404 Media: University of Michigan is selling hours and hours of audio recordings of office hours, study groups, and more to outside third-parties to train AI. Selling for tens of thousands of dollars, not clear if participants gave informed consent. I got sample www.404media.co/university-o...
February 15, 2024 at 4:37 PM
New 404 Media: University of Michigan is selling hours and hours of audio recordings of office hours, study groups, and more to outside third-parties to train AI. Selling for tens of thousands of dollars, not clear if participants gave informed consent. I got sample www.404media.co/university-o...
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Many moons ago I shared a talk about "modeling doubt," coding and engineering uncertainty into our digital systems, and weaving it into our pedagogy. That talk was published today, open access, in the Journal of Visual Culture. The whole new issue is great! journals.sagepub.com/toc/VCU/curr...
February 12, 2024 at 1:11 PM
Many moons ago I shared a talk about "modeling doubt," coding and engineering uncertainty into our digital systems, and weaving it into our pedagogy. That talk was published today, open access, in the Journal of Visual Culture. The whole new issue is great! journals.sagepub.com/toc/VCU/curr...
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Hi folks! I'm designing an undergrad course on the history & ethics of archives & collecting across the liberal arts. We're talking archival silences, data ethics, repatriation, collecting and empire. I'm super excited about it, but struggling to find suitable reading. What would you assign? TIA!
February 11, 2024 at 10:55 PM
Hi folks! I'm designing an undergrad course on the history & ethics of archives & collecting across the liberal arts. We're talking archival silences, data ethics, repatriation, collecting and empire. I'm super excited about it, but struggling to find suitable reading. What would you assign? TIA!
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
Samsung now has a defense of its phone's AI-altering photos of the Moon: "There is no such thing as a real picture."
Paging @cyberneticforests.bsky.social (not to mention Cindy Sherman)
www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/240...
Paging @cyberneticforests.bsky.social (not to mention Cindy Sherman)
www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/240...
February 6, 2024 at 8:02 PM
Samsung now has a defense of its phone's AI-altering photos of the Moon: "There is no such thing as a real picture."
Paging @cyberneticforests.bsky.social (not to mention Cindy Sherman)
www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/240...
Paging @cyberneticforests.bsky.social (not to mention Cindy Sherman)
www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/240...
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I actually read the original story for the first time right before reading this new one. Both are great. clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/
Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim
clarkesworldmagazine.com
February 5, 2024 at 8:39 PM
I actually read the original story for the first time right before reading this new one. Both are great. clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/
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Digging this fun historical perspective on the like button from Carina Albrecht in the Harvard Data Science Review. Thanks to @cheeflo.bsky.social for turning me onto this one.
Discerning Audiences Through Like Buttons
· Issue 6.1, Winter 2024
hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu
February 4, 2024 at 5:37 PM
Digging this fun historical perspective on the like button from Carina Albrecht in the Harvard Data Science Review. Thanks to @cheeflo.bsky.social for turning me onto this one.
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
“Seeing cars with no human inside move through San Francisco’s streets is eerie enough…but when I’m on my bicycle I often find myself riding alongside them, and from that vantage point you catch the ghostly spectacle of a steering wheel turning without a hand.”
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rebecca Solnit · In the Shadow of Silicon Valley: Losing San Francisco
I don’t know whether these billionaires know what a city is, but I do know that they have laid their hands on the city...
www.lrb.co.uk
February 5, 2024 at 2:18 PM
“Seeing cars with no human inside move through San Francisco’s streets is eerie enough…but when I’m on my bicycle I often find myself riding alongside them, and from that vantage point you catch the ghostly spectacle of a steering wheel turning without a hand.”
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
In November we announced a zine, "Models for Making Distance," which would collect instructions and manifestos for creative acts of algorithmic resistance. The deadline is April 15, and then we print. We would love to have your contributions! More details: www.cyberneticforests.com/zine
Zine — Cybernetic Forests.
www.cyberneticforests.com
February 5, 2024 at 7:24 PM
In November we announced a zine, "Models for Making Distance," which would collect instructions and manifestos for creative acts of algorithmic resistance. The deadline is April 15, and then we print. We would love to have your contributions! More details: www.cyberneticforests.com/zine
Reposted by Cybernetic Forests
IMO crucial & productive distinction in @eryk.bsky.social 's newsletter today re: AI tools. I had lots of fun trying out Midjourney over the last year, partially because I professionally write on visual cultures & want to understand how things work, but also because I'm a total sucker for TOOLS 1/7
February 4, 2024 at 3:59 PM
IMO crucial & productive distinction in @eryk.bsky.social 's newsletter today re: AI tools. I had lots of fun trying out Midjourney over the last year, partially because I professionally write on visual cultures & want to understand how things work, but also because I'm a total sucker for TOOLS 1/7
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In “The making of critical data center studies,” @melhogan.bsky.social, Dustin Edwards, and I draw together threads across the humanities to critically examine the past, present, and possible futures of studying these weird structures we call data centers. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sage Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
January 25, 2024 at 3:24 PM
In “The making of critical data center studies,” @melhogan.bsky.social, Dustin Edwards, and I draw together threads across the humanities to critically examine the past, present, and possible futures of studying these weird structures we call data centers. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Who is “the public” when it comes to “public engagement in AI”?
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Who are the publics engaging in AI? - Renée Sieber, Ana Brandusescu, Abigail Adu-Daako, Suthee Sang...
Given the importance of public engagement in governments’ adoption of artificial intelligence systems, artificial intelligence researchers and practitioners spe...
journals.sagepub.com
January 31, 2024 at 1:29 AM
Who is “the public” when it comes to “public engagement in AI”?
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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need to start keeping a list of all the times some big supposed display of bleeding edge technology turns out to just be A Guy
January 28, 2024 at 6:17 PM
need to start keeping a list of all the times some big supposed display of bleeding edge technology turns out to just be A Guy