[Petit Fours #389] On CHI 2024 proceedings, the monstrous costs of AI, and Exit to Community Stories
Hi, all! This week, there’s no lack of fresh-off-the-press things to read:
#1 CHI '24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems are now online, open access! (Among them, our papers on bodywork and food delivery workers as infrastructure.) Kudos to editors and all other volunteers for the tremendous effort.
#2 If you are interested in making discoveries from amidst the vast variety of research that takes place under the umbrella of human—computer interaction at CHI, you might enjoy the CHI 2024 Papers explorer, developed by John Alexis Guerra Gómez.
#3 Molly White asks some good questions in her essay: AI isn't useless. But is it worth it? “When I boil it down, I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to my feelings about blockchains: they do a poor job of much of what people try to do with them, they can't do the things their creators claim they one day might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful than blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.”
#4 Following up on last week’s mention about failed platform co-ops, Danny Spitzberg pointed me to another source on the topic, Exit to Community Stories & Strategies: A library of community ownership, and an essay on Owner’s Remorse.
-A