josh - Network

I greatly appreciate everything that Christopher Eisgruber says in this interview, but, more than that, it's increasingly a relief to...

I greatly appreciate everything that Christopher Eisgruber says in this interview, but, more than that, it's increasingly a relief to hear someone in a position of authority willing to be sane in public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/podcasts/the-daily/princeton-university-trump.html

cc @academicchatter #academicChatter

U.S. media history is pretty straightforward, honestly.#mediaStudies #commodon @communicationscholars

U.S. media history is pretty straightforward, honestly.

#mediaStudies #commodon @communicationscholars

Posting for no particular...

Posting for no particular reason.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/capturing-news-capturing-democracy-9780197768488?lang=en&cc=us

#commodon @communicationscholars

I share McStay's skepticism about whether the business incentives behind AI are going to align with our emotional well-being, which is...

I share McStay's skepticism about whether the business incentives behind AI are going to align with our emotional well-being, which is something @kashhill gets at in the podcast.

Anyway, here's Andrew's fascinating book:

https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/emotional-ai/book251642

/fin

Rather, their version of parsing feelings is mostly going to revolve around reducing our complex emotional state to whether we're in a...

Rather, their version of parsing feelings is mostly going to revolve around reducing our complex emotional state to whether we're in a buying mood or not (insert your own "retail therapy" pun here), or whether we're engaged enough to keep paying a subscription or visiting the client's website. 7/8

Blunt approximations are also less costly, so in some senses more attractive to businesses. McStay says, similarly, the designers of AI...

Blunt approximations are also less costly, so in some senses more attractive to businesses. McStay says, similarly, the designers of AI that's tuned to our emotions are unlikely to be ultimately worried about our true emotional state in the way a psychologist might be when they try to help us. 6/8

To throw in another example, algorithms that show us ads don't have to capture our true intent in viewing webpages or clicking links to...

To throw in another example, algorithms that show us ads don't have to capture our true intent in viewing webpages or clicking links to be valuable to brands — they just have to be right enough, often enough to improve on untargeted campaigns. Blunt approximations are commercially viable. 5/8

The catch is, much as Google Search is not a library, but ultimately a commercial product that serves us results based in no small part on...

The catch is, much as Google Search is not a library, but ultimately a commercial product that serves us results based in no small part on either Google's interests or those of the companies paying for SEO, in the long run AI algorithms are likely also going to be attuned to business interests. 4/8

E.g., A classic Google Search lets you type "cameras" without any modifiers and intuits, through context and machine learning,...

E.g., A classic Google Search lets you type "cameras" without any modifiers and intuits, through context and machine learning, whether you likely meant "how cameras work," "where to buy a camera," "camera reviews," etc. But with AI tools resolving ambiguity will also involve reading our tone. 3/8

I'm paraphrasing here, but the essence of McStay's argument is that AI interfaces are going to be increasingly designed to interpret...

I'm paraphrasing here, but the essence of McStay's argument is that AI interfaces are going to be increasingly designed to interpret our emotions and states of mind in order to give us the information for which we're looking. 2/8

Of the many directions one's thoughts could take in listening to this, I'm thinking most of Andrew McStay's book,...

Of the many directions one's thoughts could take in listening to this, I'm thinking most of Andrew McStay's book, "Emotional AI." Quick thread… 1/8

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/podcasts/the-daily/ai-chatgpt-boyfriend-relationship.html

cc @communicationscholars #genAI #commodon #mediaStudies

A bunch of the news sources I follow have been bursting with headlines/episode titles and ledes like "What El*n Musk Wants" or...

A bunch of the news sources I follow have been bursting with headlines/episode titles and ledes like "What El*n Musk Wants" or "What's going on with Mark Z*ckerberg?"

Tempting as it is to say these journalists should be focusing elsewhere, it's also sadly true the whims of a couple tech bros have enormous consequences for everyone.

However you look at it, the fact that we're subjected to endless psychoanalysis of these dudes feels like a big flashing sign that we're living under oligarchy.

I've been almost exclusively on #Linux since 2020, and have found great replacements for nearly every MacOS app. The only one I...

I've been almost exclusively on #Linux since 2020, and have found great replacements for nearly every MacOS app. The only one I can't seem to quit is OmniGraffle for diagramming. Anyone have any good suggestions? I've tried a bunch of stuff, including InkScape and Dia, but nothing I've used so far is quite as good.

It's CC-licensed, so feel free to adapt it to your own institutions.

It's CC-licensed, so feel free to adapt it to your own institutions.

I'm just going to leave this here…(Credit to Jen Lundquist, our amazing associate dean)Academic Freedom Crisis...

I'm just going to leave this here…

(Credit to Jen Lundquist, our amazing associate dean)

Academic Freedom Crisis Toolkit

https://www.umass.edu/faculty-development/resources/academic-freedom-crisis-toolkit

cc @academicchatter @communicationscholars

#academicChatter

I'm (hopefully) finishing my book manuscript this semester and have started a blog where I'll informally post ideas I'm working...

I'm (hopefully) finishing my book manuscript this semester and have started a blog where I'll informally post ideas I'm working through. If you're having a particularly boring Saturday night, here's the first post (which gives a big nod to @ftripodi ).

https://unevenly-distributed.ghost.io/distribution-and-procedural-rhetoric/

@academicchatter @communicationscholars

#academicchatter #mediaStudies #commodon

My university's new mandatory cybersecurity training is apparently a series of unskippable videos that are just an AI voice reading a...

My university's new mandatory cybersecurity training is apparently a series of unskippable videos that are just an AI voice reading a canned script over unchanging stock art. Could they not have given us the same text to read?

@academicchatter #academicchatter

And now, in 2024/2025, it's apparently in their interest to…well, whatever this is....

And now, in 2024/2025, it's apparently in their interest to…well, whatever this is. 4/4

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2025-01-07/zuckerberg-bezos-brin-the-tech-bros-cozying-up-to-trump

Fast forward a few years to the 2016 election and media commentators acted shocked about the amount of racist commentary that was showing up...

Fast forward a few years to the 2016 election and media commentators acted shocked about the amount of racist commentary that was showing up on Twitter and Facebook in relation to politics. I think it likely that the same grotesque sentiments were common in both elections, but in 2008 it was in CBS's business interests to hide these comments, while in 2016 it was in Facebook's business interests to let them spiral. 3/4

CBS News, at the time, had just invested an immense amount of money and time into developing and launching its own bespoke on-site...

CBS News, at the time, had just invested an immense amount of money and time into developing and launching its own bespoke on-site commenting system, only to immediately turn it off across many of their story pages because they could not control the "volume and persistence" of racist commentary that their stories on Barack Obama were attracting. 2/4

https://archive.nytimes.com/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/muzzling-all-to-hush-a-few/