iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Writers + AI: tool, co-author, or threat? 90-min live panel with @aijiang.bsky.social sky.social, Argyris Loizou, @hannahsilva.bsky.social , Haris Ioannides, @julietemckenna.bsky.social, and Tim Boucher. 16:00 EET (09.00 EST). Email j.mackay@euc.ac.cy for the link. #WritingCommunity #AIEthics

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

"AI is an automated amplifier of social norms and assumptions" - well put by Selena Savić, speaking at "Rethinking the Inevitability of AI" conference today. Such a productive series of talks.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Interesting piece on the non takeup of GenAI by educators. This is a group that has been heavily targeted by edutech startups, yet they clearly don't see any huge benefit. www.criticalinkling.com/p/students-u...

criticalinkling.com

"Students Use AI. Teachers Do Not."

Two years later, neither ChatGPT nor generative AI live up to the hype.

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Katie (Kathryn) Conrad @kconrad.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Fascinating. “Given the general sentiment about AI, scraping the web for content and the disintermediating of content creators, it’s not hard to imagine enterprising individuals adding ‘David Mayer’ …to their own content or website in an effort to make it disappear from ChatGPT’s output.” 👀

centreforaileadership.org

The Curious Case of David Mayer, the man ChatGPT cannot name.

ChatGPT users have noticed a curious behavior: It refuses to talk about a 'David Mayer'. We have the explanation and point out less obvious implications.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

It seems that someone called David Mayer has succeeded in bringing OpenAI to heel. It's impossible to get the chatbot to generate that name.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

This isn't true. In fact, only the part of the Internet curated by algorithm will fill up w/ slop. Human curated databases (libraries) are just fine, and still full of wonderful art. It's just that we've all got so used to having a machine do our thinking for us, and now we need #criticalAI skills.

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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

"Not a single Whitehall department has registered the use of AI systems since the government said it would become mandatory, prompting warnings that the public sector is “flying blind” about the deployment of algorithmic technology affecting millions of lives." www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

UK government failing to list use of AI on mandatory register

Technology secretary admits government departments are not being transparent over way they use AI and algorithms

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Very reassuring piece. Though I'm not sure that "2% of global energy use" is all that minimal.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

A huge number of my followers describe themselves as AI artists and/or have feeds mostly filed with #AIart generated pictures. I would love to hear from any of you about what you find creatively satisfying about #GenAI art. Why do you enjoy doing this?

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Has a political party anywhere in the world ever won a democratic election with manifesto promising to cut services while raising taxes? (Honestly curious, and it's tricky to research.)

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

This is only a light little article, but it's the first time I've seen anyone in mainstream media talk about Ethiopian perspectives on Western charity drives. www.theguardian.com/music/2024/n...

theguardian.com

‘Everyone was happy, but it became annoying’: Ethiopians look back on Band Aid

London cafe owner Yared Markos, 48, saw ‘aeroplanes, biscuits, sweets and cake all over Addis Ababa’ after song’s release

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Some observations from Digital Forms: The Long and Short of It, an interdisciplinary enquiry into length as a feature of the digital. I'll concentrate on digital cultures and #GenAI, though a lot more was discussed.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

If you want to feel the lovely warm glow of human connection, go read the comments under the AI generated Coca Cola advert. "Uncanny" "Disturbing" "Dead," not to mention "Made me a lifelong Pepsi fan." youtu.be/IQWUKWM2JrQ?...

youtu.be

Coca-Cola - Secret Santa (AI-Generated Christmas Ad 2024)

YouTube video by LLLLITL

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Got to admit, I'm genuinely shocked at how good ChatGPT has got at generating poetry. Even a few months ago, it was still insistent on making poems rhyme and iterative promptinh was needed. I mean, this isn't a "great" poem. But it's also far from terrible. chatgpt.com/share/673dc8...

chatgpt.com

ChatGPT - Elevator Poem Request

Shared via ChatGPT

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Santi Garcia @santigarcia.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Recent research shows that #learning from #AI #feedback is not automatic. Furthermore, despite its individual-level benefits, AI feedback can have significant population-level downsides including loss of intellectual #diversity and an increasing #skills gap. #FutureOfWork arxiv.org/abs/2409.18660

arxiv.org

Effects of AI Feedback on Learning, the Skill Gap, and Intellectual Diversity

Can human decision-makers learn from AI feedback? Using data on 52,000 decision-makers from a large online chess platform, we investigate how their AI use affects three interrelated long-term outcomes...

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Each of these documents is 10,000-15,000 words long. I've spent today proofing, standardising, cross checking them all. I'd have gone mad if it wasn't for Ants Canada videos on Youtube (www.youtube.com/@AntsCanada) (PS Ignore the absolutely insane nesting folders - it's been a long couple of weeks)

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

I finally saw snails mating today... such a bizarre process.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

What is the very best example of art or music produced wholly by #GenAI that you've seen? Just looking for pictures / audio clips, but with source if possible.

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Jennifer Hu @jennhu.bsky.social · 24/10/2023

To researchers doing LLM evaluation: prompting is *not a substitute* for direct probability measurements. Check out the camera-ready version of our work, to appear at EMNLP 2023! (w/ @rplevy.bsky.social) Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2305.13264 Original thread: twitter.com/_jennhu/stat...

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

One of our universities in Cyprus just launched an "MSc in Metaverse." Which may not be the best timing, given that the hype bubble around that concept disappeared about 18 months ago...

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

The point isn't that GenAI can write good poems now, the point is that most people have no idea what a poem is or what it's for, preferring a vague concept of "poeticness" ("poeticality"?) instead.

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Leon Furze @leonfurze.com · 15/11/2024

I made a free course about deepfakes, hosted by my deepfake. The entire course is AI generated but based on real research. It’s sort of fun/weird/terrifying #artificialintelligence #aieducation leonfurze.teachable.com/p/this-cours...

leonfurze.teachable.com

This Course is AI Generated

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

The #AI feed - roughly 1/3rd entrepreneurs pitching some kind of tool with wild overpromises, 1/3rd academics/commentators saying "read my article please", and 1/3rd people showing off dodgy/exploitative softcore images they've made with GenAI. Pretty accurate reflection of the conversation, then.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

It was a fun conversation at the launch of our book Reading #Instapoetry! Lots of interesting suggestions for future directions from the attendees. Many thanks to @eliterature.bsky.social for organizing this event.

A Zoom window showing a number of people at a book launch event

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

People can't reliably detect academic abstracts generated by AI. But of course: abstracts are written to a formula, AI does formulaic writing well, as everywhere AI replaces drudge work. Wake me up when it writes the article (inc research) undetectably. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Can linguists distinguish between ChatGPT/AI and human writing?: A study of research ethics and academic publishing

There has been considerable intrigue surrounding the use of Large Language Model powered AI chatbots such as ChatGPT in research, educational contexts…

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 28/09/2024

Testing out the new ChatGPT-o1 preview, and am finding its supposedly enhanced reasoning facilities extremely funny. Although the conversation has mostly been about maths, I'm looking at it for literary analysis/creative writing. It's barely changed from 4, but there is 1 v funny difference.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 19/09/2024

Today was the second of two very enjoyable days spent re-envisioning university teaching and assessment in the GenAI age. Lovely to have been working with colleagues from medical sciences, law, computer science and more, all focusing on the ever more profound challenges to education from this tech.

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 16/09/2024

Shakespeare on refugees: “You’ll put down strangers,/ Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,/ And lead the majesty of law in lyam/ To slip him like a hound." (From his treatment of the play Thomas More).

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

LOVED this book. Very insightful on the rhetorics of white innocence. 💙📚

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 14/09/2024

"In this new generative-AI paradigm, uncertainty reigns over certainty, speculation dominates reality, science defers to faith. The hype around generative AI is accelerating fossil-fuel extraction while the technology consumes unprecedented amounts of energy." www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Reads "Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s first chief environmental officer, who left the company in 2022, fears that the world will not be able to reverse the current trajectory of AI development even if the technology is shown to have a net-negative impact on sustainability. Companies are designing specialized chips and data centers just for advanced generative-AI models. Microsoft is reportedly planning a $100 billion supercomputer to support the next generations of OpenAI’s technologies; it could require as much energy annually as 4 million American homes. Abandoning all of this would be like the U.S. outlawing cars after designing its entire highway system around them."

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 13/09/2024

Fun fact: when we were asked for suggestions for cover designs for our open-access collection Reading #Instapoetry, we just sent the lyrics to Bo Burnham's song "White Woman's Instagram." I think Annabel Hewitson, the cover artist, really understood the brief. Gorgeous, innit?

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James Mackay @jamesmackaycyp.bsky.social · 12/09/2024

Fab piece on the lazy metaphors used to describe "generative" AI. Illustrates the need for perspectives from creative arts and literary criticism in ongoing debates about these technologies. www.techpolicy.press/challenging-...

techpolicy.press

Challenging The Myths of Generative AI | TechPolicy.Press

Eryk Salvaggio says we must dispense with myths if we are to think more clearly about what AI actually is and does.

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