Happy to announce (belatedly) that I'm #PhDone! I defended my dissertation "Guilty Faces: Localizing Surveillance through the Cultural Construction of Facial Recognition" last month.

I assure you that you do not actually have to contribute to the great American Casteist NRI vs Racist White Person debates of 2024.. You don't have to speak up for your "Indian friends" and definitely don't have to learn and spout half-baked nonsense about the US immigration process.

Petition to ban the word oomf on bsky

Someone smarter than me needs to write a paper calculating the point at which the informational landscape becomes so polluted with garbage that the genAI hallucination problem becomes unsolvable by fact checking mechanisms.

Hard relate! This whole PhD has been a process of catching up with "basic" theory and foundational scholarship that everyone else already seems to know and is able to pull out (correctly) at whim.

Randomly meeting one of my to-be mentors at a random event and getting a chance to speak with her for 10 mins (which was all the time she needed to convince me that I'm meant to do a PhD instead of job hunting in the DC think tank circuit)

American hubris is really a difficult net to avoid huh? However thoughtful their work is & however they're placed in the socio-cultural hierarchy in the US, you eventually get hit with the casual "we're the best/greatest/insert other superlative in the world" when you least expect it

Dropped by Twitter after a while to see what I missed and Xed outta there so fast. Indian men having a normal one over there to looks like.. I am not looking forward to the day the hordes get here.

Googling Stuff: Then v Now.

Companies are so surveillance-pilled and data hungry that they are trying to get everyone to believe that one of the worst aspects of modern technology—that you are constantly surveilled—is now a thing you should wholeheartedly embrace and integrate into every aspect of your existence.

My biggest problem with gen AI is that by the time the tech "gets better" (whatever that means), AI slop and hallucinations would have already permeated the information ecosystem, and the damage to the verifiability of facts will already be done.

Yes and also, just like the earlier form of the question, it's more complicated than have/have not. Case in point: the number of Indian origin bot accounts on Twitter spewing chatgpt slop as engagement bait in replies to viral tweets while being questionably informed.

the feminine urge to repost every #PhDone skeet with the caption me when

Get my family to stop giving their pics to an AI app for fun challenge

I have interacted with precisely ZERO T****r Sw*ft posts in my life and yet both my bluesky and Twitter feeds are saturated with her. Am I just the exact target audience? Is this happening for everyone else? How many accounts do I block before it stops?

Alright cool now that we're all agreed that gen AI is real, dangerous, fake, and sucks, let's not lose sight of the fact that AI is more than LLMs and chatbots.

Brilliant essay (also read all the linked pieces)

Incredible geographical diversity on the schedule here

This is wildly dismissive of scholars, activists, and journalists whose critiques go well beyond “it sucks and it’s fake.” Moreso, substantive critiques about it sucking often point out not that it’s “fake” but that it’s used for tasks it’s not suited for to the detriment of people it’s used against

Critical ICT4D written by a wonderful group of scholars and edited by @silviahedley.bsky.social and me is out and it's open-access with 11 chapters that reflect, problematise, and construct alternative trajectories for information and communication technologies in development contexts 🥳🎉So excited!

Two years into the AI boom, it's imperative we understand the true power of "AGI"—as a narrative tool useful for winning investment, talent and headlines. My report for AI Now details how OpenAI used the story of a rising AI that will replace humans to replace the need for an actual business model.

School shootings to sell face surveillance in US schools. Digital futurism to sell face surveillance in Indian schools. indiaai.gov.in/news/tamil-n...

I suspect (from my notifications tab) that I've recently been added to a starter pack with some incredible people.

One of the many reasons why focusing on "technical flaws" can often be counter productive for effective critiques of new tech. It allows companies to just say that the tech is not perfect *yet* (and that a little more time and money would get it there).

Principles never seem to stand a chance when rent's due for these folks.

Online version will be out soon but here’s a sneak preview of a new piece by @ambakak.bsky.social and I in @bostonreview.bsky.social - in this passage, taking on the false comfort of ‘a seat at the table’ instead of being in the drivers seat

I am collecting examples of the most thoughtful writing about generative AI published in 2024. What’s yours? They can be insightful for commentary, smart critique, or just because it shifted the conversation. I’ll post some of mine below as I go through them. #criticalAI

And also as I discuss in my dissertation, it's not surprising that data-based mass surveillance technologies get easily repurposed for calculating productivity metrics (esp of surveillance workers themselves). Mass surveillance sucks for many reasons friends.

Just witnessed a masterclass on twt of a Hindu supremacist prof in the US expertly weaponizing *Very American* discourses of racism & misogyny to bully a white dude prof (who had a credible criticism of her biased work) into apologizing profusely.

Hi folks, I'm teaching a graduate methods seminar (interviews) and tomorrow we're talking about discussion sections. If you've written academic papers, what advice do you have for writing the discussion? Do's & don'ts? Best practices? Articles you've read on this topic? Please share1

Bsky academics, let's get to know each other! Quote this & tell: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren't working on but keep thinking about 1. Dissertation on how police in Chennai culturally construct FR tech through their use & media presence. 2. (~) Overton window

CfP for IAMCR 2025 in Singapore is now live! Here is the link for Political Economy Section CfP: iamcr.org/singapore202...

Can I enlist someone smarter than me to name ideas in my dissertation? How do you all come up with these cool, catchy, perfectly coined academic concept names? I'm just here throwing words together to see if they stick (and they mostly don't)..

I'm excited to dive into the full report. But just wanted to say that while I don't look at the healing/conflict contrasts specifically, one of my dissertation findings also highlights the mismatch between the local implementation of FR surveillance and civil society interventions to it..

High quality reading list from Alina Utrata: "The Anti-Dystopians’ Guide for Students Studying Tech & Politics" alinautrata.substack.com/p/the-anti-d...

Looking to follow digital rights / tech policy / surveillance research folks working on India. Is my only option to search individually for people? IndiaSky help me out!

Hi bluesky! I'm a PhD candidate at American University currently writing my dissertation on the use and cultural construction of FR for policing in Chennai, India. Here for cool stuff on global communication, technology and culture, and surveillance and govtech, especially in the Indian context.

Wow everyone is so earnest on here