Hank Gerba was once one of Sophia The Robot’s handlers, and in this episode he reveals the magic (deception) behind social robots that promise to be one day autonomous. Recorded Jan 24, 2023. Released March 10, 2023.

Sophia

https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia/

The Most Realistic Humanoid Robots in The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjHNFP_773k&ab_channel=Motech

Creators of famous Sophia robot reveal AI robotics for children, elderly | Nightline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRHdnkUjcZg&ab_channel=ABCNews

Sophia the Robot and Jimmy Sing a Duet of "Say Something"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-zyTlZQYpE&ab_channel=TheTonightShowStarringJimmyFallon

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Jake Pitre and I discuss the concept of the Metaverse and the future it wants. Recorded Jan 18, 2023. Released March 1, 2023.

Who Wants the Metaverse?

https://daily.jstor.org/who-wants-the-metaverse/

Awkward Meetings

https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1455624165201887234

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Gabriele de Seta and I have a great conversation about deepfakes in a Chinese context. One of the big insights of this episode is that we may have to one day soon consider the agency of replicas in digital (human) form. Recorded Dec 15, 2022.

Huanlian, or changing faces: Deepfakes on Chinese digital media platforms

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13548565211030185

 危 特朗普与蓬佩奥向中国示爱的绝密视频流出 我爱你中国

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av754473414/

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Eryk Salvaggio and I discuss what GANs, stable diffusion and neural networks are, and we take listeners through the process of “reading” an AI image. Recorded Dec 13, 2022.

How to Read an AI Image: The Datafication of a Kiss

https://cyberneticforests.substack.com/p/how-to-read-an-ai-image

This person does not exist

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com

@Suhail They say it's "soulless"

https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1575527122449231872?s=20&t=NDTtKG0ET9c42oRmf3Q5-A

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Tamara Kneese and I have a truly delightful conversation about death and the personal data that complicates estate planning and digital doubles. The main takeaway for me from this episode — and there were many — is that we scrutinize our (and others’) likeness in digital form in ways that we didn't have to with memorabilia in material form.

Data Infrastructures of the Dead

https://www.heliotropejournal.net/helio/data-infrastructures-of-the-dead

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Luke Munn and I discuss the allure of ChatGPT technology. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with a chatbot. For me, one of the great insights from our conversation is that media scholars should pay attention to the meaning-making that happens culturally, even as technologies and their underlying logics are being/have been debunked. Recorded Dec 7, 2022.

Munn, Ferocious Logics: Unmaking the Algorithm (2018)

https://meson.press/books/ferocious-logics/

Munn, Logic of Feeling: Technology's Quest to Capitalize Emotion (2020)

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538148358/Logic-of-Feeling-Technology%27s-Quest-to-Capitalize-Emotion

Munn, Automation is a Myth (2022)

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=34899&bottom_ref=subject

Magee, Arora, and Munn, "Structured Like a Language Model: Analysing AI as an Automated Subject" (preprint)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05058

Munn, "The Uselessness of AI Ethics" 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-022-00209-w

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In this first episode of The Data Fix, I speak with Dr. Sarah T. Roberts, an expert in commercial content moderation and THE cultural critic we need right now, on all things tech & society related. We begin our discussion about how moderation on social media works, and what it presumes to parse out or let through, and explore for whose sake moderation is done. Because we focus on affect and feeling(s) in this series, we also discuss what it is about technology (and the Internet in particular) that has created such divisions in our worlds — specifically, what can we learn by asking about the legitimate grievances of the (lie-filled, meme-driven, bot-happy,) political right in the US and Canadian contexts? Recorded Dec 7, 2022.

Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300261479/behind-the-screen/

Modulating Moderation (Overton window mentioned)

https://mediarxiv.org/wvp8c

Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-politicalcontent

Future Fetishists 

https://www.boundary2.org/2019/08/sarah-t-roberts-and-mel-hogan-left-behind-futurist-fetishists-prepping-and-the-abandonment-of-earth/

Digital Detritus

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8283

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