Eryk Salvaggio
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eryk.bsky.social
Eryk Salvaggio
@eryk.bsky.social
12K followers 4.7K following 3.1K posts
Situationist Cybernetics. Gates Scholar researching AI’s impacts on the Humanities at the University of Cambridge. Tech Policy Press Writing Fellow. Researcher, AI Pedagogies, metaLab (at) Harvard University. Aim to be kind. cyberneticforests.com
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eryk.bsky.social
AGI any day now
Sam Altman Tweet: “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it's supposed to do!”
November 14, 2025 at 11:48 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Inspired by the Flying Fox
Image of a brown bat with a vaguely doglike face
October 31, 2025 at 10:00 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Yes, we are the kind of people who make homemade costumes for the dog on Halloween.
Small brown dog with small brown felt bat wings
October 31, 2025 at 6:21 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Walked through a cemetery to have a moderated chat about AI and art at a local pub tonight, and now I am having a cider. Still time to come by if you’re local! Starts in 30 minutes.
Blue Moon Pub, Cambridge
October 21, 2025 at 5:02 PM
eryk.bsky.social
This Pew Research finding on AI age gaps aligns w/ my experience talking to students on campuses. Students see it as an unwelcome competitor for jobs and inflator of grades, vs older professors & administrators who see “early problems” but also “the future.” Poll: pewrsr.ch/46uvg1u
66% of adults under 30 say they would like a painting less if they found out it was done by AI. This compares with 36% of Americans 65 and older. 53% of adults under 30 say they would like a song less if they found out it was written by AI. This compares with 26% of those 65 and older.
September 20, 2025 at 1:44 PM
eryk.bsky.social
There is no benefit to being the “that’s not AI” guy but honestly, I don’t think this image (shared on an NPR story and getting them blasted for slop use) is AI? I think it’s an awkwardly cropped image of two people’s awkwardly positioned hands & overlapping arms.
A very awkwardly poured smoothie: two hands hold a blender while another person holds a glass. The arm holding the blender portion overlaps with the arm of the person holding the glass, creating an illusion of a single body with three arms and hands.
September 6, 2025 at 12:57 PM
eryk.bsky.social
This week I spoke at St Lawrence University with @danielleezzo.bsky.social and Ameera Kawash as part of the Brush Art Gallery show, “Current States of Being,” examining AI’s impact on memory, identity and creativity. artgallery.stlawu.edu/current-stat...
Eryk Salvaggio, bearded man with black glasses, in blue shirt on stage in front of a projected slide of an abstract image with “pollen x diffusion” written on the slide.
September 6, 2025 at 3:09 AM
eryk.bsky.social
We really are in the midst of a popular delusion www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/t...
From The NY Times: “Others said they abstained from using the word, out of fear that A.I. machines would become superintelligent and seek revenge on their adversaries. Mr. Pinkert said he was not afraid of A.I., but the thought, albeit improbable, sits at the back of his mind.”
August 31, 2025 at 12:58 PM
eryk.bsky.social
1954 Shawmut Bank (Boston) ad: “What will YOU do with Cybernetics?” (H/t Sean Manion!) — makes some familiar promises re: “substituting the machine for the many functions of the human mind,” leading to “more production, more jobs, more income and far, far more leisure.”
Robot moving a giant box in a black and white plant. “Cybernetics: How will you use it?” with text copy: CYBERNETICS-how will you use it? Quietly but irresistibly, Cybernetics is changing the shape of our shearing table ahead to chop out and reject any defective section. industrial way of life— and will make fantastic changes in our personal lives as well. Cybernetics is the science that is substituting the machine for the many functions of the human mind.“ The ad, which has quite a long text, goes on to describe the automation of an automobile assembly line.
August 10, 2025 at 11:17 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Image from a 1952 Esquire article, “Cybernetics: Doom or Destiny?” in which we see the birth (?) of the “robot using a machine rather than being the machine” trope
Color drawing of a humanoid robot with many arms operating a desk full of buttons, and holding a phone up to a cone shaped ear piece.
August 10, 2025 at 11:17 PM
eryk.bsky.social
I have never been able to fit into this t shirt since I bought it but now I can, good thing the message is evergreen
Black t shirt that says “John Lennon Broke Up Fluxus.”
August 1, 2025 at 7:53 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Trump AI Action Plan wants to make America guinea pigs: pushes a "try-first culture" for AI, laments healthcare industry's slow adoption from"distrust" and "lack of risk mitigation standards." Meanwhile, study shows 88% of a chatbot’s medical responses were wrong ➡️ www.newsweek.com/ai-chatbot-m...
From page 5 of the AI Action Plan: Today, the bottleneck to harnessing AI’s full potential is not necessarily the availability of models, tools, or applications. Rather, it is the limited and slow adoption of AI, particularly within large, established organizations. Many of America’s most critical sectors, such as healthcare, are especially slow to adopt due to a variety of factors, including distrust or lack of understanding of the technology, a complex regulatory landscape, and a lack of clear governance and risk mitigation standards. A coordinated Federal effort would be beneficial in establishing a dynamic, “try-first” culture for AI across American industry.
July 23, 2025 at 3:26 PM
eryk.bsky.social
This museum is an old electric power station, and it’s literally a museum about the power station, but also a museum of artifacts found during the construction boom of the 1930s. So the power station is filled with headless ruins of marble Gods. Real Lynch vibes
Black and white photo of a headless marble sculpture of a woman standing in front of a giant industrial tank made of steel. Black and white photo of a headless marble sculpture of a man standing in front of exposed pipes and corrugated steel wall. Two marble cows heads facing each other in front of an industrial wall covered in bolts. Black and white photo of a headless marble sculpture of a woman standing in front of a giant industrial control panel with levers and dials.
June 12, 2025 at 12:03 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Very excited that my video art piece, SWIM, made the CVPR (@cvprconference.bsky.social) shortlist this year. If you are attending #CVPR2025 do check out the AI+Art exhibition in person, but others may find something of interest in the online gallery: thecvf-art.com/2025-shortli...
A black and white image of a woman swimmer is dissolving into a sea of abstract visual noise. It is a still from the video art piece, SWIM.
June 11, 2025 at 5:51 PM
eryk.bsky.social
DON’T CALL THE CATS

The cats are only safe in the ruins
They are not safe on the stairs,
Or near the street, so please
Don’t call to them
A poster taped to the walls of dilapidated brick wall in Rome with a man’s head in silhouette crossed out and the text written in the post is written on the poster.
June 4, 2025 at 7:37 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Bot alert: after @alexhanna.bsky.social posted some kind words about my latest Tech Policy Press piece, four bot accounts pretending to be journalists copied the text word for word. (The real tell was a fake Glenn Greenwald!) All 4 fake journo accounts have similar posting histories.
A fake post pretending to be journalist Greg Miller writing “"LLMs are not just text generators but pretext generators. Al is most potent as a discursive tool to justify and enact actions for which nobody wants to be accountable — eryk.bsky.social on point on the use of Al in the federal government,” identical to what was written by Alex Hanna earlier on the day. Same text attributed to journalist Martin Langfield Same text attributed to journalist Thomas Fazi Same text attributed to journalist Glenn Greenwald.
June 4, 2025 at 7:14 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Insightful presentation from @hannesbajohr.de on the transformation of our relationship with language, post-artificiality — if the question of “authenticity” is increasingly difficult to resolve, the question might be abandoned, bringing us back (properly, I would say) to the “death of the author”
Two men at a table in front of a slide projected on a screen that shows the following: primary authorship: human → final text secondary authorship human → code/rule set → final text tertiary authorship human → code and data set → weight model → final text quaternary authorship human → proprietary interface/API code and data set → weight model - final text
May 23, 2025 at 11:12 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Today’s conference at the Jeu de Paume, “Création contemporaine et intelligence artificielle,” about to start! I speak tomorrow, looking forward to the talks today too.
Top of a sign behind a stone wall, in front of green shrubs against a cloudless blue sky. The sign reads “Le Monde selon l’IA” and “Jeu de Paume.”
May 23, 2025 at 9:33 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Great now JD Vance won’t let me cross a street in Rome
Image of police and a presidential motorcade
May 18, 2025 at 10:47 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Great day with @digitalculturesandarts.ch in Zurich, with appreciation and excellent convos with @felixstadler.bsky.social and @bildoperationen.bsky.social. Great crowd, hope to come back to Zurich soon!
A staircase with writing on the wall that reads “Eryk Salvaggio: “Embodied Generativity: Critical Al, Art & the Body” and ZHdK (the Zurich Culture and Arts University)
May 13, 2025 at 9:19 PM
eryk.bsky.social
We’re building up a resource map for the Signal to Noise exhibition at the National Communication Museum in Melbourne, which will be expanding with texts, videos and other resources! Launched today — dig it! ncm.org.au/exhibitions/...
A floating web page assemblage of text and images linked by white lines on a black background
May 7, 2025 at 9:29 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Great to speak at The Photographer’s Gallery today, and to visit with folks at House of Annetta, and then a surprise run-in and great chat with a free-to-name-themselves critical AI person. Good day all in all. Here is my London selfie, second in a series of narcissistic travel images
Bearded man with black glasses and sprawling gray hair against a brick wall beneath a sign that says “Caution Internal Traffic.”
May 6, 2025 at 10:34 PM
eryk.bsky.social
In Brazilian artist Analivia Cordeiro’s “The Programming Choreographer” (1977), cybernetic feedback loops to navigate dance performances. Just one of the many discoveries at the “Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” exhibition on at the Tate Modern I got to see (on my birthday!)
Two diagrams with arrows moving from “artist” to “work of art” to “public” to “criticism” back to “artist.” The second one adds a loop for “self criticism” moving from the artist to the work of art and back to the artist again. It is typewritten, it seems.
May 6, 2025 at 12:56 AM
eryk.bsky.social
Doing some AI inspired analog photo booth headshots tonight
Black and White Photo Booth Portrait of a man with glasses and a beard and his fingers have tiny plastic hands attached to them Black and White Photo Booth Portrait of a man with glasses and a beard and his fingers have tiny plastic hands attached to them Black and White Photo Booth Portrait of a man with glasses and a beard and his fingers have tiny plastic hands attached to them
May 2, 2025 at 9:26 PM
eryk.bsky.social
Hello Baltimore! Caught some automatons at the American Visionary Art Museum today. On Monday I’ll be speaking at @circa-umbc.bsky.social — event details: umbc.edu/event/ai-and...
Six robotic figures made from various trashed electronic parts against a red wall. The sign above them reads “World’s First Family of Robots: The First Recycled Family.”
April 28, 2025 at 3:36 AM