We bring up less familiar Asimov’s stories and place them alongside the Midas myth, making a case for keeping the boundaries between tool and creator, human and nonhuman, open. We’d be curious to hear what you think and we hope you enjoy the read!

It was a pleasure writing this essay and seeing questions that once belonged to science fiction turn to everyday life. Nicole Oliva and I argue that Asimov’s Three Laws have often been read too literally and were used in technology ethics as ready-made.

It won’t stop at math. Machines getting better at thinking through abstract problems than we are is going to be an emotional crisis for lots of people. I wish we were engaging that directly instead of having ridiculous shadow-debates about GPUs’ inherent thirst for water.

The land of delicacies

✨✨👀✨✨

A deep reflection, very appropriate for this age when everyone has an idea of how to control AI. Asimov's genius gave us an important parallel: a Martian showed humans its aesthetics, but the human was unwilling to fully grasp it. "A new version of Asimov’s laws of robotics might be as follows:

"In the age of AI, the work of the imagination will become ever more important." Nina Beguš explores Isaac Asimov’s work and its impact on AI’s development: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/asimov-robotics-laws-claude-chatbots-consciousness-human-interaction/

It was a pleasure writing this essay and seeing questions that once belonged to science fiction turn to everyday life. Nicole Oliva and I argue that Asimov’s Three Laws have often been read too literally and were used in technology ethics as ready-made.

"Humans are not without agency; as a species we decide, consciously or not, what we carry into the future." Nina Beguš on how Isaac Asimov’s work has influenced AI’s development: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/asimov-robotics-laws-claude-chatbots-consciousness-human-interaction/

Looking forward to this MLA session in Jan!

The "Hidden Layers" exhibition examines some of the concealed dimensions of contemporary AI culture — the planetary infrastructures of extraction and computation, the often invisible human labor, the latent vector spaces within which culture is compressed and... events.berkeley.edu/art/event/32...

An #AI system that can construct new languages is fueling debate over the role of human creativity in language construction. https://scim.ag/4ffYfdE

During the months I was sitting on raw audio from Berkeley, one longtime listener worried to me that Vandal was "straying from its commitment to sonic distribution of esoteric research in the critical humanities." This👇 & the hours it took me to compile the bibliography, is 4 you; u know who u are.

One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold over fifty million copies worldwide! Also there: Lolita, The Catcher in the Rye, The Alchemist, The Name of the Rose, Charlotte's Web. 100-150 million range: The Little Prince, the first Harry Potter, The Hobbit, And Then There Were None.

17776 (also known as What Football Will Look Like in the Future) takes place on a far-future Earth where humans mysteriously stopped dying, aging, and being born on April 7, 2026. www.sbnation.com/a/17776-foot...

Total fuckin' coincidence why y'all being weird about it? nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/n...

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in slop. From what I’ve seen of our desire To automate, I favor fire. But if it had to simply stop, I think I know enough of feeds To say that for destruction slop Is all one needs To do the job.

We're excited to announce Artificial Humanities book series at the University of Exeter Press!💈 We invite book proposals that carry humanistic inquiry into the artificial, from ancient automata to contemporary AI and beyond. www.exeterpress.co.uk/collections/...

This was wild: I asked Fable to make a website of the famous Catalog of Ships from the Iliad. It did a beautiful job creating this interactive map: catalogue-of-ships.netlify.app ...but it also identified that Butler's version of the Iliad actually made two mistakes in the Greek translation!

Whenever I speak about other architectures than transformers, it becomes clear that the audience tends to think in terms of LLMs or just plainly about LLMs. They've taken all the head space.

Pierre is the king of liminality. My essay is coming out in LARB this week on how we can use it to develop AI

Bonsai

#CriticalAI4.1, Be sure to check out literary scholar James Dobson's drawing on of AI interdisciplinarian Nina Beguš' work to explain what humanists must do to effectively make sense of gen AI! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Nobel-Winning US Chemist Will Move to China to Lead AI Institute: “Yaghi …voiced concern about Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, saying that they endanger the nation’s system of universities, companies and governments that promote scientific excellence.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/s...

Adriatic Coast and Isola & Cappodistria (Koper) by Piri Reis, 16th century

Happy to share the artificial humanities Observatory Deckard has just launched both in English and Italian! artificialhumanities.com/en/ Thanks to Fabrizio Allione and Riccardo Milanesi, who have a forthcoming book with Codice Edizioni and hold artificial humanities workshops focused on narration.

S❤️nia

What's interesting about the whale vowel discovery is the use AI models as a prevention tactics against the researcher's tendency to anthropomorphize--only to discover that the whales don't have some alien stuff going on but rather have vowels like us! Searched for alien language, found vowels.

✨Lots of territory covered here, including a new perspective, perhaps, of language itself, and how understanding nonhuman language can expand our understanding of the world…

Artificial Humanities in Pierre Huyghe’s catalogue from the current exhibition at Fondation Beyeler.

Thanks to B. Scot Rousse for referencing my commencement speech in his great piece! open.substack.com/pub/begus/p/...

On Apple podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3...

The hardest chess opponent is a kid, trained by their 1500 dad and YouTube videos.

Very cool: Gašper Beguš of Berkeley has used an LLM to build incredibly detailed constructed languages, from phonotactics to morphology to grammar HIs paper: aclanthology.org/2026.acl-lon... Some press: spectrum.ieee.org/conlangs-ai-... And some languages! conlangcrafter.github.io

3. A potential new layer to study LLMs in their global scope through the world literature framework, based on Moretti’s distant reading approach, Damrosch’s pragmatic optimism (canon, hyper canon, shadow canon; glocalisms), and Apter’s concept of untranslatability. We have a CfP out for this one!

What is Cultural AI and the objects of its study? My paper addresses literary tools that can be borrowed to address cultural AI issues. The paper is on now ArXiv and forthcoming in Modern Fiction Studies in Spring 2027. arxiv.org/abs/2607.02369

Preparing this session for the MLA in LA this January. Can't wait! @sethperlow.bsky.social @hannesbajohr.de

An AI that builds coherent, rule-governed conlangs is now public—raising new ways to probe language structure and model behavior.

Last day on sale! @uofmpress.bsky.social informed me we got 335 preorders so far. 'First Encounters with AI' includes essays by @kyliu99.bsky.social @hannesbajohr.de @nicholasnardini.bsky.social @annelyse.bsky.social @realiainsthomas.bsky.social @jamesyu.bsky.social @sashastiles.bsky.social

An LLM that constructs new languages

An LLM that constructs new languages

Artificial humanities in the July issue of Monocle On the irreplaceable value of humanity in the age of AI monocle.com/business/tec...

We have the digital and physical galley available for those who’d like to review First Encounters with AI: Writers on Writing. Let me know, and I’ll connect you to the press editor

The book is 50% off until the end of June: doi.org/10.3998/mpub... Also available under open access and free on Kindle! Another book in this framework, also on sale, is coming out in the fall: essays by writers reflecting on the entry of AI into reading & writing: press.umich.edu/Books/F/Firs...

#CriticalAI4.1, Professor James Dobson turns to the work of interdisciplinary AI scholar Nina Beguš to uncover the ways humanists can respond to and make sense of gen AI technologies. read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Tomorrow the short film Albert Figurt & I made entirely on the Windows 95 desktop will have its European premiere at the Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen, Norway — 12noon! nickm.com/collab/figur...

Had a lovely time speaking to Adam about Latent Spacecraft and our FinneGAN. We somehow kept coming back to apples, which might be particularly dangerous for those named Adam. Learn more about what we're up to with @metahaven.bsky.social @begus.bsky.social www.onelittlegoat.org/podcast/2026...

Please share! Please apply! @culturalanalytics.bsky.social cdh.princeton.edu/opportunitie...

Undesired visitors get a rock or hot sap onto their heads from the opening above the entrance.