I'll be speaking on human autonomy and AI at the Dutch Data Protection Authority's annual seminar on AI and algorithms. www.aanmelder.nl/174190/aanme...
10.03.2026 08:54
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I'll be speaking on human autonomy and AI at the Dutch Data Protection Authority's annual seminar on AI and algorithms. www.aanmelder.nl/174190/aanme...
Enjoyed attending the launch of the 4TU.Design United Research School. Jealous of all those Dutch design research PhDs who will undoubtedly benefit tremendously from its current and future course offerings. www.4tu.nl/du/Research-...
I'll be in Amsterdam this Friday for the 2026 unconference on digital autonomy. www.meetup.com/code-for-nl/...
Many thanks to all the participants who enthusiastically joined the workshop (we exceeded our capacity) and to Iskander Smit and the rest of the ThingsCon team for having us.
This was a lot of fun to do. I really liked how critical thinking, art, hands-on making, and design futuring came together in a fairly accessible way. Hope to do more of this kind of work in the year to come.
www.tudelft.nl/2025/io/dece...
Workshop participants gathered around a wooden table covered with glass jars filled with dark, muddy material, wires, and electronic components. Several people lean in to examine and connect microbial fuel cells, while others observe and smile. A digital multimeter and various electrodes are visible. A screen in the background shows a presentation, and workshop materials are scattered across the rustic tabletop.
Close-up of a microbial fuel cell: a glass jar filled with layered dark mud and water, topped with a black clock mechanism with red clock hands. Yellow and red wires connect the jar to a digital multimeter, which displays '0.00'. Additional clock mechanisms and electronic components are visible in the background on a wooden workshop table.
A participant with arm tattoos draws with a blue marker on a large paper template during the scenario-building phase. The paper features hand-drawn sketches, including a wave/bird illustration and handwritten notes about ‘unpredictable energy cadence’ and ‘EU Law of Bacteria.’ Surrounding the workspace are glass jars with mud batteries, a multimeter, and colored markers.
Illustrated visual summary titled 'From Mud to Models' by Lena Trotereau for ThingsCon 2025. The colorful drawing in pink, blue, and white shows workshop concepts: people collaborating around an 'Electric Garden' table with mud batteries, an optimization stopwatch, measurement tools, a harvest station with plants, and a 'Living Energy' jar with bacteria. A circular workflow illustrates four steps of the process, featuring the quote ‘Together we know more’ and themes such as teamwork, utilizing local soil, and adhering to nature's rhythm.
Brief report of the "From Mud to Models" workshop on regenerative AI futures organized by Fieke Jansen, Sunjoo Lee, Lena Trotereau, and me at TH/NGS 2025.
Mine would be as follows, because I'm old.
1. Super Mario 64
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
3. Papers, Please
4. Half-Life 2
5. Mass Effect
6. Deus Ex
7. Metroid Prime
Had a great time recording this hot take about how "a different AI is possible" at TH/NGS 2025 with Peet Sneekes at the end of last year. youtu.be/OhvEZz0eJk4?...
A look back on the past 6 months of "doing science" as a postdoc at TU Delft, working on contestable AI. Quite a few conference talks and workshops in this one. It was nice to engage with a wide range of communities. leapfrog.nl/blog/archive...
Update! Now also available as blog post: leapfrog.nl/blog/archive...
En tot slot dank aan het ondersteunende team waar ik zelf deel van uit maak, Felienne Hermans, Mark D., Eelco Herder, Emile van Bergen, Siri Beerends, Nolen Gertz, Paul Peters, Gerry McGovern, Kars Alfrink, en Jelle van der Ster.
Ook dank aan kernteamleden Roel Dobbe, Iris van Rooij, Lilian de Jong, Wouter Nieuwenhuizen, Marcela Suarez, Wiep Hamstra, en Olivia Guest voor alle noeste arbeid.
Met dank aan Cristina Zaga voor het initiatief.
openletter.earth/nl/zorgvuldi...
Een andere AI is mogelijk. Als jij je, net als ik, zorgen maakt over beperkte economische belangen die de ontwikkeling van AI domineren, dan nodig ik je uit deze brief te ondertekenen en te delen, waarin wij onze politici oproepen om te werken aan AI-beleid dat bijdraagt aan sociale vooruitgang.
As always, it was a welcome morale boost to demo and march with, in this case, over 7000 fellow students, teachers, and researchers. #woinactie
On strike today, and off to Amsterdam in a bit to join my colleagues at the demo. Stop the cuts to higher education.
I'll just leave this here… Seaver, N. (2023). Attention Is All You Need: Humans and Computers in the Time of Neural Networks. In D. G. Burnett & J. E. H. Smith (Eds.), Scenes of Attention (pp. 230–248). Columbia University Press. doi.org/10.7312/burn...
Next week, I will be at Dam Square in Amsterdam together with my colleagues to continue urging the parties forming the government not to make cuts to higher education. #woinactie www.aob.nl/actueel/stak...
At this year's ThingsCon TH/NGS conference, Fieke Jansen, Sunjoo Lee, Lena Trotereau, and myself will run a workshop that explores regenerative futures for community AI. thingscon.org/from-mud-to-...
Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a delegation from Denmark and the UK for a full-day workshop about Contestable AI at TU Delft. www.tudelft.nl/2025/io/dece...
Looking forward to collectively exploring permacomputing, server collectives, and networks of consent at NIAS today and tomorrow. Many thanks to John Boy for the invitation. www.jboy.space/nias-worksho...
Now also available as a blog post: leapfrog.nl/blog/archive...
Had a great time presenting on designing AI work tools that preserve worker autonomy at the Enterprise UX conference today. My slides are available on my website, as usual. contestable.ai/wp-content/u...
Recommended event coming up with Christine Lemmer-Webber on rethinking web 2.0 and free and open source software orthodoxy. spui25.nl/programma/we...
Next week, I am speaking at Enterprise UX about designing AI-enabled work tools that promote autonomy. May contain references to Office Space and Luddism. Looking forward to it. www.enterpriseux.nl/program-2025...
Unconference about the digital autonomy of Dutch public institutions is coming up this Friday in Amsterdam. www.meetup.com/code-for-nl/...
Here's a link to my slides (PDF): contestable.ai/wp-content/u...
It is a teaser of sorts for a position paper I have been writing since earlier this year in the semi-open. I hope to do more work on this topic in the years ahead. So it was very productive to discuss this at the symposium.