Hello! We're starting our next book (Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser) next week. You can order it from the publisher's page, or from bookshop.org.

I'm sharing a tentative schedule at the bottom of this email; please look it over and get in contact if you have suggestions or thoughts.

this week's readings & plans

This week I'm at a conference, so I'm going to have to cancel our regular meeting plans. I'll share some papers that look interesting.

I might have some reflections to share on Thursday, but again... no meeting this week.

• "The Weaponization of Computer Vision: Tracing Military-Surveillance Ties through Conference Sponsorship" by Noa Garcia & Amelia Katirai
• "Big AI’s Regulatory Capture: Mapping Industry Interference and Government Complicity" by Abeba Birhane, Riccardo Angius, William Agnew, Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Bhaskar Mitra, Roel Dobbe, & Zeerak Talat

A note on generative AI

Papers at FAccT this year have sections describing the use of generative AI in the preparation of the paper in question. You can (and I would say should) look at the disclosures for the above papers before you read the papers.

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Ok, let's get back to the rest of the thing.

routine stuff

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 jitsi where we talk about this week's readings. (except 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.

new: I'm also experimenting with Fluxer, a thing very similar to Discord and Slack, but without ID verification requirements and all that stuff. There are a number of channels there, and it's generally much better-structured for conversations. If Signal is a bit overwhelming, I think you might find that more manageable.

reading plans

Here's my tentative reading plan for Techno-Negative:

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 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 chat about the articles and the podcast episode from this week.

PS

If you're curious, I'm also interested in this paper, but I didn't share it above because I wasn't sure if I could fit into our conversations about data centers and AI; I just think it looks compelling and worth reading.

Also, their generative AI use disclosure is fairly unimpeachable. Anyway, here it is:

"Making a Name for Myself : On Academic Naming Policies and their Impact" by A Pranav, Vagrant Gautam, Martin Mundt, Jordan Taylor, Arjun Subramonian, Franziska Sofia Hafner, Daniel Chechelnitsky, William Agnew, & Anne Lauscher