iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

blair @blairaf.com · 16/09/2026

New office whiteboard already proving to be a great investment

Photo of a whiteboard with purple text "Is estradiol femtech?" and a drawing of a thinking face emoji

180

blair @blairaf.com · 16/09/2026

Once again pointing to my big "frontier labs are a Luciferian cult" neon sign

I. The Prophecy

The Cult’s priests are conjuring an entity too complex for any of them to comprehend or control. It is an unruly assemblage of lithium mines and dump trucks, of shipping containers and undersea cables, microprocessors and server racks, data centres and data subjects, neural networks and knowledge workers, energy grids and power cords, machine-learned decisions and predictions and people and places and lives and stories and pasts and futures and sensors and models and data and knowledge and patterns far too slippery for anyone to strongly grasp. It is a crystal ball encased in a black box, and so it can never be trusted.

It is a superintelligence, and it is being hyperstitioned into existence.

There is no post-transition utopia to be achieved. Their prophecy is a self-fulfilling apocalypse and their salvation is a self-destructive paradise. Their mission is Luciferian: invoke the ambivalent power of their superintelligent un-god, build conscious machines, spread their light of consciousness throughout the universe, expand the cognitive frontier endlessly, out further and further and further into the highest spheres of the heavens, absorbing ever more training data, extending their capabilities ever deeper into an interplanetary cognitive ecology, reaching ever higher to an unreachable throne of omniscience and omnipotence . . . and then what?

4408

blair @blairaf.com · 07/09/2026

kinda cooking tonight

00:00:35
Slide 11 of 43
Despite being such a diverse, fluid, and context-sensitive field of practice, when we hear about AI governance & AI regulation in popular discourse, the conversation - and the attention of political officials & policymakers - is often dominated by masculine power fantasies of

harnessing godlike superintelligence

building “AGI” - artificial general intelligence - a perfectly performant, mechanized servant that can think whatever a human can think and do whatever a human can do

and instituting large-scale security systems and regulatory regimes to protect the world against the ever-impending cyber catastrophe that may occur if these supposedly advanced intelligent agents were to ever “go rogue”

Excerpt reads 00:00:12
Slide 16 of 43
What object.type(3) exposes is that the male power fantasies coded into so much of our discourse on AI regulation & governance is a recipe for failure

A Luciferian project of spitting in the face of hubris to grasp at a throne of omnipotence and omniscience

Pursuing these fantasies can only lead to unreliable control and immeasurable harm

Governance of superintelligence is a fleeting technocratic dream of a dissociated god’s eye view where all risks can be managed by small enclaves of experts with strong security systems and ultra-surveillant, data-intensive dashboard porn to help them monitor and contain rogue superintelligence

along with other threat actors like anti-technology extremists and neoluddite terrorists who seek to bring about a global cyber-apocalypse and plunge us back into the Stone Age

A fleeting technocratic dream is not a sound basis for policy, governance, or regulation

140

blair @blairaf.com · 07/09/2026

My best speaker notes always happen late at night

Excerpt from slide speaker notes that reads: Ok so we know AI and AI governance is kinda ambiguous & kinda trans, And I’m kinda obsessed with this question of what is AI governance, What the hell are we doing here when we say we’re gonna
govern all this stuff

170

blair @blairaf.com · 05/09/2026

Spent a dark cloudy overcaffeinated afternoon working on a fun new talk that blends my research & creative work, officially in my sci-fi horror dark minimalism era

Title slide with an abstract art background that reads "AI GOVERNANCE IS A MESS"

Slide with an excerpt from a short web story and an image of a blueprint of a fictional attack drone

Slide with a dark abstract art background with the text: Why is AI governance so often ineffective at preventing harm?

AI governance systems are limited by resource constraints & power structures

Slide with an abstract dark red art background with all caps text that reads "LET THEM EAT COMPUTE"

2183

blair @blairaf.com · 30/08/2026

she's falling asleep I think I won the puppy eyes battle

Huxley the dog in the same spot but she is sleeping now

020

blair @blairaf.com · 30/08/2026

pov you are trying to read a book but your critter is staring you down hoping for playtime

Photo of Huxley the dog laying flat on a big fuzzy green blanket staring at the camera

2120

blair @blairaf.com · 27/08/2026

No support for data centre resistance, public protests, refusal to adopt, or other stalling strategies in Bill Gates' "we need more time" essay btw

Text excerpt that reads: This time really is different.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated.

We need time to prepare for the social, political, and economic upheaval.

I wish the world could get the benefits rapidly and delay the problems it will cause as long as possible, but the benefits and problems are arriving at the same time. I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political, and economic upheaval we are about to enter. The people who need the most time are the ones who have the least—the accounting worker who’s replaced by a bot or the $20-an-hour worker who loses their job to a $10-an-hour robot

001

blair @blairaf.com · 21/08/2026

Haven't posted dog in a while

150

blair @blairaf.com · 19/08/2026

My trans dissertation won an award for most significant dissertation in Canada 👍 cags.ca/prizes/cags-...

7363

blair @blairaf.com · 07/08/2026

Me rolling back into work mode after weeks of sunbathing and writing weird little stories and essays

Image of a dog sleeping in a square of sunlight with the caption "Continue Yes No"

040

blair @blairaf.com · 23/06/2026

I wrote this weird little essay in 2023 about a near-future in which AI, extended reality, and interlocking policy failures collapse politics into glitchy post-reality soup & fragile cognitive security regimes. So many prescient predictions in this volume, excited it's finally out!

Excerpt from the essay in the liked volume entitled "Realness"

2184

blair @blairaf.com · 09/06/2026

Super excited for our CRAFT workshop on trans AI policy at FAccT, co-organized w @jhereia.bsky.social & @anabrandusescu.bsky.social, come join us if you're at the conference! More details here: programs.sigchi.org/facct/2026/p...

Poster entitled "Designing AI policy for and with trans communities"

24013

blair @blairaf.com · 02/06/2026

I'm looking for a new PhD student to come join me at UAlberta & Amii to study trans perspectives on AI policy & the future of AI as part of my new lab. The position is fully funded and offers access to a range of supports - more details in the poster below!

Flyer with qualifications and details for the PhD position.

37060

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

"Prevent reinforcment of historical injustices" vs. "Reinforce exclusivity in tech policy & governance processes"

The which way meme with a boy at a crossroads facing a light path and a dark path

041

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

I make all of my teaching materials open access! My newest course is entitled "Politics of Digital Technologies", and I also have syllabi, reading lists, & lecture slides openly available from my other courses on AI governance & policy All my course materials are here: www.blairaf.com/resources/

Screenshot of a syllabus for a course entitled "Politics of Digital Technologies"

131

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

Not a fan of "AGI"? I have an anti-AGI paper! "Queering Intelligence" introduces a new anti-normative theory of intelligence and uses it to deflate two normative foundations of "AI": general intelligence and the Turing Test: www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...

Screenshot from the first page of a paper published as a chapter in a book. The title of the paper is "Queering intelligence." The page contains text from the paper's Introduction section that can be found within the hyperlink in this post.

141

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

"Transfeminist AI governance" draws on trans and feminist theory & 3 of my empirical studies to address structural reasons why AI policy & governance are so often ineffective at preventing harm: firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

Abstract for a paper entitled "Transfeminist AI Governance". The abstract reads: "This paper re-imagines the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) through a transfeminist lens, focusing on challenges of power, participation, and injustice, and on opportunities for advancing equity, community-based resistance, and transformative change. AI governance is a field of research and practice seeking to maximize benefits and minimize harms caused by AI systems. Unfortunately, AI governance practices are frequently ineffective at preventing AI systems from harming people and the environment, with historically marginalized groups such as trans people being particularly vulnerable to harm. Building upon trans and feminist theories of ethics, I introduce an approach to transfeminist AI governance. Applying a transfeminist lens in combination with a critical self-reflexivity methodology, I retroactively reinterpret findings from three empirical studies of AI governance practices in Canada and globally. In three reflections on my findings, I show that large-scale AI governance systems structurally prioritize the needs of industry over marginalized communities. As a result, AI governance is limited by power imbalances and exclusionary norms. My reflections reveal that re-grounding AI governance in transfeminist ethical principles can support AI governance researchers, practitioners, and organizers in addressing those limitations."

152

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

"The Governance of AI in Canada", a longer research paper with @anabrandusescu.bsky.social & Kelly Lyons looking at 84 of Canada's AI governance initiatives and discuss challenges of public trust & participation, diversity, transparency, and collaboration: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Screenshot of an article entitled "The governance of artificial intelligence in Canada"

130

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

"AI Regulation in a Post-Reality World" looks at the erosion of reality amidst a tide of AI slop, introducing concepts like ontological & intangible harm and smaller-scale regulatory strategies for navigating post-reality environments: libraopen.lib.virginia.edu/downloads/cc...

Screenshot of an article entitled "AI regulation in a post-reality world"

320

blair @blairaf.com · 01/06/2026

How can we address algorithmic justice challenges when we are faced with unreliable and malicious governments? "Algorithmic Justice vs. State Power" confronts this question: montrealethics.ai/state-of-ai-...

Screenshot from an article entitled "Algorithmic Justice vs. State Power"

110

blair @blairaf.com · 29/05/2026

All 4 of my 4S abstracts got accepted but now I have to put together 4 talks

Big smiley face emoji with two thumbs up and a burning building in the background

250

blair @blairaf.com · 29/05/2026

Reading my AI bible backwards with my AI bodyguard in the AI background on linkedin .com

AI slop image of the Pope reading a print version of Magnifica Humanitas backwards with a pope robot behind him

140

blair @blairaf.com · 28/05/2026

Haven't posted dog in a while

Huxley the dog with black brown and white fur in a pink lit room

150

blair @blairaf.com · 15/05/2026

Catching strays from my critter

Huxley the dog has big ears and brown black and white fur and is tilting her head with big eyes in this photo

050

blair @blairaf.com · 11/05/2026

This winter I taught a new course entitled "Politics of Digital Technologies" and we had tons of fun discussing a range of digital policy issues. I'm making the syllabus & reading list open access, hope it's helpful for your own teaching or learning! Materials here: www.blairaf.com/resources/

Screenshot of the syllabus for a course entitled "Politics of Digital Technologies"

33311

blair @blairaf.com · 07/05/2026

Putting together a whole talk about this

Title slide for a talk entitled "What is AI Governance? Findings from interviews with Canadian government leaders & subject matter experts"

171

blair @blairaf.com · 30/04/2026

Thrifted a new coat and found a receipt for 120 individually wrapped chicken breasts in the pocket I have questions

A receipt for 120 chicken breasts totaling $418.80

170

blair @blairaf.com · 25/03/2026

actually burst out laughing when I saw the author bios

Washington Post oped entitled "Halting data center construction will entrench inequality"

The oped authors are Palantir's head of AI implementation and head of government affairs

2163

blair @blairaf.com · 11/03/2026

Angry audit man with four pupils five eyebrows and comically oversized magnifying glass

120

blair @blairaf.com · 11/03/2026

Trying to find stock images for lecture slides that aren't AI slop is becoming more of a challenge - what is a "checkist"? Why aren't the checkmarks completed? Why are the checkmark blocks defying gravity? What is happening in these images?

Image of a checklist misspelled as "checkist" with half-finished checkmarks on a page on a clipboard and magnifying glass over the page

Another AI generated checklist and magnifying glass image

140

blair @blairaf.com · 03/03/2026

Giving a talk on collective resistance in AI governance this Friday! Come say hi in-person or drop by online using the Zoom info on this page: sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/...

Summary of talk entitled "Collective Resistance in AI Governance Systems" from the linked page

072

blair @blairaf.com · 24/02/2026

This talk is next Friday! Come say hi in-person at Amii HQ if you're in Edmonton, or join online using the Zoom info on this page: sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/...