Benjamin Jacobsen
@bnjacobsen.bsky.social
Lecturer in Sociology at University of York and Visiting Fellow on ALGOSOC project at Durham University.
One more week to submit! See you in Santa Barbara in October!
Fabian Offert@zentralwerkstatt.org · last mo.Excited to share that we are now inviting proposals for our upcoming Critical AI Studies? conference at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social on Oct. 9&10, 2026. Please see the full CfP here: huml.ucsb.edu/conference. Submissions are due July 31, 2026. For questions DM me or @owenleonard.bsky.social.
I am very excited to announce and welcome the new @erc.europa.eu SYNDATA project team members!! 🚨🚨
My latest essay is out📄"Off-Centre AI: On Alignment, Antihumanism and AI Ethics", published in Ars & Humanitas, in a special issue from Legacies of Antihumanism—the conference held at the University of Ljubljana in December 2024, where I gave a keynote. 🧵1/4
Frederic Jameson, After Year Zero:On Postwar German Thought - ed. Carson Welch, @versobooks.bsky.social, September 2026 www.versobooks.com/products/353...
After Year Zero
In this series of accessible lectures, Fredric Jameson explores German philosophy and critical theory as it developed in the wake of World War Two. Focusing on key thinkers — Horkheimer, Adorno, Heid...
versobooks.com
Thanks to ALGOSOC's @amoorelouise.bsky.social @alexcampolo.bsky.social @bnjacobsen.bsky.social and @sj-bennett.bsky.social for the essential feedback and OA funding.
polo.bsky.social
polo.bsky.social
Image models are not "a" model. Each component was built or integrated to solve a specific problem of computer vision — each engineered to automate a decision, each inscribing its bit of ideology into every generated image. My latest paper unpacks those decisions and what they inscribe.
The Market in the Model: Latent Diffusion as Neural Economy
Valuable critique of generative image models within visual culture and the humanities has emphasized the role of datasets in shaping the images they produce. Yet, close studies of the ideological posi...
arxiv.org
✨ New in Big Data & Society ✨ “Agents of erasure: Following the deletion of public sector data through its value chain” by @frederikschade.bsky.social. 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #personaldata #deletion #valuechain #publicadministration
Six years ago I published a book that engaged machine learning in terms of the politics of text, language & the impossibility of definitive authorship. Are any of the men writing now on LLMs, authorship, and text citing my 2020 work?…. No, reader, they are not.
Available for preorder - Algorithmic Capital: Resistance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Jonathan Durand Folco and Jonathan Martineau A rich and audacious account of the mutually reinforcing transformations of capitalism and technology in the age of AI
Algorithmic Capital
This book provides a critical theory of the new stage of algorithmic capitalism, and maps out paths for critique and resistance. AI and algorithms are not just technologies, they are rooted in new cap...
versobooks.com
It’s alive! Copies of @fintechcapital.bsky.social, by @paullangley.bsky.social and me, published by @princetonupress.bsky.social arrived this morning. Out in the US soon, and in the UK a little later.
"Anthropic is the clean coal of AI. And clean coal doesn't exist" - Karen Hao speaking at Hay yesterday.
On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org
Dave Beer and Benjamin Jacobsen ( @bnjacobsen.bsky.social ) have published on AI, distillation, and the reframing of reasoning in ‘Big Data & Society’ ( @bigdatasoc.bsky.social ). buff.ly/DfOxDKb
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🚨 New in Big Data & Society 🚨 “Artificial intelligence, conceptions of distillation and the reframing of reasoning” by David Beer and @bnjacobsen.bsky.social. 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/.... #AI #reasoning #DeepSeeek #ML
From the Archive: Thomas Lemke, 'An Alternative Model of Politics? Prospects and Problems of Jane Bennett’s Vital Materialism' - discusses basic arguments and important achievements of Jane Bennett’s vital materialism. (2018) journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
An Alternative Model of Politics? Prospects and Problems of Jane Bennett’s Vital Materialism - Thomas Lemke, 2018
This article discusses the basic arguments and important achievements of Jane Bennett’s vital materialism, as well as some problems and limitations of this theo...
journals.sagepub.com
I will be speaking at @rwth.bsky.social on 3 June 2026. My talk—"Causation as Sign Action: Semiotic Empiricism and the Causal Complexity of Large Language Models"—draws on my new work (soon to be published) on Peircean semiotics and LLMs. khk.rwth-aachen.de/event/causat...
With the cover now finalized, I am pleased to announce my forthcoming book: 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐦: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞. Available this October from @ucpress.bsky.social s. 🧵 1/4
Sarah C. Dunstan and Ian Stewart eds. Race in the Modern World: An intellectual History - @universitypress.cambridge.org, August 2026 www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...
Race in the Modern World
Cambridge Core - History of Ideas and Intellectual History - Race in the Modern World
cambridge.org
✨ How can model collapse help us make sense of the emergent risks of synthetic data? And how might it perpetuate notions of real data as 'gold standard'? @bnjacobsen.bsky.social will discuss this in his talk on March 18th - sign up ⬇️ www.eventbrite.com/e/trash-in-t...
Trash In, Trash Out? Synthetic Data and the Politics of Degenerative AI
This talk discusses how phenomena such as model collapse help us make sense of the emergent risks of synthetic data
eventbrite.com
🚨 Publication alert 🚨 I just published an article in the Journal of Academic Ethics that examines how academic staff investigate and sanction suspected cases of academic misconduct. link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...
The Procedures of Investigating Academic Misconduct: Perspectives from Academic Staff at a UK Russell Group University
link.springer.com
"Turnitin and Grammarly do not simply detect plagiarism but actively reconfigure what counts as authorship, originality, and intellectual integrity ... reshaping academic labor through anticipatory compliance and rendering originality as machinic compatibility." 🔥 doi.org/10.1177/0263...
In January, my @erc.europa.eu funded project ‘The Ethics of Synthetic Data in the Age of Machine Learning and AI’ started, and I am very excited to say that we are now hiring a fully funded PhD studentship for 2026/27 entry 🚨🚨 www.york.ac.uk/sociology/st...
ERC SYNDATA PhD Studentship - Study, University of York
The European Research Council funded project, ‘The Ethics of Synthetic Data in the Age of Machine Learning and AI’ (SYNDATA), is now advertising a PhD scholarship to be based in the Department of Soci...
york.ac.uk
New as Online First in Theory, Culture & Society: Ethan Stoneman and Joseph C. Packer, 'Writing for Machines, Formatting Originality: Plagiarism Detection and the Automation of Authorship'. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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@fayboundalberti.bsky.social Fay Bound-Alberti, The Face: A Cultural History - Allen Lane, February 2026 www.penguin.co.uk/books/459227...
The Face
What’s in a face? The face is the only part of the body where all the senses come together and, over the course of human history, has come to represent who we are as individuals. We unlock our phones...
penguin.co.uk
New as Online First in Theory, Culture & Society: Tianren Luo, William Xing and Jingjia Xiao, 'Digital Sensing, Infrastructure of Sovereignty, and the Unmaking of the Chinese Surveillance State'. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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ICYMI: Louise Amoore and Volha Piotukh, 'Interview with N. Katherine Hayles' - Hayles discusses the themes of her book 'Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious' published in 2017. (Free Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Interview with N. Katherine Hayles - Louise Amoore, Volha Piotukh, 2019
Following the publication of her 2017 book, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, N. Katherine Hayles discusses the themes of the book with Louise...
journals.sagepub.com
Annual Review: Diana Stypinska, 'Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification' - shows how the digitalization of the pastoral directive culminates in the production of spectral subjects. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification - Diana Stypinska, 2025
Taking its cue from Michel Foucault’s analyses of the pastoral ‘conduct of conduct’, this paper considers social media as a specific dispositif that derives its...
journals.sagepub.com
New as Online First in Theory, Culture & Society: Ross Abbinnett, 'On Late Fascism: Derrida, Toscano and the Return of Absolute Hostility' - examines the question of the return of fascism to the political mainstream in European liberal democracies. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Take a look at what our academic and research staff published in January!👇