New paper in AI & Society w/ @hoytlong.bsky.social + @teddyroland.bsky.social! We simulated 101 "AI authors" to see how LLMs imagine creativity & cultural distinction + compared them to real historical authors. What do AI authors want & how do they pursue success? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New article in AI & Society with @richardjeanso.bsky.social and @hoytlong.bsky.social 🎉 We wanted to know how AI might affect cultural fields like literary publishing. But cultural production is complex! So we piloted a new method we call “social simulation.” rdcu.be/eTkMy

Honored to be part of this initiative to explore "Humanistic AI"! Hosted at the University of Chicago and led by @hoytlong.bsky.social and Chris Kennedy, we're collaborating in a series of interdisciplinary workshops and projects to think about how the humanities can contribute to AI and vice versa.

In case you missed it, this "Doing AI Differently" funding call should be of interest to humanities scholars with technical experience, computer scientists with humanities grounding, or anyone whose work spans both domains. Take a look and please consider applying! www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

New preprint on "Computational Hermeneutics," co-authored by too many people to list in one post. TL;DR: GenAI is a cultural technology, and needs to be evaluated in ways that recognize situatedness, plurality, and ambiguity as the conditions of meaning — not noise to be minimized.

Donald Trump does NOT want you to share this footage of his pathetically tiny birthday parade crowd.

Excited to share our preprint "Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research” We're open to feedback—read & share thoughts! @laurenfklein.bsky.social @mmvty.bsky.social @docdre.distributedblackness.net @mariaa.bsky.social @jmjafrx.bsky.social @nolauren.bsky.social @dmimno.bsky.social

Aaaaah good timing, published today! "we introduce Mini Worldlit, a manually curated dataset of 1,192 works of contemporary fiction from 13 countries, representing nine languages" By @andrewpiper.bsky.social, @dbamman.bsky.social, Christina Han, Jens Bjerring-Hansen, @hoytlong.bsky.social, et al.

If you're depressed that non-expert readers prefer AI-written poetry to the classics, perhaps try Matt's quiz. You may discover that the real finding here is the huge gulf between your own taste and that of non-expert readers ... a gulf that has likely existed at least since, oh, IA Richards?

Interested in writing with AI? ✍️ Please apply to be a **postdoc** in my group through the UChicago DSI Scholars program! 🤠 - Research in my group: minalee-research.github.io/research.html - Application: datascience.uchicago.edu/research/pos... (review begins on Dec 6)

I'm recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work with me at the University of Colorado Boulder! Looking for creative students with interests in #NLP and #CulturalAnalytics. Boulder is a lovely college town 30 minutes from Denver and 1 hour from Rocky Mountain National Park 😎 Apply by December 15th!

Internet studies people unite! Internet studies starter pack is here - incomplete, skewed etc etc but some fantastic folks, to help us all rebuild our social networks. Happy to add you if I left you out! Please circulate, and here it is: go.bsky.app/KHmxfWf

AOC returning to BlueSky and you can feel the place light up...

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join my group in 2025-2026. If you like the mountains and interdisciplinary research that blends data and culture, this could be a good fit! UW iSchool PhD apps due Dec 2nd: ischool.uw.edu/programs/phd... More info about my group: melaniewalsh.org/mentorship

"Based on what you know about me, draw a picture of what you think my life looks like." I don't ask Chat many personal questions, so it thinks I live a cozy, data-filled life. And well organized, too! Although wall-of-monitors is not my idea of cozy.

My group just finished up a new paper that I'm excited to get out into the world: "On Classification with Large Language Models in Cultural Analytics" (to be published at CHR): github.com/bamman-group...

We're excited that UChicago Humanities Division has approved 2 searches for Assistant Professors in Korean Studies this year. One is in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and includes the fields of media, performance, literature, and popular culture: apply.interfolio.com/153011. EOE/Vet/Disability

The last four years have been the best for nonwhite fiction writers in US history, Richard Jean So & I found. But all signs point to backlash. What would it take actually to sustain—& grow? We wrote about it for @theatlantic.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

Web-based fandoms are intimate publics at scale. @richardjeanso.bsky.social and I use close reading/stats to study the narrative/rhetorical features of fanfic and commentary on AO3. Fandoms are part of literary history, and we show how to study these living archives of reader-response. No paywall!

Hey MLA friends! If you're interested in Literature & LLMs, come check out our roundtable on Saturday! Awesome lineup of scholars working on AI in public, industry, cultural heritage, & more: @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social @jonathancheng.bsky.social @bcgl.bsky.social Carly Schnitzler & Anna Preus

My piece about BookTok is now up as part of the new @atpost45.bsky.social cluster Reading with Algorithms! I write about how recommendation works on TT and do some light exploration of video metadata, but also about Barnes & Noble, 🌶️🌶️🌶️, joyfulness, and middle-class desire post45.org/2023/12/book...

Officially on the job market! Graduating in 2024, I am navigating the academic job market. I use machine learning, text mining, and social network analysis to study human society, contributing to digital humanities and neighboring fields such as computational social science.

For the latest volume of Debates in the Digital Humanities, I wrote about the promises and challenges of social media data. My essay (and the entire volume) is now free and open-access dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/f3f8744...

@vierth.bsky.social & I are pleased to announce that applications for our summer Dream Lab, East Asian Studies & Digital Humanities, are open! 🎉 This DH 101 through EAS workshop will prioritize applications from grad students & contingent faculty. Deadline is 3/8! web.sas.upenn.edu/dream-lab/ea...

Tess McNulty offers a sobering assessment of how little we know (and can know) about what's popular on social media platforms. But also some hopeful visions for how scholars might redirect the narrative of what's on top. A must read for #TikTok researchers! www.publicbooks.org/whats-on-top...

I have just released the early modern ChatGPT, MonadGPT, currently running thanks to generous support from @huggingface.bsky.social Any question in English or French will be answered from the perspective of someone living between 1500 and 1750. huggingface.co/spaces/Pclan...

For the third article in our latest installment of “Hacking the Culture Industries,” Tess McNulty considers the striking difficulty in finding comprehensive data on popular social media content–and the concerning implications of this gap. www.publicbooks.org/whats-on-top...

data-driven cultural criticism: *buying* televisual attention data (!!!!!) and seeing it by light of a zillion tweets (go spongebob, rip twitter 💙)

Squid Game shocked the world with its viral popularity. But what does global success mean in an age of streaming platforms, hyper segmented audiences, algorithmic taste, and opaque data? @aarthivadde.bsky.social and I take a look for @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...

Cultural studies for the 21st century! This essay brings global audience demand data together with Twitter data across 3 languages to explain why we love catastrophe TV. We drew on essential TV theory and criticism by Mary Ann Doane, @pjmaciak.bsky.social, and @annakornbluh.bsky.social

For the second article in our latest installment of “Hacking the Culture Industries,” @hoytlong.bsky.social & @aarthivadde.bsky.social analyze the data behind our obsession w/catastrophe TV, which spans across seemingly unrelated or even counterintuitive genres. www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...

This hits *all* my sweet spots: Netflix global strategy + data-driven revelations revealing that we crave stressful TV amid catastrophes. Or: how Squid Game & Grey's Anatomy function identically. Rly: read this!! @aarthivadde.bsky.social + @hoytlong.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...

Squid Game shocked the world with its viral popularity. But what does global success mean in an age of streaming platforms, hyper segmented audiences, algorithmic taste, and opaque data? @aarthivadde.bsky.social and I take a look for @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/we-want-our-...

First up: @mellymeldubs.bsky.social and @alexandermanshel.bsky.social tell us “What 35 Years of Data Can Tell Us about Who Will Win the National Book Award” www.publicbooks.org/what-35-year...

Here's a big one! Who wins fiction prizes & why—& who judges them? (Joy Williams, esp.) What is the relationship between the race of judges and that of finalists? Must read. @alexandermanshel.bsky.social + @mellymeldubs.bsky.social in @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/what-35-year...

This year's jury for the National Book Award is the most diverse in the prize's history. Will that make a difference when the winner is announced next week? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Before the gala, check out @mellymeldubs.bsky.social and I in @publicbooks.bsky.social!

Last year, @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I teamed up with @Richardjeanso.bsky.social for @publicbooks.bsky.social to launch HACKING THE CULTURE INDUSTRIES. This week, we’re back for round 2.

In the first article in our latest installment of “Hacking the Culture Industries,” @mellymeldubs.bsky.social and @alexandermanshel.bsky.social dig into data on the The National Book Award. What they find reflects enduring issues of racism in literary awards. www.publicbooks.org/what-35-year...

must read of the week; university-destroying grift is not just for public schools

Ok so there’s a lot happening but please take a moment to ask your reps not to eliminate funding for the NEH

Princeton Language and Intelligence Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for people who have recently received or are about to receive a Ph.D. or doctorate degree and work on large AI models! pli.princeton.edu/about-pli/em...

🚨 Digital Humanities Specialist job at WashU in St. Louis! 🚨 This job seems perfect for someone who has 1) a humanities background 2) a lot of tech skills 3) and a desire to work on DH projects Also STL is the absolute best, truly underrated wustl.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Tenure-track position in modern and contemporary Japanese literature and culture at North Carolina State University. Come work with me and my stellar colleagues: jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/191...

The wonderful magazine Public Books has arrived! Yay! Please follow for wonderfully edited essays about our contemporary world. @publicbooks.bsky.social

We will host novelist/playwright Yu Miri at UChicago as visiting fellow in 2024, part of a project to use oral histories of local Japanese American neighborhoods as material for a new play. NHK posted an English-language documentary about a similar project Yu carried out with students in Fukushima.

An interesting piece on state and corporate efforts to build a Japanese-based ChatGPT. The future of LLMs with respect to national language politics and state ideology is going to be a fascinating ride #CompLitCanStillWin www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reading between the lines of this, everyone involved is now embarrassed about taking a sledgehammer to an ant.

How I feel logging on here right now versus the other site

Everyone's starting to wonder how writing assignments will have to change this fall. I think we've got this, because we're capable of adapting in ways that preserve the things that matter.

okay let's give this one a shot...