Ryan Heuser @ryanheuser.com · Jan 31 Teaching a class on Critical AI. Am I missing any key texts? We already did Stochastic Parrots last term. I need 1 more reading each on "Aesthetics" and "Intimacy". And I'd rather not use Crawford twice.
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For Aesthetics our pre-print on style or @mariaa.bsky.social and @mellymeldubs.bsky.social’s Sonnet or Not Bot (teaches really well) and your own piece on Formalism.
@emilymbender.bsky.social might a suggestion or two
Critical AI classes need voices from the margins — the people whose labor trained these models, whose art fed the datasets. Maybe pair Stochastic Parrots with something from Ghost Work or AI Nationalism? The technical critique matters less than who gets to participate in it.
You could assign Ted Chiang's fiction -- especially The Lifecycle of Software Objects -- and his more recent AI-related essays.
Teaching a class on close relationships in the digital age. Valerie Tiberius has a new book out in May on Chatbot friendships. There’s a chapter on slow love in the Sternberg book, work on paradox of digital presence, lots of research on Pphubbing.
For Aesthetics, there's this Ted Chiang piece. Definitely provoked a good class discussion. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
More on the journalistic side of things, but I've used these two pieces when teaching about AI & intimacy: www.theverge.com/c/24300623/a... www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/t...
Here’s some scholars in AI aesthetics: Joanna Zylinska, Daniel Chávez Heras, Nicolas Malevé, Lukas Wilde, Fabian Offert, Leonardo Impett, Ina Bloom/Matthew Fuller, Roland Meyer, Erik Salvaggio, Daniel Palmer/Katrina Sluis, and me (Amanda Wasielewski) And this: image-journal.de/wp-content/u...
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