[AI Skeptics] Disabling Intelligence ch2 & additional readings
Hello! We're reading Disabling Intelligences by Rua Williams. I've also got a paper and a blog post to share.
- Disabling Intelligences chapter 2: "A Taxonomy of AI"
- ""A natural language interface for everyday life": The social and political functions of AI capabilities discourses" by Justine Zhang, Su Lin Blodgett, & Nina Markl in FAccT Conference 2026
I wrote some thoughts about this paper a few weeks ago (here), but I'll unpack more thoughts on Thursday. In the meantime, you could also get caught up on some stuff I'm thinking about by reading my post about "defining AI", if you haven't already.
i can finally talk about this. the era of discourses about discourses begins today
— ali alkhatib (@ali-alkhatib.com) April 22, 2026
other stuff
The program chairs for the Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society have asked me to pass along a message:
Hi all,
Who decides what counts as progress in AI, Ethics, and Society? We invite nominations for reviewers and Senior Program Committee members for AIES2026, the 9th AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, taking place in Malmö, Sweden, October 12–14, 2026: Call For Papers
If you want to shape the field, not just follow it, nominate yourself or a colleague for AIES2026's (Senior) Program Committee. Nominate here.
routine stuff
If you've read these emails before, this is mostly the same stuff as last week (except for the discount code at the end). You can probably skip it if you're caught up.
format
As a reminder, there are numerous ways to keep up with the reading group:
- newsletter: I send updates on Mondays and Thursdays. In the Monday updates, I'll point to what to read; in the Thursday updates, I'll send some reflections and an icebreaker question to think about, and a reminder of where & how to join the video chat.
- video chats: Thursdays at 8pm ET we have a video chat on jitsi1 where we talk about that week's readings. Sometimes we'll have a guest to talk about something related to what we read that week (like this week!).
- group chat: if you want to chat with people on signal, we have a pretty active group chat. You can join the signal group chat here.
schedule
Here's my tentative schedule for the book. I'm not including the additional readings, but I'm thinking about ways to archive what we read each week - it just doesn't fit well in a table sent via email. If you have suggestions (the signal chat has a Zotero, if you want to join)
| Week of... | Reading... |
|---|---|
| April 27 | Preface |
| May 4 | ch1: "AI's Eugenic Legacies, Our Disabled Future" |
| May 11 | ch2: "A Taxonomy of AI" |
| May 18 | ch3: "The Broken Promises of AI in Everyday Life" |
| May 25 | ch4: "Social Stratification Engines and the Ideology of Replacement" |
| June 11 | ch5: "A Just AI Toolkit" |
next book(s)
After Disabling Intelligences, we'll be reading... something.
If you have suggestions for future books to read, please reach out, I'd love to hear them.
last thoughts
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc... please feel free to reach out. Talk soon.
Also, if you come across something you think we'd like to read, I'd love to hear about it; contact me.
Okay, that's it; see you Thursday to discuss the chapter and other reading.
-
I use Jitsi for video chats. Jitsi is a free web-based video chat service kind of like Zoom, but it's free, absent of generative AI stuff, and not connected to people's work accounts. ↩
-
If you've made (written, recorded, etc...) something you'd like to share - a zine, an blog post, an academic paper, a video, or whatever else - email me or message me on signal. ↩