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d-eepculture.bsky.social @d-eepculture.bsky.social · 13d

"What is digital about abstraction?" - new chapter by @riederb.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2508.18181

This chapter examines abstraction as a central principle of computing, not merely as a cognitive skill or epistemological category, but as a material and organizational practice that structures how so...

arxiv.org

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · 28d

🚨The Critical AI Seminar Series returns in 2025/2026 ✨

This year we will have four talks and are beyond excited to welcome @amoorelouise.bsky.social & @alexcampolo.bsky.social, Fabian Offert, Helene Ratner & @nannathylstrup.bsky.social and @thaophan.bsky.social ✨

Sign up: bit.ly/uvacriticala...

Critical AI seminar series

Register via https://bit.ly/uvacriticalai2526

Program and Invited Speakers:

Upcoming seminars

November 12, 5-6:30 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Louise Amoore and Alexander Campolo, ‘On reading machine learning‘

January 13, 5:30-7 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Fabian Offert on
‘Vector Media‘

March 18, 3-4:30 (CEST): Invited talk by Helene Ratner and Nanna Thylstrup on ‘Ecologies of evaluation’

May 20, 12-1:30 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Thao Phan on ‘Testing-in-the-wild’

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Benjamin Jacobsen @bnjacobsen.bsky.social · Sep 4

I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms

Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.

www.york.ac.uk

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Nick Srnicek @nsrnicek.bsky.social · 29d

I'm excited to share the final cover for Silicon Empires and very grateful for the kind words that others have offered. Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

"This is a sobering but essential, must-read book. It lays bare the economic dynamics that are driving the development of AI and sheds new light on who will control its future, using which business practices and geopolitical strategies and towards which ends." -Helga Nowotny, Emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, and former President of the European Research Council

"Silicon Empires pulls back the curtain on the AI gold rush, tracking how chips, clouds and capital are marshalled by tech titans and rival states to lock down tomorrow’s power and profits. With clear, panoramic insight, Srnicek slices through the hype to show who wins, who loses; and why the future of AI should belong to all of us." -Mark Graham, Oxford University

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Kean Birch @keanbirch.bsky.social · Aug 5

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology

#STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Do Artifacts Have Political Economy? - Kean Birch, 2025

Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay “Do artifacts have politics?,” my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question—namely, do artif...

journals.sagepub.com

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Florian Jaton @flojaton.bsky.social · Jul 15

📣 New article out 📣 in the journal Digital Society, where I reflect on the relevance, limitation, and future challenges of studying algorithms through the lens of their referential 'ground truth' datasets

Available here: doi.org/10.1007/s442...

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Sam Bennett @sj-bennett.bsky.social · Jun 30

🎉 A lovely wedding present from Big Data & Society! I bring together an ethnographic study of AI practitioners with Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, exploring how ambiguity shapes AI practice and ethics
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Artificial Intelligence and the ethics of navigating ambiguity - SJ Bennett, 2025

This paper examines ambiguity within AI practice, arguing for an ethics of AI which stays with fundamental ambiguities and accounts for their complex socio-mate...

journals.sagepub.com

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · Jun 11

⚡Very happy to see another exciting publication out in our Topical Collection of "The Politics of ML Evaluation" in Digital Society!

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · Jun 4

Dankjewel🙏

Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · Jun 4

✨This Friday (June 6) at #RESAW25 I'm excited to be presenting a methodological follow-up titled "Critical AI technography: Researching the material political economy and power of AI platforms" w/ @fvandervlist.bsky.social

www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/datafiedweb/...

Program – The Datafied Web

www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · Jun 4

Thank you so much to the wonderful jury—Barnita Bagchi, Sudeep Dasgupta and @ferraribraun.bsky.social—for the unanimous recognition; calling the work "a remarkable contribution to the ongoing debates around AI, and the politics of infrastructure more broadly" ✨

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · Jun 4

✨ 🎉 I am very grateful and honored to be the recipient of the 2025 Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis Article Award @uvahumanities.bsky.social for my paper "Platform power in AI: The evolution of cloud infrastructures in the political economy of artificial intelligence" (tinyurl.com/ythnj7kf)

The text on the image:

Dieuwertje Luitse’s article “Platform Power in AI: the Evolution of Cloud Infrastructure in the Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence” is a remarkable contribution to the ongoing debates around AI, and the politics of infrastructure more broadly. The committee was impressed with Luitse’s capacity to put forward methodological, empirical, and theoretical contributions in one single piece. The notion of “evolutionary platform technography”, which she introduces in this article, is a welcomed addition to the literature on technography as a method, and provides necessary tools to study technical systems characterised by vertical integration and heavy market concentration. The application of these methods in the empirical sections demonstrates remarkable scholarly rigor, and allows her to provide a typology of Big Tech strategies to condition technological innovation. It is hard to think of a more timely contribution to the field, considering the amount of market and political power amassed by the firms that she studied. Finally, this typology offers a valuable – dare I even say crucial – contribution to the theoretical debates around “platform power” in which many ASCA colleagues are involved. For all these reasons, the jury unanimously decided to award her this prize and wholeheartedly congratulates you for penning such an impactful piece of research.

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Fernando van der Vlist @fvandervlist.bsky.social · Jun 2

Then off to #RESAW25, presenting on the evolving audience data economy w/ @silvertje.bsky.social (Thu), platform histories panel (Fri) w/ @devikanarayan.bsky.social, @bumatic.bsky.social, & on technography for critical AI studies w/ @dluitse.bsky.social. 🔗 www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/datafiedweb/...

Program – The Datafied Web

www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de

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Sciences Po médialab @medialab-scpo.bsky.social · May 27

Mardi 3 juin, découvrez comment l’évaluation des modèles IA évolue et soulève un enjeu politique majeur.

Une présentation d’ @annaschjoett.bsky.social et @dluitse.bsky.social suivie d’un échange sur le lancement de la collection « The Politics of ML Evaluation » dans Digital Society.

Plus d'info 🔽

The Politics of Machine Learning Evaluation: From Present to Future | médialab Sciences Po

Le médialab reçoit Anna Schjøtt Hansen et Dieuwertje Luitse pour le prochain séminaire du 3 juin 2025. Elles feront une présentation d'ouverture sur les politiques d'évaluation de l'apprentissage auto...

medialab.sciencespo.fr

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susanne förster @sufo.bsky.social · May 26

Our article on the metaphor of hallucination and its use by big tech companies in relation to supposedly erroneous outputs from LLMs has finally been published :) @skoopit.bsky.social

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Between fact and fairy: tracing the hallucination metaphor in AI discourse - AI & SOCIETY

Large and powerful language models such as OpenAI’s GPT model family, Google’s LaMDA and BERT or Meta’s LlaMA are integral to many applications, such as translation, summarization or language generati...

link.springer.com

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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · May 19

Very timely and necessary critical intervention by @katschwerzmann.bsky.social ‬– highly recommended: «By embracing LLMs before developing any critical framework for their use in pedagogical and research contexts, the University allows itself to be governed by the contingent, ever-evolving ...
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Ruled by the Representation Space: On the University’s Embrace of Large Language Models

arxiv.org

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Valentin Goujon @vgoujon.bsky.social · May 20

🗓️ The next and final 2024-2025 session of the FlashLab seminar will feature Dieuwertje Luitse (@dluitse.bsky.social), PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, with a talk on the technopolitical production of "otherness" through ML modelling and evaluation in medecine!

Abstract and more info ⤵️

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Sciences Po médialab @medialab-scpo.bsky.social · May 15

📅 5th of June - Join the médialab conference "Social Science and Generative AI: Inquiries, Instruments, Consequences"

A one-day event examining generative AI as a sociotechnical device and exploring its effects on scientific work, as well as its epistemological and social implications 🌐

Info ⬇️

Social Science and Generative AI: Inquiries, Instruments, Consequences | médialab Sciences Po

This one-day conference will reflexively examine generative AI as sociotechnical devices, discussing its effects on scientific work and its epistemological and social implications. The presentations w...

medialab.sciencespo.fr

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · May 12

1) ✨ Deeply honoured to be delivering a keynote at RESAW 2025 – The Datafied Web at Universität Siegen! My talk "Vanishing Points: Technographies of Data Loss" will explore politics & temporalities of disappearing data in our age of platformization.

Sebastian Gießmann @sebgiessmann.bsky.social · Mar 27

🕸️ We are doing this conference at Media of Cooperation this June ... It is called THE DATAFIED WEB, and it will be a blast! Registration for #RESAW25 is now open. Please spread widely, and do not forget to check out the marvelous programme at datafiedweb.net! #www #history #archive #data #AI

Registration open for RESAW 2025 THE DATAFIED WEB at Siegen University

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Benedetta Catanzariti @benedetta.bsky.social · May 8

✨ Very happy to share that my new paper on data annotation practices in affective computing is out ✨ link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🙏 thanks to the fantastic editors of this SI on the politics of machine learning evaluation @dluitse.bsky.social @annaschjoett.bsky.social & Tobias Blanke

Taming Affect: On the Construction of Objectivity in Data Annotation Practices - Digital Society

Affective computing applications promise to decode human emotional expressions and provide objective insights into users’ affective experience, ranging from frustration and boredom to states of clinic...

link.springer.com

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Claudia Aradau @cearadau.bsky.social · May 5

#AI fellowships across all disciplines at King’s College London. Deadline 19 May 2025 @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social.

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/111205-...

King's AI+ Academic Fellowships

www.kcl.ac.uk

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Dieuwertje Luitse @dluitse.bsky.social · May 5

⚡Thrilled to see the first papers to our Topical Collection published in Digital Society ✨Thank you @alexcampolo.bsky.social and Allison Jerzak for your fantastic contributions!

👀 For more info and future publications, keep an eye out on link.springer.com/collections/... ✨

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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · May 2

This came out of an excellent conference, organized by @dluitse.bsky.social and @annaschjoett.bsky.social of the University of Amsterdam titled - "The Politics of Machine Learning Evaluation." Look out for the other contributions to this forum, some of which are forthcoming. Super important topic.

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Alex Campolo @alexcampolo.bsky.social · May 2

I have a short reflection on benchmarking in machine learning, titled "State-of-the-Art." Beyond questions of construct validity and rankings, how do benchmarks and model evaluation produce orientations towards progress or the future? Open access: doi.org/10.1007/s442...

State-of-the-Art: The Temporal Order of Benchmarking Culture - Digital Society

This commentary situates the epistemic values of machine learning’s culture of benchmarking and evaluation within larger temporal structures. Beyond questions of validity, whether model comparisons ar...

doi.org

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Anna Schjøtt @annaschjoett.bsky.social · Apr 29

On May 14, we are delighted to host @whkchun.bsky.social and Matt Canute as the final speakers in our Critical AI Seminar Series.

The seminar is online and open to everyone. To receive the link, sign up via the link below.

🗓️ May 14, 5:30-7 PM (CEST). www.create.humanities.uva.nl/events/5-cri...

#5 Critical AI Seminar Series: AI and the (Re)Shaping of Intelligence

Invited lecture by Wendy Chun & Matt Canute on 'AI and the (Re)Shaping of Intelligence' Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Professor in the Schoo...

www.create.humanities.uva.nl

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