Episode

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Episode Description

In this episode, I talk to Dr Federica Frabetti, associate professor in Digital Media at the University of Roehampton. Federica is a former software engineer, something we have in common, and her interdisciplinary work bridges the gap between technology and the humanities, focusing on Software Studies, critical AI studies, digital media, and cultural theory.

We talk about Federica's experience of the ascent of genAI in HE, the perspective of her students in a new module on AI for the creative industries, and a similar, new MA programme launched next year, and a lot of deep, theory-laden chat, which has prompted me to add references in the chaptering below.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:06 The arrival of gen AI in HE

02:31 (Liu et al., 2026)

03:24 (on transparency, q.v. Gonsalves, 2026)

04:02 AI as a pharmakon

05:32 Federica's monograph (Frabetti, 2015)

06:53 (Brooks, 1975 [1995])

07:40 (NATO's 1968/69 Software Engineering Conferences - Naur and Randell, 1968)

09:16 (on technical solutionism, q.v. Morozov, 2013)

10:09 (Frankfurt, 1988)

11:32 On students' perspectives on genAI

15:57 The new MA and its contents

17:01 (Berard, 2026)

17:24 (Minsky and Papert, 1969)

18:20 Federica's work in critical AI studies

18:48: (Drage and Frabetti, 2023)

18:55 (Browne et al., 2023)

19:03 (Drage and Frabetti, 2024b, 2024a)

19:53 (Barad, 2007)

23:54 Performativity in AI, education and research

24:22 (Bender and Koller, 2020)

25:41 (Berard, 2022)

27:32 (Searle, 1980)

29:16 (Stiegler, 1998)

30:41 On communicative intent

32:39 (On episteme and techne, q.v. Parry, 2024)

33:29 On students' criticality

36:01 (On LLM and. reflective writing, q.v Li et al., 2023)

References

Barad, K.M. (2007) Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press (e-Duke books scholarly collection). https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822388128.

Bender, E.M. and Koller, A. (2020) ‘Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data’, in D. Jurafsky et al. (eds) Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. ACL 2020, https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.acl-main.463.

Berard, W. (2022) ‘Why and How to Teach Programming’, Hypernoetic. https://www.hypernoetic.net/Writings/Why+and+How+to+Teach+Programming.

Berard, W. (2026) ‘AI Before ChatGPT - tracing the ancestry of large language models’, Hypernoetic. Interdisciplinary PGR AI Conference, Roehampton. https://www.hypernoetic.net/Presentations/UR+AI+PGR+Conf+2026/AI+Before+ChatGPT+-+tracing+the+ancestry+of+large+language+models.

Brooks, F.P. (1995) The mythical man-month: essays on software engineering. Anniversary edition. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Colbert, M. (2023) ‘Lack of Transparency over Police Forces’ Covert Use of Predictive Policing Software Raises Concerns about Human Rights Abuses’, Byline Times, 28 March. https://bylinetimes.com/2023/03/28/lack-of-transparency-over-police-forces-covert-use-of-predictive-policing-software-raises-concerns-about-human-rights-abuses/.

Drage, E. and Frabetti, F. (2024a) ‘Copies without an original: the performativity of biometric bordering technologies’, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 21(1), pp. 79–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2023.2292493.

Drage, E. and Frabetti, F. (2024b) ‘The Performativity of AI-powered Event Detection: How AI Creates a Racialized Protest and Why Looking for Bias Is Not a Solution’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 49(5), pp. 1045–1072. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439231164660.

Frabetti, F. (2015) Software theory: a cultural and philosophical study. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.

Frankfurt, H.G. (1988) ‘On Bullshit’, in H. G. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818172.

Gonsalves, C. (2026) ‘The transparency trap: Generative AI and the rise of interpretive load’, Review of Education, 14(1), p. e70139. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.70139.

Li, Y. et al. (2023) ‘Can large language models write reflectively’, Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 4, p. 100140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2023.100140.

Liu, G. et al. (2026) ‘AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance’. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.04721.

Minsky, M. and Papert, S.A. (1969) Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11301.001.0001.

Morozov, E. (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. PublicAffairs.

Parry, R. (2024) ‘Episteme and Techne’, in E.N. Zalta and U. Nodelman (eds) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2024/entries/episteme-techne/.

Searle, J.R. (1980) ‘Minds, brains, and programs’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), pp. 417–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005756.

Stiegler, B. (1998) Technics and Time. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/theory-and-philosophy/technics-and-time-1.