Excellent book about the Pygmalion myth and AI: press.umich.edu/Books/A/Arti...

A story in two pictures

How, we ask, does such polychronicity determine or disrupt epistemic claims? What happens to our experience of the world and of ourselves when we enter a temporal zone artificially produced by LLMs—a space often devoid of external referents? 2/2

Ramona Naddaff and I will speak about polychronic models, exploring the diverse and coexistent temporalities that generative AI model families manufacture, ranging from the ephemeral and the oneiric temporality to the archival and the counterfactual temporality. 1/2 www.biblhertz.it/events/45218...

My crown jumped a letter to Begǔs :) Harvard Magazine recommends Artificial Humanities @uofmpress.bsky.social Link: www.harvardmagazine.com/arts-culture...

This reminds me of Edgar Degas pioneering the "snapshot" look (1860s). 📸🎨 By painting in a radical, off-center composition and cropped figures (i.e., cutting off a horse's tail, a dancer’s arm, etc.) to mimic the accidental framing of early off-center photographs or Japanese prints.

“Any creative output today can be touched by AI in one way or another without us being able to prove it. Authorship is disintegrating into new directions, becoming more technologically enhanced and more collective. We need to revamp our creativity criteria that were made solely for humans."

In Verge today commenting on the human-made v AI-generated: www.theverge.com/tech/906453/...

Ramona Naddaff and I will speak about polychronic models, exploring the diverse and coexistent temporalities that generative AI model families manufacture, ranging from the ephemeral and the oneiric temporality to the archival and the counterfactual temporality. 1/2 www.biblhertz.it/events/45218...

Some time later: “I read some of your book and it’s actually really interesting and boring at the same time!”

@ninabegus.bsky.social featured on Nautilus speaks about her upcoming book Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI. "We mold AI with our cultural imaginaries..There are so many other ways to imagine, build, and use AI," she says.

✨🐜🐜🐜✨

They actually generalize beyond the corpus - that’s the charm of GANs! The FiwGAN model was trained on 8 words of English and produced many more words and nonce words - I write about it here: latentspacecraft.antikythera.org

A great podcast on how AI can help us with scientific discovery and what legal implications this will bear in the future. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @projectceti.bsky.social

Some time later: “I read some of your book and it’s actually really interesting and boring at the same time!”

On FinneGAN exploration of latent spaces rickmossart.substack.com/p/knowing-yo...

Meg Shriber on fiction and technology, discussing the Pygmalion myth in American SciFi and technology-making and concluding with a comparison with other cultural traditions - Japanese, Latin American, Afrofuturism. www.harbus.org/post/monkey-...

ArtHum in Nautilus: "While AI is new in a manifest sense, humans have been telling stories of artificial intelligence for ages. Today we have Her and Ex Machina, but these stories owe much to tales that came before them. The ancient Greeks told of Pygmalion, whose statue was granted life."

ants build soil chimneys around nest openings

Explore "Latent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans" by BIDS Affiliates @ninabegus.bsky.social and @begus.bsky.social latentspacecraft.antikythera.org

First post on Substack: a summary of yesterday's talk on biohacking. ninabegus.substack.com/p/fiction-sa...

How myth, fiction, language, and the humanities shape the way we imagine and build machines humansplus.ai/podcast/nina...

ArtHum in Nautilus: "While AI is new in a manifest sense, humans have been telling stories of artificial intelligence for ages. Today we have Her and Ex Machina, but these stories owe much to tales that came before them. The ancient Greeks told of Pygmalion, whose statue was granted life."

We the Platform is available for preorder with the discount code CUP20 if you order directly from the press! cup.columbia.edu/book/we-the-... A thread on the argument below:

How myth, fiction, language, and the humanities shape the way we imagine and build machines humansplus.ai/podcast/nina...

First post on Substack: a summary of yesterday's talk on biohacking. ninabegus.substack.com/p/fiction-sa...

This Monday at the Social Science Matrix we're talking about biotech events.berkeley.edu/besi/event/3...

Artificial Humanities got the Artificiality Institute award! After that, we recorded a conversation where you can learn more about this approach that connects fiction, philosophy, history of technology, and current AI development www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M3I...

Whale vowels “a” and “i” during the delivery. 🐳

A baby whale is born with 10 female whales and one male helping. During the most beautiful event that happens in life—birth—whales were very chatty. We found vowels during the birth event as well. @projectceti.bsky.social The paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

During the birth the midwifes were very chatty. We found the whale vowels during this beautiful event too.

Artificial Humanities got the Artificiality Institute award! After that, we recorded a conversation where you can learn more about this approach that connects fiction, philosophy, history of technology, and current AI development www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M3I...

I spent a week with my @textculture.bsky.social colleagues, first at the AI and the Creative Condition conference, then at a TEXT retreat. We're hiring another PhD student (see link) - it's a great place with lots of research opportunities and collaborations. phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/o...

This Monday at the Social Science Matrix we're talking about biotech events.berkeley.edu/besi/event/3...

This is great. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/c... (free link) "Notably, half of the whales attending were not related to the mother." "The calf was rarely left untouched, and it was usually being touched by at least two whales simultaneously."

Check out the work of - Katy Gero, U of Sydney, also a contributor to First Encounters with AI! - Kyle Booten, UConn, coming to Berkeley soon, - Karin Kukkonen, U of Oslo, with a new book from Oxford UP & - Roger Beaty, Penn State, reigning at the intersection of creativity and cog. neuroscience

This interpretation shifts attention from polished interfaces and fluent outputs to the hidden structures that make those outputs possible and structured in the first place. latentspacecraft.antikythera.org @ninabegus.bsky.social @metahaven.bsky.social

We are mostly seeing end products, final outcomes, exteriors, in that sense. We are—deliberately—not seeing what is going on inside. Interpreting the latent space as a cartography, or as an architecture, changes that.

The Journal of World Literature invites abstracts for a special issue on Artificial Intelligence and World Literature. We welcome work on LLMs & literary analysis, multilingualism, AI imaginaries, canonicity, and beyond. Submit your abstract to guest editors’ emails by September 1, 2026.

This part is a dog park today

Agnes Denes’s unrealized plan for the Berkeley Marina park from 1990.

A chat with @ninabegus.bsky.social about the vital need for AI development infused with the humanities. nickhilden.substack.com/p/nina-begus...

Artificial Humanities in Montreal this Thursday! Many thanks to the McGill School of Continuing Studies, the McGill Computational and Data Systems Institute, and the McGill Collaborative for AI & Society for hosting me. mcgill.ca/x/5No

FinneGAN in latentspacecraft.antikythera.org @metahaven.bsky.social @begus.bsky.social and Richi Petrini

10 yo avid reader: “Big boring book.”

I KNOW!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S SO PAINFUL TO WATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nicole and I have been working on the Midas myth and robotics connections, arguing for a more liminal approach to social robotics. Nicole is at the Mythologium conference this week, and we're excited to see the chapter out soon in an anthology on SciFi and AI.