For a long time, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what AI fundamentally can’t offer, even when it generates compelling writing. The answer is “existential solidarity”: comfort of hearing from others who can speak to struggles we identify with and care about. blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/06/s...

British friends, excited that UK preorders for my 1st book are live! @evanselinger.bsky.social and I explain why the DOGE (move fast & break things) approach is broken and how we can fix huge problems by moving slow and upgrading. You can get 25% off until Friday! www.waterstones.com/book/move-sl...

Thrilled that “Move Slow and Upgrade,” my new Cambridge University Press book written with Albert Fox Cahn, is available for pre-order this week at 25% off. www.waterstones.com/campaign/oct...

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology #STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thomas Carroll and I put our heads together to articulate the main ethical concerns with using AI to address the empathy crisis in medicine. “The Ethics of Empathetic AI in Medicine” is now out in IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/110...

Wrote about why Robin Williams’s wisdom from Good Will Hunting is worth revisiting in the AI age: books and bots offer words that move us, but they’re not offering caring relationships. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/07/o...

Not much on social media these days. But if anyone is interested in why I think the entire paradigm of human-like AI is wrong, here’s a short post at the APA Public Philosophy blog. They leaned into the “shit on a stick” story for the cover art. 😆 blog.apaonline.org/2025/07/01/t...

"The profit-driven nature of life outside the classroom makes students wonder why we even bother discussing the ethics of technology in class." @evanselinger.bsky.social reads Daryl Campbell's "Fatal Abstraction" with the realities his students face in mind. lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

Can enlightened altruistic coders save us from the oppressive tyranny of corporate managerialism? Alas, I don’t think so. My argument in a review essay of Darryll Campbell’s “Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.” lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

What a great event on law enforcement use of #FRT with fantastic presentations & provocative keynotes by @petefussey.bsky.social @hartzog.bsky.social @evanselinger.bsky.social & closing words of Karen Yeung! Many thanks to wonderful @clequesne.bsky.social for the impeccable organisation! #AI

The attack on universities mirrors our blind spot with supply chains. Because both operate invisibly, misconceptions abound. The profound contributions of universities often go unnoticed—and, just like supply chains, we risk only recognizing their value when they're diminished or fail.

The main thesis is that the hermeneutic circle (no, they don't use this phrase!) haunts AI consciousness claims. Our theories of mind are built on pre-theoretical experience of consciousness. And yet companies insist they can replicate what they can't even define independently of that experience.

Please tune in to my conversation with Andrew Keen on the risks of AI companions.

Last opportunity to register to Seton Hall Law School's AI Companions online symposium tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 18 ,12 pm-2:30 pm EST. You can register here: : bit.ly/40Ztl2j

Growing up in the 80s makes me a sucker for underdog stories. I loved reliving Karate Kid vibes with Cobra Kai! Question— Does celebrating beating the odds risk minimizing how stacked the deck is? Or is that view overblown b/c life poses many challenges, and we need many inspirational stories?

Hey @evanselinger.bsky.social

It's out! You can now access The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Ethics and Policy of #AI: www.cambridge.org/core/books/t... 20 #openaccess chapters covering topics on AI, ethics, philosophy, legal domains and sectoral applications. Huge thanks to all the authors who made this possible!

Narrating counterfactuals is necessary to make the invisible legible. Tragically, though, I suspect many will find such stories too abstract and hypothetical to resonate. When people are hurting, it's hard to point out that things could have been worse, and much is taken for granted.

It’s hard for some to appreciate this because, tragically, they only associate governance with one thing: a scolding headshake. “The second fallacy we’ve heard is that AI requires a tradeoff – between safety and progress, between competition and collaboration, and between rights and innovation.”

The top 100 legal scholars of 2024 is in and a woman made number 1–so happy to appear alongside @ariezra.bsky.social @klonick.bsky.social @hartzog.bsky.social @lsolum.bsky.social @micahschwartzman.bsky.social @richschragger.bsky.social @meganstevenson.bsky.social @uvalaw.bsky.social Whoos!

Big news: From February 20 to 28, I’ll be on a North American tour with talks in Toronto, Yale, and Harvard about my latest book, Waiting for Robots. Register here to join 👉 www.casilli.fr/2025/02/10/u...

Lack of trust in universities has opened the door to the current political attempts to control research. To add to @ibogost.bsky.social’s brilliant insights, for too long too many scientists & engineers acted as if only folks in the humanities had something to prove to the public.

Companies, organizations, and politicians rushing to AI and blaming "human inefficiency" often ignore an inconvenient truth. Poor working conditions limit human potential. In so many situations, the solution to better work is investing in people, not replacing them.

Yes, sadly they do. It’s been built and enabled over decades. Techno-social engineering of humans and society at scale, as described at length in 2018 book, Re-Engineering Humanity. @evanselinger.bsky.social

Working on philosophy exams reminded me why we should be wary of AI grading. Appreciating student writing often requires understanding what’s between the lines, e.g., connecting what they said to class discussions or recognizing when they're expressing a sophisticated thought with imprecise wording.

Maybe institutions would feel less cynical if they directly and consistently admitted, "We follow the money and bend to those with power,” instead of performing ethical theater that touts principles they’re destined to abandon.

My latest blog roundup, on the lies that Silicon Valley tells itself, and mounting resistance when everything is collapsing everywhere. open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

Hey folks, it seems that Nature has selected my book 'Waiting for Robots' (University of Chicago Press, 2025) as one of its best science picks of the week! www.nature.com/articles/d41... PS. Pairs nicely with the excellent review in Science a few weeks ago. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I tried something! Let me know if this works for you. This is a handbuilt list of journalists, academics, industry figures, activists et al on Bluesky who are focused on tech — especially online platforms, social media and AI. Click "Pin to Home" if you find it worthwhile: bsky.app/profile/will...

New BOOK, by the brilliant @michael-p-lynch.bsky.social on truth in politics & why we need truth for democracy. Insightful analysis and helpful forward-looking advice at the end. Destined to be classic, but URGENT reading now. PRE-ORDER, and it will arrive soon! bookshop.org/p/books/on-t...

Meanwhile in the CA system as education becomes more botified, Sonoma cut grad and undergrad programs and eliminated departments of art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theater and dance, and women and gender studies. Other cuts at other CA schools could happen, too.

I can’t i just … i can’t www.404media.co/anthropic-cl...

Passion is the key to great teaching. You need to spend so much emotional energy in class that you feel like you ran a marathon! Tragically, teaching conditions have led to mass, passion-destroying burnout. This is why schools are so vulnerable to adopting mere AI simulations of enthusiasm.

“Tech companies have pushed industrial values and measures (such as optimizing for efficiency and productivity) into domains of life where they don’t belong. According to Carr, this mismatch keeps giving us the wrong tools for our deepest human needs.”

Nicholas Carr’s verdict on social media? “Pretty much a disaster for society and culture” that can’t be fixed. His recommendation? “Excommunication”! We discuss his new book “Superbloom” at The Boston Globe. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/26/o...

A tree just drew this! That’s how Paul Bartow and Richard Metzger, two-thirds of an artistic collaboration, described their work at last night’s exhibition—a project tracing nonhuman expressions of time along the Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo.

Bad ideas never truly die. Every time you think aha, this time they’re a goner, they rise again hungry for fresh minds. Or opportunists...

Cleaning the house and found a binder with old grad school papers, including one from a 1997 seminar on Derrida. Looking at “The Danger of Safety: Derrida’s Analysis of Crisis in Husserl,” I have no idea what any of it means. Trying to dialog with yourself across time can be a weird experience. 😦

Systems of exhaustion are strategies, not accidents. When you're burned out just trying to survive each day, forget having the energy to resist and create change. Power often works by imposing fatigue--not through blatant displays of force.

This thesis is a large part of Nick Carr’s new book, Superbloom: sharing doesn’t lead to empathy; instead, familiarity breeds contempt, thanks to “dissimilarity cascades” and “environmental spoiling.”

I filed an amicus brief today! It is posted on ssrn at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Absurdly emblematic? Tragically fitting? Ludicrously apt? Not sure what the right label is for “Hawk Tuah girl” even becoming famous, much less launching a meme coin “with a market cap in the hundreds of millions of dollars” that collapsed. Maybe just Zeitgeist? www.yahoo.com/tech/hawk-tu...

Keep thinking about Shannon's brave post. Is integrity in crisis because many are trapped in dysfunctional systems that punish caring now & also don’t offer a clear and viable path forward? When every "yes" adds more health-depleting obligations, where does self-preservation end & complicity begin?

Kudos to @henriksaetre.bsky.social & @evanselinger.bsky.social for a brilliant paper on techno-solutionism. Read this if only for zingers: "Like everyone else, people in the tech industry can have complex inner lives and act for mixed reasons." [::giggle:: to "can"] link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Verdict after re-watching “The Good Wife”: Top 10 show. The Wire is #1. Unparalleled portrait of systems crushing reformers. GW brilliantly asks a related question: Does being a mature success-seeking adult w/ influence & power require cynicism—seeing nearly all self-serving choices as necessary?

I'm looking forward to reading! Carlos’s work on why AI, in principle, can’t be fully empathetic is first-rate but also a challenging technical read. If his book has a similar style, it would be great to come to it after getting Robin’s no doubt very thoughtful and crystal clear take.