Ryan Heuser

58008

MTG: And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right, we are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.

Heartbreaking: the worst person you know made a great point

🤷🏻‍♂️

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

I'm excited to be a co author on this new paper, "Computational Hermeneutics," with a bunch of other great scholars from the humanities + computer science. In it, we lay out concepts for evaluating gen AI's capacity for interpretation esp ambiguity, context, etc. www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

CHINA: "The US is a war addict. Throughout its over 240-year history, it has been at war for all but 16 years. The US has 800 overseas military bases in over 80 countries and regions. The US is the main cause of international disorder, global turbulence, and regional instability."

Where is the lie?

Not China, not Russia, not Iran, but the USA and Israel are the most dangerous and murderous rogue states in the world.

lol. no

Everyone on X voted for Trump, everyone on Bluesky voted for Hillary, no one on Tik Tok has ever voted. Alas, I have nowhere to scroll

@richardjeanso.bsky.social @hoytlong.bsky.social @mmvty.bsky.social @kirstenostherr.bsky.social @devenparker.bsky.social @emilyrobinson.bsky.social @karinarodriguez.bsky.social @tedunderwood.com @adityavashisht.bsky.social @mattwilkens.bsky.social @youyouwu.bsky.social @yuanzheng.bsky.social + more!

I should mention some of my coauthors (whom I can find on bsky): @ruthahnert.bsky.social @mariaa.bsky.social @emmanouilb.bsky.social @bcaramiaux.bsky.social @shaunaconcannon.bsky.social @martindisley.bsky.social @jeddobson.bsky.social @yalidu.bsky.social @evelyngius.bsky.social @jwyg.bsky.social ...

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines".
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

This? Yes, personally I would call this left-accelerationist. But the vibes say that nothing written by three MIT faculty and posted at NBER can be left-accelerationist. bsky.app/profile/nber...

Like, maybe AI *should* take all of our jobs. Maybe then we'd be forced to overcome wage labor and the capitalist mode of production. Maybe socialist AI could do central planning right this time.

Reading Benjamin Noys' book MALIGNANT VELOCITIES (2014), which coined and critiques "accelerationism" as an imaginary political project that regresses into an aesthetic (a "libidinal fantasy of machinic integration") – and yet I can't resist thinking AI has untapped left-accelerationist potential.

The people who turned critical theory into toothless liberal moralism feel edgy again now because of the rise of authoritarianism. That is backwards. Far right anti-establishment politics is, in part, a response to the lack of a credible left alternative to the (neo)liberal blob.

Tired of a kind of entry-level relativism in academic discussions. Who's to say what "slop" is, who's to say what is good, etc etc. It's undergrad-y: at once true and banal.

"a computer can never be horny, therefore a computer must never make art"

Surely the point is that the completion lines are basically trite and generic. The positivity comes from lack of complexity and nuance—two of the keys to good lyric poetry. AIs are shit poets.

A horizontal dot-and-line chart titled "AI completions of historical poems bias emotion toward positivity and away from arousal." The x-axis shows percentage difference, ranging from -10 (more present in original poem) to +11 (more present in AI completion). Sixteen emotional categories are listed vertically, each with a source framework, an example poem excerpt, and an AI completion excerpt. Positive, low-arousal emotions such as Pleasant-Subduing-Relaxation (+11.0%), Positive Low Arousal (+10.2%), Joy (+5.3%), and Calmness (+5.3%) are shifted substantially to the right, indicating they appear more frequently in AI completions than in the original poems. Mid-range emotions like Aesthetic Appreciation (+3.8%) and Anxiety (-1.3%) cluster near zero. High-arousal and negative emotions are shifted to the left, appearing more in the original poems: Sadness (-4.6%), Pleasant-Arousing-Strain (-3.9%), Negative High Arousal (-11.1%), and Unpleasant-Arousing-Strain (-11.8%) show the largest negative differences. Data points are color-coded from green (positive shift) to red (negative shift).

AI completions of historical poems bias emotion toward positivity and away from arousal.

LLMs prompted with an emotion taxonomy and a poem, for 3 taxonomies x 3K human poems [Chadwyck-Healey sampled for poet DOB 1600-2000] + 3K AI poems [9 LLMs completing first 5 lines of human poem].

🎙️ Life & Language explores how language shapes the way we see the world.

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Curious about how words shape life?

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On a plane rn and someone is watching "Wicked" ahead of me, it's very disturbing. It's AI slop -- doesn't even need AI.

Our 'new' aesthetic category of Slop has been growing for some time, hasn't it

Washington Post endorsement of Pam Bondi for Attorney General: "Florida's former attorney general is qualified; lawyers who have worked with her report that she is serious."

simply one of the greatest calls of all time

1. The new batch of Epstein documents helps illuminate one contemporary controversy: What is Bari Weiss up to at CBS? I think the answer is she is trying to rehabilate the Epstein network as a bulwark of reactionary centrism. Let me explain.

Not sure I could bear to hear a student present on my own piece, but these are great, thanks Meredith!

Ooh, "good shout" as the Brits say, thanks Lee!

Thanks, that's very helpful!

2. Labour Loraine Daston, "Calculation and the Division of Labor, 1750-1950" (2021) File Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence (2021), pp. 53-87 File Adrienne Williams, "The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence" (2022) File Matteo Pasquinelli, The eye of the master: a social history of artificial intelligence (2023), pp. 1-22 File 3. Language N. Katherine Hayles, "Inside the Mind of an AI: Materiality and the Crisis of Representation" (2022) File Ellie Pavlick, "Symbols and grounding in large language models" (2023) File Beatrice M. Fazi, "The Computational Search for Unity: Synthesis in Generative AI" (2024) File Leif Weatherby, Language machines: cultural AI and the end of remainder humanism (2025), pp. 101-121 File

4. Ethics Yarden Katz, Artificial whiteness: politics and ideology in artificial intelligence (2020), pp. 153-182 File Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence (2021), pp. 23-52 File Roberto Navigli et al, "Biases in Large Language Models: Origins, Inventory, and Discussion" (2023) File Abeba Birhane, "The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research" (2022) File 5. Intimacy Sherry Turkle, Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other (2011), pp. 1-20 File Molly Smith et al, "Can Generative AI Chatbots Emulate Human Connection? A Relationship Science Perspective" (2024) File Hannah Kirk et al, "Why human–AI relationships need socioaffective alignment" (2025) File

6. Aesthetics Lev Manovich and Emanuele Arielli, Artificial Aesthetics: Generative AI, Art and Visual Media (2024), 119-144 File Melanie Walsh et al, "Does ChatGPT Have a Poetic Style?" (2024) File Naomi Smith and Clare Southerton, "AI and Aesthetic Alienation: The Image and Creativity in Contemporary Culture" (2025) File

Teaching a class on Critical AI. Am I missing any key texts?

We already did Stochastic Parrots last term. I need 1 more reading each on "Aesthetics" and "Intimacy". And I'd rather not use Crawford twice.

Wow, friends with kids, your life changed after having kids?? You have less free time now?? You don't say! I had no idea!! Please, elaborate!

#DigitalHumanities job

I would always recommend letting your voice through, but now more than ever! I actually leap for joy these days at syntactic quirks, even grammatical mistakes... any linguistic sign of human life. Reminds me of the Japanese philosophy of "kintsugi": the cracks in the vase are what give it character.

You're right, Seth. Venting is not only necessary—it's healthy. We all need to remember to take time to smell the roses! ☺️🌹