Hello! There's some neat stuff happening in the world, and our next book is at the bottom of the email, but first: we're continuing to read Disabling Intelligences by Rua Williams! This week I think it'd be fun to read these two pieces:

• Disabling Intelligences chapter 3: "The Broken Promises of AI in Everyday Life"
• "A Lo-Fi Rebellion Against A.I." by Kyle Chayka for The New Yorker

things in the world

If you're not tapped into higher education, first: congratulations; second: you may find it amusing that at several universities' commencement ceremonies, different speakers tried to talk up the supposed inevitability of AI (First at the University of Central Florida, and then at the University of Arizona. And then a third speaker, at Middle Tennessee State University's College of Media and Entertainment).

Every time, AI-boosting speakers got booed (in some cases pretty intensely). In one of the videos you can just barely hear someone yelling back at Eric Schmidt "AI sucks!", which is pretty cool.

More universities have commencement ceremonies coming up - most of the University of California system finishes in June - so maybe we'll revisit this phenomenon as it develops.

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)

next book

After Disabling Intelligences, let's read Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser.

I figure we'll be getting started on June 8 or maybe June 15, so you'll probably want to get it ASAP. You can follow the link above, or find it at various online and brick & mortar bookstores.

I have ideas for what we'll read after Techno-Negative, but if you have suggestions, 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.