Reposted by Nina BegušDavid Smith @dasmiq.bsky.social · 2hWe can put a 10ft human skeleton in the front yard of anyone who wants one. Why don’t we have the supply chain to put a T. rex or triceratops skeleton on every corner? 061
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 3hDelivering dinosaurs for exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science. Arthur Pollock, 1984 052
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 3hI walked into the classroom to pick up my son from a violin lesson, and there he was doing armpit farts. 120
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 18hThis one is for @mattseybold.bsky.social! Courtesy of my silly 6yo. 231
Reposted by Nina BegušRichard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Cool post-doc opp for recent graduates in computer science & AI from Schmidt Sciences; broad range of AI topics that intersect with comp social sci. & humanities, esp. problems with alignment, interpretability, and knowledge production. Great foundation to work with: jobs.lever.co/schmidt-enti...jobs.lever.cojobs - Fellow in ResidenceSummary Schmidt Sciences invites recent PhD graduates in AI and computer science to apply for a 12-18 month fellows-in-residence program, with the possibility of extension to 24 months. Fellows would ... 046
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026From now on, "First Encounters with AI" are delivered for all preorders: press.umich.edu/Books/F/Firs... Feel free to use UMWEB30 discount code. Since this is a trade book, it won't be open access. There will be an e-book closer to the official publication date in mid-November.press.umich.eduFirst Encounters with AI | Nina BegušFirst Encounters with AI gathers some of today’s most original literary minds to explore one of the central artistic and cultural questions of our era: What happens to writing when language is no long... 231
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026“In 1930, the manuscript was inherited after Wilfrid's death by his widow Ethel Voynich, author of the novel The Gadfly and daughter of mathematician George Boole.” 050
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Vojnich is perfect for AI to crack, but here we are. 120
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Sometime during the pandemic, I interviewed a guy over zoom. He drank an energy drink and lit a cigarette. I will never forget him. 221
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I appreciate the editor who put the submission deadline into my calendar. Nice, thoughtful gesture! 000
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026All academic writing should be open access. Especially since libraries are not buying physical books anymore. 071
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Andrej Tomažin's "Heroes, Lackeys and Artificial Intelligence" (2018) presents a literary jury discussing literature confronted with AI great wit and depth. I wish the translation was out by now. Hopefully soon! 021
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Had to get it off my chest! substack.com/home/post/p-...substack.comPost-Semantic Literature or How to Finally Kill the Text and Not the Author (2022)Pseudo-academic musings on literary prizes 000
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Grads take note! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32791academicjobsonline.orgCornell University, College of Arts and Sciences Fellowships Job #AJO32791, Postdoctoral Associate, AI in Social Sciences & Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences Fellowships, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US 010
Reposted by Nina BegušRuss Luzetski @rabit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Another intriguing podcast! I started listening to provoke thoughts for my #TTRPG / #DnD campaigns, but episodes like this are so much more... 042
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Liminality is the most productive way of AI exploration (IMO), and Pierre Hugyhe is the king of liminality. Thanks to @ranjodhdhaliwal.com for snapping these at Fondation Beyeler! 071
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026FYI my 2024 syllabi for Artificial Humanities and History of Information are available online. ArtHum follows the book, while the History of Information course offers a historical overview of information technologies and their challenges, starting with writing. www.ninabegus.com/talks-teachingninabegus.comNina Begus - Talks & TeachingUpcoming Talks August 19 Tiat August 26 Guest lecture UCSC September 10-12 Latent Spaces of Culture September 24 Ethics of Narration, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Media, Sapienza University of... 250
Reposted by Nina BegušImaginary Worlds @emolinsky.bsky.social · 23/09/2026With all the talk about AI these days, it’s hard not to think of movies like The Matrix or Her. But it’s possible that sci-fi isn’t the best prism to understand AI right now. We explore why ancient myths have a lot to say about chatfishing, deathbots and an AI apocalypse.imaginaryworldspodcast.orgIs Mythology the Key to Understand AI? — Imaginary WorldsEpisode 312 061
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026At least this was my experience with artificial humanities. It's repeating with scientists today. They're raising an alarm that the world is not ready to hear. 030
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Science and AI is a hot topic among academics. But not outside of the academia and some parts of the industry. The problem an expert is working on seems urgent and evident to them, but the world is often not yet ready to her about it. You're likely too early. 010
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Coming out: Encounters with AI and First Encounters with AI ☺️ 130
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Scholarship runs on internal motivation. Industry runs on external motivation. 000
Reposted by Nina BegušGasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026What is college if knowledge, teaching, and advising are available from machines? One model has answers to many challenges that AI is posing today: residential education where students learn from each other to be bold, original, and uniquely human while living, eating and socializing together.begus.substack.comThe future is in residential educationThe most transformative education happens when students learn uniquely human skills over meals and tea time 032
Reposted by Nina BegušCenter for Digital Humanities @princetoncdh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Coming up on 10/6! @leifw.bsky.social discusses the epistemic order that LLMs are currently spreading throughout our culture, from policy to science to writing. More info & RSVP (requested) @ the link! Presented in partnership with CDH, Media+Modernity, and @princeton.edu Humanities Initiative.cdh.princeton.eduHow to Reason with Words: Models, Metaphors, MetaphysicsHow to Reason with Words: Models, Metaphors, Metaphysics 184
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 18/09/2026One of 700 pages of Accent in Hittite. By Alwin Kloekhorst. 131
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026See more on the link and please feel free to reach out with any questions. I'd be happy to share the book proposal form. www.exeterpress.co.uk/collections/...exeterpress.co.ukArtificial HumanitiesSeries editor: Nina Beguš, University of California, Berkeley, USAEditorial advisory board members:Stanley Qiufan Chen, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong KongRanjodh Singh Dhaliwal, University o... 032
Reposted by Nina BegušGabriel Hankins @gabrielh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Surrealism is the concrete aesthetic language for our moment 085
Reposted by Nina BegušGasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026My coping mechanism in the age of AI: write more Proto-Indo-European papers. Here’s a story on the origin of PIE mobility. I argue that in Pre-PIE, a rule operated that whereby heavy syllables attracted stress from the root to the ending. I focus on root nouns and verbs. 2193
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Jean-Pierre Serre turned a 100 years old! Here's what he said many years ago about learning math. It still holds, even in the time when the machine does math better than us. Math is closer to the pursuit of art. This is what the recent Leiden Declaration on AI and Math defended. 010
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 16/09/202610yo: “Back in my day we didn’t have audio book. We only had real books.” 030
Reposted by Nina Begušmetahaven @metahaven.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Great point @begus.bsky.social. As @robert-booth.bsky.social writes about puzzling Joycean lingo now uttered by agential AI, "Latent Spacecraft" (with @ninabegus.bsky.social) researched both "Finnegans Wake" as a written-out latent space and artificial neural networks as babbling engines 052
Reposted by Nina BegušGasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Yes, Joyce was exploring the prior layers of language. Here's a project that lets you explore those prior stages: latentspacecraft.antikythera.org Glad to se that the industry is coming to the same conclusion! @metahaven.bsky.social @ninabegus.bsky.social @robert-booth.bsky.social 073
Reposted by Nina Begušmetahaven @metahaven.bsky.social · 15/09/2026The term “latent space realism” is inspired by the concept of “wave function realism,” which has been used in quantum mechanics to address the question whether the configuration space of Schrödinger's wave function amounts to something physically real 051
Reposted by Nina Begušmetahaven @metahaven.bsky.social · 15/09/2026"Latent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans," with the brilliant @ninabegus.bsky.social, @begus.bsky.social & Riccardo Petrini, is still major for us. An artificial neural network's vector space becomes navigable. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce's novel, gets read as a latent space 162
Reposted by Nina BegušGasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026A new book series just dropped! 1113
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026STEM exodus from the academy into the industry may bring the university into its pre-industrial form, where one does humanities, classical analysis, and basic science for the sake of knowledge. 1100
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Siblings are finally united! What is writing and reading in the time of AI? Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, Sheila Heti, Sasha Stiles, James Yu, and other amazing writers reflect and offer new possibilities. @uofmpress.bsky.social 1127
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Asimov's Laws of Robotics were a narrative plot for the robots to fail and don't translate into ethics. We propose a new set of laws: 071
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026Everyone can access the paper and the models online: latentspacecraft.antikythera.org Model 1: a speech-GAN model that learned on 8 words of English latentspacecraft.antikythera.org/concatenatio... Model 2: a speech model that learned on Finnegans Wake only latentspacecraft.antikythera.org/finnegan/latentspacecraft.antikythera.orgLatent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans.Latent Spacecraft combines computational linguistics, neuroscience, and literary analysis to investigate latent space, i.e. the hidden internal structure that enables both humans and machines to produ... 084
Reposted by Nina BegušGasper Begus @begus.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Preorder here: press.umich.edu/Books/F/Firs...press.umich.eduFirst Encounters with AI | Nina BegušFirst Encounters with AI gathers some of today’s most original literary minds to explore one of the central artistic and cultural questions of our era: What happens to writing when language is no long... 073
Reposted by Nina BegušLos Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 30/08/2026"Our modern ridicule, however, stems from a profound misunderstanding of the practice of copying." Ken Liu on what cannot be replaced by LLM imitation in current writing, an excerpt from "First Encounters with AI": lareviewofbooks.org/article/ken-liu… 092
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Siblings are finally united! What is writing and reading in the time of AI? Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, Sheila Heti, Sasha Stiles, James Yu, and other amazing writers reflect and offer new possibilities. @uofmpress.bsky.social 1127
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026Everyone can access the paper and the models online: latentspacecraft.antikythera.org Model 1: a speech-GAN model that learned on 8 words of English latentspacecraft.antikythera.org/concatenatio... Model 2: a speech model that learned on Finnegans Wake only latentspacecraft.antikythera.org/finnegan/latentspacecraft.antikythera.orgLatent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans.Latent Spacecraft combines computational linguistics, neuroscience, and literary analysis to investigate latent space, i.e. the hidden internal structure that enables both humans and machines to produ... 084
Reposted by Nina BegušNina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026What does the history of copying machines teach us? That we should leave copying to machines and focus on interpretation, intent, and meaning - our human powers. 294
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Asimov's Laws of Robotics were a narrative plot for the robots to fail and don't translate into ethics. We propose a new set of laws: 071
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 03/09/2026In the Daily Cal today on the use of AI in public communications. With @emilymbender.bsky.social and @richjaro.bsky.social www.dailycal.org/everyone-use... 021
Nina Beguš @ninabegus.bsky.social · 03/09/2026When a paper becomes a piece of art. We’re exhibiting our Latent Spacecraft GAN models with @metahaven.bsky.social @begus.bsky.social at the Hidden Layers exhibition. Come see the artworks at the Worth Ryder Gallery in Berkeley. The opening reception is today, 9/3, and we run until 10/3. 052