🚨 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

✨ New in Big Data & Society ✨ “Making machine learning good enough – studying the political endeavour of finding ‘right’ metrics and thresholds” by @annaschjoett.bsky.social and Tobias Blanke. 🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #machinelearning #goodenough #MLevaluation

Publication alert! New article out in Big Data & Society on digital phantoms and synthetic data in medical physics. We explore the making of digital reference objects for human bodies and how they are used in construction of ground truths, as known, & even perfect truths. doi.org/10.1177/2053...

Digital phantoms in medical research: Synthetic data and the pursuit of ground truth - Charlotte Högberg, Peter Winter, 2026

Digital phantoms are virtual representations of the human body used in medical research to test equipment, train medical professionals and develop or validate a...

doi.org

How do researchers, journalists & artists work with the Wayback Machine? At a recent gathering in Amsterdam, we explored how web archives support digital investigations, platform research & media art — and how we can build better tools & collaborations. 👉 www.internetarchive.eu/2026/02/18/w...

Ways of working with the Wayback Machine - Internet Archive Europe

Guest post by Jonathan W. Y. Gray. How do researchers, journalists, and artists work with archived pages from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine? What kinds of tools, methods, and approaches do th...

internetarchive.eu

✨Welcoming Fabian Offer for the next #CriticalAI Seminar (online) on his upcoming book "Vector Media" on January 13, 2026 5:30-7 PM (Amsterdam)✨ The talk presents a new history and theory of the vector space in contemporary #AI systems 🗓️ Register here: www.create.humanities.uva.nl/events/2-cri...

#2 Critical AI Seminar Series: Vector Media

January 13, 17:30-19:00 (CEST): Vector Media This talk presents a new history and theory of the vector space in contemporary artificial intelligence systems. I will argue that the inevitable bias of s...

create.humanities.uva.nl

CfP ✨Consider submitting to this fantastic panel on Deep Learning and Culture at the STS NL Conference ✨ Organised by @louravn.bsky.social @annaschjoett.bsky.social Dasha Simons, Paula Helm and Tobias Blanke (@d-eepculture.bsky.social)

Louis Ravn@louravn.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🚨 Call for presentations: “Deep Learning and Culture” panel 🔍 We're organizing a panel on “Deep Learning and Culture” at the STS NL Conference (Uni of Twente, 17-19 April 2026). 📮 Please submit your abstract here: www.utwente.nl/en/bms/sts-n.... Deadline: 07 Jan. 2026. See you there :)

‪🇬🇧 New RESET call for papers on "Towards New Social and Historical Studies of Artificial Intelligence"! A special issue edited by @vgoujon.bsky.social, Mathilde Fichen and @alexcampolo.bsky.social One-page abstracts are due by January 16, 2026: journals.openedition.org/reset/6250

Call for Papers n° 19 : Towards New Social and Historical Studies o...

Abstracts are due by January 16, 2026. Today public opinion on generative artificial intelligence is deeply divided. Techno-optimistic promises clash with ethical critiques, against the backdrop of...

journals.openedition.org

I have a new paper out in @jhokjournal.bsky.social - "Loss: A notion of error in machine learning." It attempts to draw some wider historical comparisons than are perhaps usual. I would love to know what you think. journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view...

❗ We are urgently looking for a new Lecturer in Cultural Data & AI at the University of Amsterdam: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies... The deadline for applying is very soon: Jan 4th. You’ll work with @tpoell.bsky.social, @riederb.bsky.social, @dluitse.bsky.social, @louravn.bsky.social, me, & more

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!

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

🚨On November 12, we are delighted to welcome @amoorelouise.bsky.social and @alexcampolo.bsky.social as the opening speakers of the 2025/2026 Critical AI Seminar Series (online)✨ 🗓️ November 12, 2025 from 5:00-6:30 PM (CEST) on Zoom ✨Register via: www.create.humanities.uva.nl/events/1-cri...

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...

Google zet gekleurde AI-antwoorden midden in campagnetijd aan, uit, en weer aan

GroenLinks-PvdA, D66 en de VVD worden in de antwoorden op algemene politieke vragen het vaakst genoemd. Kleinere partijen komen veel minder vaak aan bod.

nos.nl

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI

This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

tandfonline.com

✨excited to start my UKRI AI Metascience fellowship, where I’ll examine how AI-generated synthetic data is (re)shaping medical research cultures and knowledge practices. Super happy to be staying at Durham University with @amoorelouise.bsky.social as my mentor! www.ukri.org/news/interna...

International fellowships to explore AI’s impact on science

New £4 million programme funds early career researchers in the UK, US and Canada to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming science.

ukri.org

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...

I am very excited and honoured to be the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant, starting January 2026 🔆 @erc.europa.eu. The five-year project will explore the broader social, political, and ethical implications of training algorithmic models on synthetic data. www.york.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

New project to investigate societal consequences of using synthetic data to train algorithms

Researchers in the University of York’s Department of Sociology will lead one of the first large-scale, systematic social science studies of synthetic data.

york.ac.uk

I'm excited to share the final cover for Silicon Empires and very grateful for the kind words that others have offered. Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

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/...

Do Artifacts Have Political Economy? - Kean Birch, 2025

Harking back to Langdon Winner's now classic essay “Do artifacts have politics?,” my aim in this article is to ask a very similar question—namely, do artif...

journals.sagepub.com

📣 New article out 📣 in the journal Digital Society, where I reflect on the relevance, limitation, and future challenges of studying algorithms through the lens of their referential 'ground truth' datasets Available here: doi.org/10.1007/s442...

🎉 A lovely wedding present from Big Data & Society! I bring together an ethnographic study of AI practitioners with Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity, exploring how ambiguity shapes AI practice and ethics journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Artificial Intelligence and the ethics of navigating ambiguity - SJ Bennett, 2025

This paper examines ambiguity within AI practice, arguing for an ethics of AI which stays with fundamental ambiguities and accounts for their complex socio-mate...

journals.sagepub.com

⚡Very happy to see another exciting publication out in our Topical Collection of "The Politics of ML Evaluation" in Digital Society!

Unraveling the Regimes of Synthetic Data Metrics: Expectations, Ethics, and Politics - Digital Society

Synthetic data - artificially produced data used for various data science tasks - have become the subject of intense scholarly interest, engendering both hope and hype in fields like machine learning ...

link.springer.com

Louis Ravn@louravn.bsky.social · last yr.

🌟 New commentary “Unraveling the Regimes of Synthetic Data Metrics“ in Digital Society: link.springer.com/article/10.1... 📚 In it, @velocitygravity.bsky.social , @matthewarcher.bsky.social, @danishanley.bsky.social, and I argue that synth data metrics are linked to the politics of synth data. 🧵…

✨ 🎉 I am very grateful and honored to be the recipient of the 2025 Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis Article Award @uvahumanities.bsky.social for my paper "Platform power in AI: The evolution of cloud infrastructures in the political economy of artificial intelligence" (tinyurl.com/ythnj7kf)

Then off to #RESAW25, presenting on the evolving audience data economy w/ @silvertje.bsky.social (Thu), platform histories panel (Fri) w/ @devikanarayan.bsky.social, @bumatic.bsky.social, & on technography for critical AI studies w/ @dluitse.bsky.social. 🔗 www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/datafiedweb/...

Mardi 3 juin, découvrez comment l’évaluation des modèles IA évolue et soulève un enjeu politique majeur. Une présentation d’ @annaschjoett.bsky.social et @dluitse.bsky.social suivie d’un échange sur le lancement de la collection « The Politics of ML Evaluation » dans Digital Society. Plus d'info 🔽

The Politics of Machine Learning Evaluation: From Present to Future | médialab Sciences Po

Le médialab reçoit Anna Schjøtt Hansen et Dieuwertje Luitse pour le prochain séminaire du 3 juin 2025. Elles feront une présentation d'ouverture sur les politiques d'évaluation de l'apprentissage auto...

medialab.sciencespo.fr

Our article on the metaphor of hallucination and its use by big tech companies in relation to supposedly erroneous outputs from LLMs has finally been published :) @skoopit.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Between fact and fairy: tracing the hallucination metaphor in AI discourse - AI & SOCIETY

Large and powerful language models such as OpenAI’s GPT model family, Google’s LaMDA and BERT or Meta’s LlaMA are integral to many applications, such as translation, summarization or language generati...

link.springer.com

Very timely and necessary critical intervention by @katschwerzmann.bsky.social ‬– highly recommended: «By embracing LLMs before developing any critical framework for their use in pedagogical and research contexts, the University allows itself to be governed by the contingent, ever-evolving ... 1/

🗓️ The next and final 2024-2025 session of the FlashLab seminar will feature Dieuwertje Luitse (@dluitse.bsky.social), PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, with a talk on the technopolitical production of "otherness" through ML modelling and evaluation in medecine! Abstract and more info ⤵️