Rich Sutton warned that computational scale ultimately outperforms human expertise. Does his "bitter lesson" hold true when reproducing our own custom methods with LLMs? We find: the bitter lesson is sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, and sometimes inapplicable. deep-culture.org/the-occasion...

Two weeks ago we hosted a "Deep Learning and Culture" track at the STS NL Conference at the University of Twente. Read a recap of the event here: deep-culture.org/deep-culture...

What’s the difference between latent space, vector space, feature space, and embedding space? @louravn.bsky.social spelled it out for you in this short blog post deep-culture.org/whats-the-di...

We are excited to report that we have started developing our first *Little Tools of Difference*. While deep learning has been driven by a culture of uniformity, we asked: What if we used these same state-of-the-art architectures to do the opposite? More prototypes are coming soon, so stay tuned!

How to move along with the audiovisual, vibey, and AI-infused feeds of today's platforms? In this new article with @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Tommaso Venturini, we theorize 'digital rhythmanalysis' as a potential new quali-quantitative approach to measure and 'feel' rhythms online: bit.ly/pns-dra

Our research was covered by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS:

Sal Hagen@hetsalwel.bsky.social · 9mo ago

With @best.wel.moe and @nieuwsuur.nl, we studied Google's AI Overviews for political searches in the NL. We found that larger parties often benefit and that Google changed its use of AI Overviews *three times* during the run-up to the Dutch elections. Read the article here: nos.nl/nieuwsuur/ar...

Keywords are not neutral. With Tobias Blanke, we investigate the power of keywords as interpretive tools in our work "Keywords in Digital Humanities: A critical assessment of computational techniques for mapping security and freedom in historical debates". You can read the article now on DHQ!

Super fun to contribute to this brief interview with Terminally Online, a student-led organization on New Media at the University of Amsterdam. We spoke about my wonderful team‘s research (@d-eepculture.bsky.social), who inspires me, and some of my own work. 🔗: www.linkedin.com/pulse/interv...

Interview with Louis Ravn

Louis Ravn is a PhD Candidate on Deep Culture at the University of Amsterdam, working in the fields of science and technology studies and critical data/AI studies. Moreover, he is assistant editor for...

linkedin.com

"What is digital about abstraction?" - new chapter by @riederb.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2508.18181

What is digital about abstraction?

This chapter examines abstraction as a central principle of computing, not merely as a cognitive skill or epistemological category, but as a material and organizational practice that structures how so...

arxiv.org

🚨The Critical AI Seminar Series returns in 2025/2026 ✨ This year we will have four talks and are beyond excited to welcome @amoorelouise.bsky.social & @alexcampolo.bsky.social, Fabian Offert, Helene Ratner & @nannathylstrup.bsky.social and @thaophan.bsky.social ✨ Sign up: bit.ly/uvacriticala...