iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maybe it's just the AI tan background or the way the Great Lakes are represented as rivers or the legend for the temp but not river size I'm reacting to but something seems off to me. Like it looks like the water moves inland a bunch rather than downstream

110

Reposted by Justin Joque

Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 7h

It’s nice to see so many familiar faces in GHOST IN THE MACHINE, including a bunch of mutuals. The film is well done and a gift for those of us teaching. youtu.be/dLQzVLtvdv8?...

youtu.be

Ghost in the Machine | Full Documentary

YouTube video by PBS Documentaries

2143

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 6h

I read something somewhere (sorry I can't find it again) where the author was suggesting the Turing test was inspired by Turing attempting to pass as straight. Obviously no way to know but the idea has stuck with me for a long time

030

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 8h

Just kidding I know I'm not new enough to qualify anyway

010

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 8h

lol I do now want to watch this and learn about corn sweat!

010

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 8h

I know this isn't the point but I hope it's media studies because you guys maybe this is finally my chance!

160

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 10h

I know it's very far from the biggest problem with all this EA/AGI nonsense but it still really grinds my gears that these people are getting this kind of money to think about shit and talk about it when just objectively speaking my ideas are at a minimum 37x better

050

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 11h

nice but hopefully some day fossil fuels will go the way of the dinosaurs (eh?) but corn will one day spread throughout the galaxy and maybe beyond

010

Reposted by Justin Joque

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 16h

In my AI class today I'm going to try to convince my students that super intelligence has already arrived, far surpassed humanity, already rules the world with humans doing its will and it is not a computer, it is corn

25810

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 13h

You should just write a sequel called "Why we fear corn and are right to be afraid"

130

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 16h

Ha. That might be the only thing I disagree with in your book. High fructose corn syrup plus animal feed use has put corn way beyond other food crops

160

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 16h

25810

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 17h

Welp now it appears that you can no longer do anything on the diag at my university (aside from permitted events)

Plastic sandwich sign that reads: welcome to the diag a permit is required for all events. Other uses prohibited. The university will enforce its policies

120

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

My mom bought me a doll of one of the creatures from where the wild things are and I made her keep it in her room because it scared me too much

040

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

He teaches at my Uni anytime he wants to go get lunch and talk about why I think bourgeois economics is not a real science I'm game for building those bridges

2430

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I guess what I mean to say is: it can't replicate human thinking but that doesn't preclude it from reasoning in some ways because some reason takes place in language itself (symbolic logic being the most obvious example and one with possibly the least amount of jouissance of any academic subject)

100

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

much a part of our human experience of the symbolic as any other language. Moreover what separates from AI is those drives and our relation to the symbolic not that we have some special secret thing that allows us to be the only way to relate the symbolic

210

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Even in his earlier work it is the failure of the imaginary vis-a-vis the body image that drives the subject into the symbolic. But he also says that we are subjects of our teletechnology. It's not that AI has an ego or enjoys language like we do, but the language that comes from the AI is just as..

110

Reposted by Justin Joque

Diego Gómez-Venegas @digomezvenegas.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

“Against this we must instead recognize that capitalism has always been a crushing, extractionist artificial intelligence.” – I really enjoy this kind of academic critique of academic critics of AI

121

Reposted by Justin Joque

Robin James @robinjames.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Tbh Catholic phenomenology had a renaissance in the 2000s/2010s so it is kind of no surprise that the Pope has a more robust philosophical account of AI than tech bros do, sounds like he is working from that tradition…

15310

Reposted by Justin Joque

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 03/10/2026

Sadly, I think a few critical anti-AI thinkers have already fallen into a trap of believing we need to resurrect a metaphysics of rejecting certain ways of everyday thinking about sociotechnical systems and enforce this in other people’s speech, as an over-correction to a real problem of magicslop.

1132

Reposted by Justin Joque

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 03/10/2026

“You can believe anything that you can imagine” and “the earthly representatives of God ordain that you can only think certain things” are actually not the only two positions and should both be rejected.

1142

Reposted by Justin Joque

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 03/10/2026

I strongly suspect we are going to see a global cultural shift equivalent to the rejection of the "mundus imaginalis" of Renaissance-era mysticism via the Reformation, as religious and cultural institutions come to reject the participatory make-believe of digital culture and fascism.

1385

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

What's a rogue industry? Are we talking making rogue like video games or dumping illegal toxic waste? Either way not sure how that qualifies one to give extra real advice

010

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Projectors are where it's at! So much easier on my over screened eyes. You could get a screen and skip the tv all together. That's a beautiful space to have a theater setup

010

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This is where I'm a bit radical perhaps. I think consciousness, despite most people feeling very intimately that it's something they have, is an entirely metaphysical concept. There is a line of thinking that runs from William James to Lacan and Derrida along these lines but too long for here

330

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

To my mind what Bender has done is basically to respond by insisting only humans have souls. Which is obviously a fine thing to believe but just like the AI boosters tried to dress it up in positivist language. And I just don't think either side of this is going to get very far going that way

110

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'm not sure you need to respond with metaphysics. If Sam Altman were to say "look the new version has a soul" I think it would be best to not take the bait and get in a theological argument about what a soul is (again unless you're the pope) and instead say that's silly and focus on what it does

120

Reposted by Justin Joque

Robert Heinze @rheinze.myatproto.social · 04/10/2026

Wait, is this supposed to say that its the critics who are bringing metaphysics into this? If you put up a massive claim like “LLMs can think” you’re not the one making a metaphysical argument? Lol

4255

Reposted by Justin Joque

Frédéric Deshusses @fdeshusses.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Il me semble que cet aspect est important, car la défense métaphysique face aux techniques est souvent la justification des tactiques de défenses corporatistes. Telle compétence ne peut être exercée que par ceux qui sont initiés.

111

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I agree. Both sides are making metaphysical claims and treating them as empirical/scientific concepts. The Pope is the only being rigorous in all this because at least he is honest he's talking metaphysics

130

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'm not like an AI architect or anything but maybe they should put a secret calculator in chatgpt. Seems a lot more efficient than reasoning 457 * 58 from first principles. As a human I'd also be like "I know this is a problem for calculator"

080

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If I was in any level of leadership in any organization or company, I'd be spending a lot of time getting people to game out how you keep things moving when big chunks of the network go down. When Sony got hacked they had to use typewriters and fax machines. I'd want to prepare now with email

050

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I need to think more about why and how to articulate it but I find the metaphysics of probability more palatable than that of "understanding" and "meaning" but again not entirely sure why or how to explain at least without typing out much more than I can here

120

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

For sure. He thought that the fact the math applied was proof that the universe was orderly.

120

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yeah completely agree. Bender's climbing to NLU paper is really out there to me. Like it tries to describe understanding in set theoretical terms but the math just masks how much her argument is metaphysical

130

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

for example: 1) a labor based one: who cares whether it works or not we don't want to automate this work 2) a pedagogical one: it's important for people to know how to think and read so don't offload it 3) a whole hearted metaphysical one that doesn't claim to be scientific (ie the Pope's position)

160

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The problem is some people decided a few years ago that the best response to LLMs was a metaphysical one (only humans think, therefore no material system can ever think). And once you've committed to a metaphysical decision there is really no evidence that can ever sway you.

2163

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I don't need headphones to tell you all how close I'm to burnout. I already know exactly how close I am (very)

050

Reposted by Justin Joque

Emily @emilydawn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

@hockeyviz.com I found some beautiful data viz for you

7142331025

Justin Joque @jjoque.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

No but it looks great I'm going to definitely check it out

210

Reposted by Justin Joque

Sarah Osment @smosment.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

no humanities except for grok

1177