robotamerica
// currently: 𖠌 i am looking forward to a calm weekend.

robotamerica

be critical, have fun, don't cry ;)

i was recently called out for liking an irony-fuelled ai content-filled blog on my celebration of blogging blog. the writer was horrified someone could like ai writing. but, even as an educator, i really enjoy the writing + blog as a whole.

i am not uncritical about ai, my views are firmly against big tech and ai tech-brodom.

here's a reading list following my argument that soullessness isn't a condition for ai writing: in the attention economy, the majority of writing is soulless slop, already cheapened by instutional + capital pressures / algorithms. ai has only helped us see what we've been up to all this time. read some, get critical, but have fun!

...

i. history of ai before ai

a history of artificial intelligence before computers by brian maclennan

the deep history of ai began 3,000 years before computers by joel J miller

a brief history of ai in computers and thought by bruce buchanan


ii. language can already be artificial

zombie nouns by helen sword

truth, critique and writing: foucault, every-day by Erzsebet Strausz

why bullsh*t language is so annoying by hilary sutcliffe

ai slop vs. human slop: a field guide to the content landfill by manuel alfaro


iii. ai style and grammar

artificial intelligence and the ethnographic encounter: transhuman language ontologies, or what it means "to write like a human, think like a machine" by eugenia demuro & laura gurney

do llms write like humans? variation in grammatical and rhetorical styles by Alex Reinhart et al.

does writing with language models reduce content diversity? by padmakumar & he

ai suggestions homogenize writing toward western styles and diminish cultural nuances by agarwal, naaman & vashistha

bruno latour and artificial intelligence by tommaso venturini

language models and language change: recent evidence by sean trott