Off Center

Scott and Jhave are back to talk even more AI controversy. Is it okay for AI to kill up to 100 people? Is there a dark money campaign to spread Anti-China-AI fear? Are "deep fakes" out and "shallow fakes" so in right now? That, and so much more.Referenceshttps://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2051454585420521501 .A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat | WIRED Elon Musk’s Lawyers Ask OpenAI’s President Why He Is Worth $30 Billion - The New York TimesElon Musk Wanted OpenAI to Go Commercial, Greg Brockman Testifies - The New York Times‘Think before sharing,’ Giorgia Meloni says as AI-made lingerie image of her goes viral Google and Pentagon reportedly agree on deal for ‘any lawful’ use of AI (the Verge) Google DeepMind workers in UK vote to unionize amid deal with US military | US news | The Guardian 4TB of voice samples stolen from 40,000 AI contractors -- how to verify if yours is being weaponized | ORAVYSThe Era of Eka: New Startup Unveils Vision-Force-Action Model to Crack Dexterity | Humanoids DailyEka Robotics: The Era of Superhuman Robotics

Join Scott and Jhave for a candid, slightly cynical deep dive into the ethical quagmires currently reshaping the tech landscape on The AI Update. This episode tackles everything from the military entanglements of Anthropic and Palantir to the unsettling rise of AI-driven bioweapons and global cyber warfare. Amidst a flurry of deepfakes and "supervillain" corporate maneuvers, the duo questions whether humanity is truly prepared for the automated future it is so aggressively building.References AI Safety Institute (AISI). (2026). Our evaluation of Claude Mythos Preview’s cyber capabilities. AISI Work. [https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-evaluation-of-claude-mythos-previews-cyber-capabilities]Amodei, D. (2026). Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War. Anthropic. [https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war]Anthropic [@AnthropicAI]. (2026). New research: When open-source models are fine-tuned on seemingly benign chemical synthesis information generated by frontier models... [Post]. X. [https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/2015870963792142563]Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War, No. 26-cv-01996-RFL (N.D. Cal. 2026). (Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction) [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.465515/gov.uscourts.cand.465515.134.0.pdf]Claude hits No. 1 on App Store as ChatGPT users defect in show of support for Anthropic's Pentagon stance. (2026). [https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-claude-hits-number-one-app-store-openai-chatgpt-2026-2]Mozilla. (2026). Mozilla used Anthropic’s Mythos to find and fix 271 bugs in Firefox. Mozilla Blog. [https://www.wired.com/story/mozilla-used-anthropics-mythos-to-find-271-bugs-in-firefox/]OpenAI. (2026a). GPT-5.5 Bio Bug Bounty. OpenAI. [https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-5-bio-bug-bounty/]OpenAI. (2026b). Our agreement with the Department of War. OpenAI Blog. [https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war/]Palantir manifesto described as ‘ramblings of a supervillain’ amid UK contract fears. (2026). The Guardian. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/21/palantir-manifesto-uk-contract-fears-mps]Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era. (2026) [https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing]Trump deletes post with AI image of himself as Jesus-like figure after outcry. (2026). The Guardian. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/13/trump-ai-image-christ-like-figure-backlash]Turner, S. D. (2026). AI can design and run thousands of lab experiments without human hands. Humanity isn’t ready for the new risks this brings to biology. The Conversation. [https://theconversation.com/ai-can-design-and-run-thousands-of-lab-experiments-without-human-hands-humanity-isnt-ready-for-the-new-risks-this-brings-to-biology-279191]Walsh, Joe  (2026) Hegseth declares Anthropic a supply chain risk, restricting military contractors from doing business with AI giant. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-declares-anthropic-supply-chain-risk/]The watchers: How OpenAI, the US government, and Persona built an identity surveillance machine that files reports on you to the feds. (2026) [https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/]

In episode eight of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta chats with Craig Ryder, postdoctoral researcher with the ERC-funded project SMALLPLATFORMS at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, about his ethnographic journey from Sri Lankan digital activism towards platformed extreme speech.

In this episode we present a live recording of "The Wrong Body; Diverse Bodies and Digital Narratives" panel that took place at the CDN Equinox event on 20th March 2026, with Hannah Ackermans, Ella Holi and Sérgio Galvão Roxo.

In episode seven of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta catches up with Bokar N'Diaye, doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, regarding the past and future of creativity and generative models.

On this episode Scott and Jhave talk about AI Consciousness, debating whether recent research into mechanistic interpretability suggests that frontier models are developing introspection, nascent sentience, and/or a "society of thought."References Aranyosi, M. (2026), Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08017 Butlin, P. et al. (2023), Identifying Indicators of Consciousness in AI Systems, https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708Berg, C et al. (2025), LLMs Report Subjective Experience under Self-Referential Processing https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.24797DeepMind (2026), Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought, https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825Descartes, R. (1637), Discourse on the MethodJohnston, D (2006) Consciousness, Understanding & Mechanistic Interpretability https://glia.ca/2026/hbf/ Johnston, D (2006) Is AI Conscious according to current criteria? https://glia.ca/2026/hbf/iac/Nanda, N. (2025), Emergent Introspective Awareness in Large Language Models, https://www.anthropic.com/researchSchneiderman, D. (2026), The HUMAN Project

When Professor Kishonna Gray visited the Center for Digital Narrative in February 2026, she showed us “synthetic Kishonna”, an AI-generated version of Kishonna somebody made to share on social media with a generic AI-generated quote about diversity. In this podcast, Kishonna talks with Jill Walker Rettberg about what was so disturbing about this image, which took Kishonna’s huge grin and very embodied self and turned it in to what Kishonna calls a “disillation of blackness”, a homogenized and politely smiling normalized fake that erases what makes Kishonna Kishonna. If you follow this link, you’ll see the real photo of Kishonna on the right and the AI version on the left: https://www.kishonnagray.com/synthetic-kishonna  Kishonna Gray argues that AI produces representation without embodiment, and it neutralises our individual voices. That can be very disempowering. But as June Jordan wrote in 1978, “we are the ones we have been waiting for”: we don’t have to let AI neutralise us.  Kishonna Gray is famous for her work in Black games studies, and Professor of Racial Justice and Technology in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and is on the CDN’s advisory board. Read more at https://www.kishonnagray.com/ References:Kishonna mentioned Safiya Noble’s book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press, 2018) and the documentary Coded Bias, which is about MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini’s research on gender bias in AI. You can read more about Buolamwini’s work at http://gendershades.com The “Harpo, who dis woman” meme is an animated gif from Spielberg’s 1985 movie The Color Purple, and can be seen at https://tenor.com/view/who-this-woman-harpo-who-is-this-whoisthat-colorpurple-gif-13132285 Kishonna mentions citational practices;back in 2015 she started the #citeherwork hashtag on Twitter, and Wendy Belcher later came up with the Gray Test, named for Kishonna – to pass the Gray Test «a journal article must not only cite the scholarship of at least two women and two non-white people, but must discuss it in the body of the text»(https://web.archive.org/web/20250318093245/https://www.wihe.com/article-details/194/researching-gaming-and-showing-why-citations-matter) You can read more about what Jill meant about bra straps, personal criticism and finding your voice in her blog post from back in 2002: https://jilltxt.net/arkiv/2001_07_01_arkiv.html#4701526 The Nature paper showing that switching to X’s algorithmic (“For you”) feed shifted peoples’ political opinions to the right is “The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm” by Germain Gauthier, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. It was published in February 2026: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 June Jordan’s poem that ends with the words “we are the ones we have been waiting for” is called “Poem for South African Woman” and she read it at the United Nations in 1978. It is available at https://poets.org/poem/poem-south-african-women

What happens when we treat AI not just as a tool, but as a character? In this episode of Off Center, guest host Jill Walker Rettberg sits down with Lukas Wilde to explore the evolution of AI personas. Drawing on transmedia theory and the "Eliza effect," Wilde breaks down three ways we encounter AI: as fictional robots (like Star Trek’s Data), as co-authors in creative media, and as interactive agents in our daily lives.From theme park mascots to "multiverses" of chatbot inconsistency, they discuss how our deep-seated habits of fictional role-play shape how we perceive machine intelligence.References Amodei, D. (2024) Machines of Loving Grace https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace Crawford, K. (2021) The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence Gray, K. (2020) Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Worlds Greimas, A. J. (1966) Sémantique structurale: recherche de méthode Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory Merlan, A. (2023) The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains It All https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bdba/the-chatgpt-lawyer-explains-it-all Pereira, G. (2023) Towards a Critical Folklore of Artificial Intelligence https://www.gabrielpereira.net/ Weizenbaum, J. (1966) ELIZA—A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist238/p36-weizenbaum.pdf Wilde, L. (2023) The Character Effect and the Eliza Effect: AI Characters as Digital Actants https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375762828_The_Character_Effect_and_the_Eliza_Effect_AI_Characters_as_Digital_Actants Wilde, L. and Kunze, T. (2024) A Key Figure: AI Characters Wilde, L. and Thon, J.-N. (2022) Characters in Game Studies and Media Research https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361836017_Characters_in_Game_Studies_and_Media_Research_A_Review_and_Introduction

In episode six of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta and Hanna Lauvli geek out with Santtu Raisanen, doctoral researcher at the Center for Consumer Society at The University of Helsinki, about the pervasive concept of convenience in contemporary algorithmic culture.

What happens when you drop generative AI into the middle of a liberal arts curriculum? This week on Off Center, Scott sits down with Davis Schneiderman at Lake Forest College to find out. We dive into the HUMAN project, a campus-wide experiment putting AI tools directly into the hands of humanities students and professors. Instead of panicking or running from the tech, Davis argues that writers, artists, and historians need to get their hands dirty with AI to actually understand and critique it. From historical Chicago chatbots to the future of experimental fiction, this conversation explores why the creative critical thinking skills taught in the humanities are our best defense in an AI-driven world.References Burroughs, W. S., & Gysin, B. (1978). The Third Mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_MindChamberlain, W., & Thomas Ettrick [Racter]. (1984). The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Policeman%27s_Beard_Is_Half_ConstructedGrossman, J. R., Keating, A. D., & Reiff, J. L. (Eds.). (2004). The Encyclopedia of Chicago. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/Gysin, B. (1960). I AM THAT I AM [Audio / Permutation poem]. https://www.ubu.com/sound/gysin.htmlLake Forest College. (n.d.). Humanity’s Understanding of the Machine-Assisted Nexus (HUMAN) https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/krebs-center-for-the-humanitiesSanchez Burr, D. (2025). Redshift https://morethanmeetsai.uib.no/Schneiderman, D., & [Kelly]. (2025). You Can Call Me AI Taylor, T. (2025). Serious Game 

In episode five of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Anya Shchetvina, PhD fellow with the Literary and Epistemic History of Small Forms research group at the Humboldt University in Berlin, to hear about her current work on internet manifestos.References Barlow, John Perry (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independenceBlankenship, Loyd (1986) The Conscience of a Hacker. http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.htmlCheng, Jack (2012) The Slow Web. http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-webFeminist Server Project. (2014) Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01 / Transfeminist Server Wishlist.https://bakonline.org/en/research+publications/prospections/a+wishlist+for+trans+feminist+servers/Haraway, Donna (1985) A Cyborg Manifesto. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifestoLe Guin, Ursula K. (2024) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fictionLialina, Olia. (2005) A Vernacular Web. http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/Old Boys Network. 1997. 100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism (Referenced as "one hundred and ninety theses on Cyberfeminism"). https://obn.org/cfundef/100antitheses.htmlReynolds, Simon (2011) Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865479944Sadgrl.online (2021) Sad Girl Online Webmaster Manifesto. https://sadgrl.online/Turner, Fred. (2006) From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773602.htmlVNS Matrix. 1991. A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century. https://vnsmatrix.net/projects/the-cyberfeminist-manifesto-for-the-21st-century

What are “World Models,” and why should we care? Could AI really understand reality? Scott and Jhave sit down to explore the rise of World Models - the "engines" of machine intuition -to discuss how quickly they are evolving and what their existence means for the future of humanity (and the robots living alongside us)References Agarwal, N. et al. (2025) Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03575ByteDance. (2025) Lumine: An Open Recipe for Building Generalist Agents in 3D Open Worlds. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08892DeepMind SIMA Team. (2025) SIMA 2: A Generalist Embodied Agent for Virtual Worlds. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04797Deng, J. et al. (2009) ImageNet: A Large-Scale Hierarchical Image Database. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5206848Fisher, C., Coover, R., & Julian. (2026) [Untitled AR Skiing Project]. [No public URL available for this in-development project]Li, F.-F. (2025) From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI's Next Frontier. https://drfeifei.substack.com/p/from-words-to-worlds-spatial-intelligenceMao, J. et al. (2025) Robot Learning from a Physical World Model https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07416PAN Team, MBZUAI. (2025) PAN: A World Model for General, Interactable, and Long-Horizon World Simulation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09057Powers, R. (2000) Plowing the Dark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowing_the_Dark

Did you know slop was a problem long before AI? This episode of Off Center takes us all the way back to the 18th century as today’s host, Jill Walker Rettberg, discuss the precursors to AI slop with Hazel Wilkinson, Associate Professor of English at the University of Birmingham. Hazel’s specialty is 18th century literature, a time when paper and printing became much cheaper and it became possible to make a living by selling your writing. That also led to a lot of “bad literature”, to the development of copyright laws and to many discussions about the differences between originality and even “genius” and imitative “bad” writing that are surprisingly similar to today’s debates about AI slop and the threat LLMs pose to “good” literature.  Hazel’s previous research has been on book history and printer’s ornaments, and we begin the discussion by looking at an ornament often used in books that weren’t highly appreciated for their literary quality, showing an ape copying out a text by candlelight. Our discussion ranges from Pope’s The Dunciad, which parodies hack writers, to automatons that wrote out poems in carefully automated handwriting, to “it-narratives” told from the perspective of writing instruments like quills and paper that are outraged at the banal writing the humans use them for.  Hazel Wilkinson’s university profile page: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/english/wilkinson-hazel Compositor is a database of eighteenth century printers’ ornaments. https://compositor.bham.ac.uk/ 

Following Universal Music Groups' settlement and partnership of Udio, Scott and Jhave sit down to discuss the potential future of music in a world with AI.

Look what just dropped down the chimney: Why, it's the first Off Center Christmas Special Holiday Extravaganza Show! Featuring music, human and otherwise, lessons in Norwegian folklore, Christmas beers reviewed, holiday traditions from various cultures, and merriment of all sorts. Featuring Jill Walker Rettberg, Anne Sigrid Refsum, Nick Montfort, Gabriele de Seta, Drew Keller, Hanne-Rikka Roine, Yagmur Vik, Tegan Pyke, Nadja Heiber, Rafael Pérez y Pérez, Søren Pold and the New Originals, Andreas Opsvik, and Ola Roth Johnsen.

In episode four of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta welcomes Nick Seaver, Associate Professor in Anthropology and Director of the Science, Technology & Society program at Tufts University, to catch up on his recent ethnographic research on algorithms, computing and automation. References Crary, J. (1999) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture https://archive.org/details/suspensionsofper0000crarDaston, L. (2011) The Empire of Observation, 1600-1800 Drott, E. (2021) Fake Streams, Listening Bots, and Click FarmsElish, M. C., and Boyd, D. (2018) Situating Methods in the Magic of Big Data and AI Gell, A. (1992) The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology Jobin, A. (2022) Organic Search: The Marketing of a Concept and Its Political Implications Nakamura, L. (2002) Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet Seaver, N. (2022) Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation Seaver, N. (Forthcoming) Attention Fragments https://nickseaver.net/attention-fragments

Scott and Jhave are back talking billions of dollars and discussing whether the new AI economy truly is "too big to fail".References Artificial Analysis (2025) Models Leaderboard Fortune (2025) Without data centers, US GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025 GLM-4 (2025) GLM-4.6: Open-Source Bilingual Intermediate Model https://github.com/THUDM/GLM-4Kimi (2025) Kimi k10 / K2 Thinking: Interleaved Reasoning Model https://www.moonshot.ai/MiniMax (2025) MiniMax-M2: Video and Language Foundation Models https://www.minimaxir.com/Sarah Friar (2025) Interview on Unconventional AI Financing and Infrastructure District Court, D. Massachusetts (2024) Copyright Infringement Litigation: RIAA v. Suno, Inc. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68897534/recording-industry-association-of-america-inc-v-suno-inc/

In this wide-ranging conversation, host Scott Rettberg sits down with renowned media theorist Roberto Simanowski to map the seismic shifts in digital culture over the last quarter-century. Starting with the early avant-garde experiments in "born-digital" literature and the founding of the journal Dichtung Digital, they trace the evolution of the screen from a space of poetic play to a site of global datafication.References Adorno, Theodor W. (1970) Aesthetic Theory Anadol, Refik (2021) Machine Hallucinations https://refikanadol.com/works/machine-hallucinations-nature-dreams/ Aarseth, Espen (1997) Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature https://archive.org/details/cybertextperspec0000aars Habermas, Jürgen (1962) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Hales, Katherine (2002) Writing Machines https://archive.org/details/writingmachines0000haylKeep, Christopher (1994) A Socrates in the Labyrinth Landow, George (1994) Hyper/Text/Theory Levin, Golan (2004) The Dumpster Menke, Christoph (1998) The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and DerridaRettberg, Scott; Stratton, William; Gillespie, William; Marquardt, Frank (1998) The Unknown https://unknownhypertext.com/Simanowski, Roberto (1999) Dichtung Digital https://dichtung-digital.de/ Simanowski, Roberto (2002) Interfictions: Vom Schreiben im Netz https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/roberto-simanowski-interfictions-t-9783518122471 Simanowski, Roberto (2011) Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Contentual Art, Dot-Walks, and Hypertexts Simanowski, Roberto (2016) Data LoveSimanowski, Roberto (2016) Digital Humanities and Digital Media: Conversations on Politics, Culture, Aesthetics and Literacy Simanowski, Roberto (2018) The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536370/the-death-algorithm-and-other-digital-dilemmas/ Utterback, Camille (2002) Deep Wall Wilks, James (2016) Poetry Games Wolff, Ben; Hall, Zach (2003) Listening Post 

Scott and Jhave are here to talk about a major class-action lawsuit that will reward authors for the fact that their books were used for AI training data... and this is not just any class-action lawsuit: the largest publicly reported settlement in human history.References: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/My Book Was Stolen by an AI Company. Why Does Suing Them Feel Wrong? Thea Lim https://thewalrus.ca/suing-ai-company/

In episode three of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta visits Minna Ruckenstein, a Professor in Emerging Technologies in Society at the University of Helsinki's Consumer Society Research Center, for a deep dive into her work on algorithmic folklore.References Booker, T. (2013), Programmed Sociality: Enclosure, Governance and Critical TheoryLönnrot, E. (1835), The Kalevala https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186Ruckenstein, M. (2023), The Field of Algorithms: Edition 1 Ruckenstein, M. et al. (2018-2022), Algorithmic Culture https://blogs.helsinki.fi/algorithmicculture/

On this episode Scott talks to Espen Aarseth, Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, to trace the origins and evolution of game studies. From his early fascination with text adventures to writing his groundbreaking dissertation Cybertext, Espen reflects on the "human legwork" required to build an entirely new academic field from the ground up.ReferencesAarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. https://archive.org/details/cybertextperspec0000aars Crowther, W., & Woods, D. (1976). Adventure (also known as Colossal Cave Adventure). https://rickadams.org/adventure/advent/ Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) Conference Series. (1998). https://elmcip.net/event/digital-arts-and-culture-dac Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research. (2001). https://gamestudies.org/ Infocom. (1980). Zork. https://archive.org/details/msdos_Zork_I_-_The_Great_Underground_Empire_1980 Knausgård, K. O. (2009). My Struggle (Min Kamp). https://www.worldcat.org/title/min-kamp-forste-bok/oclc/464593414 Melbourne House. (1982). The Hobbit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1982_video_game)

In episode two of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Guro Flinterud, a folklorist and cultural studies researcher, about her research on social media and digital platforms as an interface between the police and the public.References Bakhtin, Mikhail (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Bakhtin_Mikhail_Speech_Genres_and_Other_Late_Essays_1986.pdfCultural Analysis (2023), Journal of Cultural Analysis, https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~culturalanalysis/Folklore Journal (2024), Folklore, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfol20/134/1Guru (2024), Folk in the Age of Algorithms: Theorizing Folklore on Social Media Platforms, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2273183Knut (2007), The Berlin Zoo Polar Bear, https://www.zoo-berlin.de/en/

On this episode we talk about our upcoming exhibition "An Eye for AI Cinema" at the Bergen International Film Festival, running October 15th-23rd. Is artificial intelligence destroying cinema as we know it? Are we entering the age of the computer-generated DIY film? AI brings tumultuous changes to the established film industry, at the same time as it is creating new opportunities for independent filmmakers, and perhaps even birthing new genres of moving image art. References Laurent BassetAFFAIR IN MARSEILLE, 2025Seif AbdallaHANAA, 2025Micol HebronStudy of animals in motion in the style of Eadweard Muybridge, 2025 Simon M. ValentineOne Last Wish, 2024REDACTEDOptimals, 2025Sachiko Hayashi, Nina SobellEchoes Unseen, 2024Lina Ruth Harder & Colin RobinsonWherever I go, you’re always with me, 2025Scott RettbergRiverrun (fascistchicfascistquick), 2025David Jhave JohnstonBrain-Knot Altar, 2025

On this episode, author, data scientist, and journalist Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks to Jill Walker Rettberg about his relationship with AI in producing his Salvage Crew Trilogy of novels. References Yudhanjaya Wijeratne: “The Machine as Provocateur” Keynote at CDN Summer School 2025 -   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ZdWvzk2JEStarMap – galaxy generator code on GitHub: https://github.com/yudhanjaya/Starmap Find out more at Yudhanjaya.com Photo by Dirk Skiba Fotografie.Iain M. Banks (1987) The Culture SeriesGoogle Creative Lab (2012) 100,000 Stars https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/ Atticus Poetry (2017) Love Her Wild https://www.atticuspoetry.com/ Stephen King (1982) The Gunslinger Rupi Kaur (2014) Milk and Honey Garry Kasparov (1998) Advanced Chess (Centaur Chess) https://kasparovchess.com/ Stanisław Lem (1961) Solaris, https://solarislotus.com/ OpenAI (2022) Whisper (Speech Recognition Model) https://github.com/openai/whisper Keynote (Yudhanjaya Wijeratne), https://www.youtube.com/@CenterforDigitalNarrative David Stark (2018) Planet Generator https://watabou.itch.io/planet-generator ConcernedApe (2016) Stardew Valley https://www.stardewvalley.net/ Tynan Sylvester (2013) RimWorld https://rimworldgame.com/ Tynan Sylvester (2013) The Simulation Dream https://tynansylvester.com/2013/06/the-simulation-dream/Peter Watts (2006) Blindsight

It’s been a while since the last AI update, and with the field evolving so quickly, Scott and Jhave have plenty to catch up on. In this episode, they explore AI and writing - but who is prompting whom? Can AI serve as “steroids for creativity”? And if so, what are the unintended side effects?References Abundant Intelligence Project (2024). Indigenous AI and Language Revitalization. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-024-02099-4Beckett, Samuel (1951). Molloy Codrescu, Andrei (1970). License to Carry a Gun. Joyce, James (1939) Finnegans Wake.Mistral AI (2024). Mistral Large 2: Multilingual Capacity and European Language Models. https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-largeThe Conversation (2024). Fake academic papers are on the rise: why they’re a danger and how to stop them https://theconversation.com/fake-academic-papers-are-on-the-rise-why-theyre-a-danger-and-how-to-stop-them-224650Prompt Armor (2024). Before installing an MCP: The security risks of autonomous agents. https://promptarmor.com/blog/Suleyman, Mustafa et al. (2025). The Quantum Merlin Hypothesis and GPT-5 Iterative Problem Solving. https://arxiv.org/Walker Rettberg, Jill (2023). Narrative Homogenization and Cultural Bias in Large Language Models. https://jilltxt.net/

This episode features an interview with Samya Brata Roy, now an Assistant Professor of English at Gitam (Deemed-to-be) University Hyderabad, recorded during the 2025 CDN Digital Narrative PhD Summer School. Samya discusses his academic journey and the founding of Electronic Literature India. References Coover, Roderick (Ed.), with contributions by Mark Marino. (2019). The Digital Imaginary: Literature and Cinema of the Database. https://www.akademika.no/dokumentar-og-fakta/kunst-og-kultur/digital-imaginary/9781501379406?srsltid=AfmBOophg-ofPaSdQpLvomMOLLfRAeHcsHcBLv6gZn4mgVzgqUfv8rl1Electronic Literature Organization. (2006). Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1. https://collection.eliterature.org/1/Ensslin, Astrid; Roy, Samya Brata (2024). Electronic Literatures as Post-Comparative Media. https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/55582/Gallix, Andrew. (2008). Is e-literature just one big anti-climax? https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/sep/24/ebooksHayles, N. Katherine. (2008). Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268030841/electronic-literature/ Menon, Nirmala, and Shanmugapriya T. (2023). First Anthology of Indian Electronic Literature. https://iiti.ac.in/Pressman, Jessica. (2020). Bookishness: Loving Books in a Digital Age. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/bookishness/9780231195133Rettberg, Scott. (2004). Wherefore Genre? Grand Text Auto. https://grandtextauto.soe.ucsc.edu/2004/08/20/wherefore-genre/Rettberg, Scott. (2018). Electronic Literature. Roy, Soumyabrata. (2024). Electronic Literatures and Its Impossibilities in India. Shafiq, Afrah. (2017). Enter Sultana's Reality. https://afrahshafiq.com/enter-sultanas-reality

In the first episode of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Joan Mukogosi, where they talk about her essay "Strategic Knowledge. Teens use 'algorithmic folklore' to crack TikTok’s black box", which she co-authored with Ireti Akinrinade. References Akinrinade, Iretiolu, and Joan Mukogosi. (2021) Strategic Knowledge: Teens use "algorithmic folklore" to crack TikTok's black box https://medium.com/datasociety-points/strategic-knowledge-6bbddb3f0259Butler, Octavia E. (1987) Dawn  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60929.DawnButler, Octavia E. (1993) Parable of the Sower https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52397.Parable_of_the_SowerLenhart, Amanda, and Kellie Owens (2021) The Unseen Teen: The Challenges of Building Healthy Tech for Young People, https://datasociety.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-Unseen-Teen-.pdf

Returning guest Gabriele de Seta joins Scott to talk about Algopod, the new series of podcast episodes that will be released as part of the new season of Off Center. We also hear some interviews that David and Benji, two middle school students who had their work week at the center, did with several people within the center's staff.References Akinrinade, Ireti & Mukoki, Joanne (2019). Algorithmic Folklore. https://datasociety.net/Black Isle Studios (1999). Planescape: Torment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_TormentDrinkBox Studios (2013). Guacamelee!. https://guacamelee.com/Flinterud, Guro (2023). Folklore of the Algorithm. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2233839#abstractJørgensen, Kristine & Mortensen, Torill Elvira (2024). Looking for gamers where they are: Norwegian broadcasting from television to Twitch. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389959402_Looking_for_gamers_where_they_are_Norwegian_broadcasting_from_television_to_TwitchMagnuson, Jordan (2023). Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/10.3998/mpub.12758495Ruckenstein, Minna (2023). The Feel of Algorithms. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520394551/the-feel-of-algorithms

This episode Scott and Jhave talk about some of the ways in which AI is finding itself involved in research. They talk about some of the AI models that have been developed with research in mind as well as some of their own experiments with these models.References:Brain2Qwerty https://ai.meta.com/research/publications/brain-to-text-decoding-a-non-invasive-approach-via-typing/ Claude https://claude.ai/ Accessed March 11, 2025.Deep research. https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/ Accessed March 11, 2025.Eliot, George. 1879. “Impressions of Theophrastus Such” William Blackwood and Sons.Perplexity deep research https://www.perplexity.ai/?model_id=deep_research Accessed March 11, 2025.Rettberg, Scott. 2020. “Republicans In Love” https://eloconference2023exhibitions.wordpress.com/exhibition2_resistance/republicans-in-love/

On this episode Scott joins David Bithell overseas, at Southern Oregon University's Digital Media Center. They talk about digital performance, collaborative online music and digital puppetry. References: Bithell, David. Followers. 2017. http://www.davidbithell.com/followers.htmlBithell, David. Matters Dark and Luminous. 2023-Present. http://www.davidbithell.com/mattersdarkandluminous.htmlBithell, David. Subterranean. 2020. http://www.davidbithell.com/subterranean.htmlBithell, David. Windward. 2018. http://www.davidbithell.com/windward.html

In this week's AI Update, Scott and Jhave discuss some of the ways in which fascism reproduces itself, how AI could be used as a tool to facilitate it, and how those leading AI development have found themselves in positions of political power.References:Ahmed, S. (2024). Social Media News Use Amplifies the Illusory Truth Effects of Viral Deepfakes: A Cross-National Study of Eight Countries. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2024.2410783Anna's Archive & Library Genesis. https://annas-archive.org/ , https://libgen.is/Bain, N., & Bartolo, D. (2025). Emergence of collective oscillations in massive human crowds.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388724182_Emergence_of_collective_oscillations_in_massive_human_crowdsBletchley Declaration. (2023). Countries attending the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-safety-summit-2023-the-bletchley-declarationCanetti, E. (1960). Crowds and Power https://archive.org/details/crowdspower0000caneFurie, M. (2005). Pepe the Frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_FrogHarrison, H. (1957). The Stainless Steel Rat. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/70034Knausgaard, K. O. (2011). My Struggle: Book 6 https://archipelagobooks.org/book/my-struggle-book-six/Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.: https://archive.org/details/decolonisingmind0000ngugSutskever, I. (2023). Ilya: the AI scientist shaping the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iqn1HhFJ6cSwartz, A. (2008). Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txtWatkins, G. (2025). AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism. https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this episode, Scott travels to Australia to talk with Tama Leaver at the Center of Excellence for the Digital Child. They discuss Tama's involvement with the Center, his research regarding generative AI, the ways in which children interact with AI and how they can be affected by them, as well as a recent ban to social media for all children under 16 in Australia. ReferencesHaidt, Jonathan. The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. 2024. New York, Penguin Press. Leaver, Tama, and Suzanne Srdarov. 2025. "Generative AI and Children's Digital Futures: New Research Challenges." Journal of Children and Media. 19 (1): 65-70. doi:10.1080/17482798.2024.2438679.Ritchie, Hannah. Australia approves social media ban on under-16s. BBC News, Sydney. November 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o

Jhave and Scott talk about simulated worlds or environments created with AI, considering what are the boundaries for artifical life. ReferencesByteDance. (2025). Protenix: Toward High-Accuracy Open-Source Biomolecular Structure Prediction. https://github.com/bytedance/ProtenixConway, J. H. (1970). The Game of Life. Scientific American, 223(4) https://conwaylife.com/Genesis Consortium. (2024). Genesis: A generative universal physics engine for robotics and beyond.Google Quantum AI. (2024, December 9). Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/Kumar, A., Lu, C., Kirsch, L., Tang, Y., Stanley, K. O., Isola, P., & Ha, D. (2024). Automating the Search for Artificial Life with Foundation Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17799Nvidia. (2025)6). NVIDIA Launches Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform to Accelerate Physical AI Development. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-cosmos-world-foundation-model-platform-to-accelerate-physical-ai-developmentReynolds, C. W. (1987). Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed behavioral model. https://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/Sims, K. (1994). Evolving Virtual Creatures. https://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.htmlThis work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this episode we are joined by co-authors Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort to talk about their new publication Output: An Anthology of Computer Generated Text, 1953-2023. We learn about their path into digital poetry and the process of putting together this anthology.ReferencesBertram, Lillian-Yvonne. (2019). Travesty generator. https://www.nationalbook.org/books/travesty-generator/Bertram, Lillian-Yvonne, & Montfort, Nick (Eds.). (2024). Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023. https://direct.mit.edu/books/edited-volume/5867/OutputAn-Anthology-of-Computer-Generated-Text-1953Gysin, Brion, & Sommerville, Ian. (1960). Permutation Poems.https://davidpocknee.ricercata.org/gysin/Knowles, Alison, & Tenney, James. (1967). The House of Dust.https://theverseverse.com/poems/the-house-of-dustLutz, Theo. (1959). Stochastic Texts https://www.stuttgarter-schule.de/lutz_schule_en.htmMontfort, Nick. (2017). The Truelist. https://counterpathpress.org/the-truelist-nick-montfortMontfort, Nick, & Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (Eds.). (2003). The New Media Readerhttps://www.newmediareader.com/Nish-Lapidus, Matt. (2020). Work, Life, Balance. https://www.aleator.press/shop/p/work-life-balanceRichardson, Leonard. (2013). Alice’s Adventures in the Whale. Stiles, Sasha. (2021). Technelegy. https://www.sashastiles.com/technelegyhardcoverStrachey, Christopher. (1953). Love Letters https://alpha60.de/art/love_letters/manchester_gallery/Yngve, Victor H. (1961). Random Sentences https://literaryai.library.columbia.edu/litai/i36/This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this AI Update Jhave and Scott discuss O3, the new AI model announced by OpenAI, which excels in high-complexity tasks, demonstrating state-of-the-art capabilities in science, structured reasoning, and problem-solving. References Brown, N., & Sandholm, T. (2018). Superhuman AI for heads-up no-limit poker: Libratus beats top professionals. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aao1733Chollet, F. (2019). On the measure of intelligence.https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547DeepSeek-AI et al. (2024). DeepSeek-V3 Technical Report. https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.19437DeepSeek-AI et al. (2025). DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12948Epoch AI. (2024). FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning. https://epoch.ai/frontiermathMeta Fundamental AI Research Diplomacy Team (FAIR) et al. (2022). Human-level play in the game of Diplomacy by combining language models with strategic reasoning. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade9097Rein, D., et al. (2023). GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmark. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.12022Shao, Z., et al. (2024). DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03300Snell, C., Lee, J., Xu, K., & Kumar, A. (2024). Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03314Sutton, R. (2019). The Bitter Lesson. Incomplete Ideas. http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.htmlXin, H., et al. (2024). DeepSeek-Prover-V1.5: Harnessing Proof Assistant Feedback for Reinforcement Learning and Monte-Carlo Tree Search https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08152This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this episode, Alinta Krauth, new media artist, is joining Scott Rettberg for a discussion about her art and interspecies communication. References Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI). https://aci-sigchi.org/Bertram, L. Y., & Montfort, N. (Eds.). (2024). Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262549813/output/Kleinberger, R., Hirskyj-Douglas, I., Cunha, J., & Meisner, E. (2023). "Birds of a Feather Video-Flock Together: Design and Evaluation of an Agency-Based Video-Calling System for Domesticated Parrots." Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581166Krauth, A. (2020). The Bat Translator (also known as The Clouds Are Falling) https://www.alintakrauth.com/#!portfolioKrauth, A. Interspecies Games https://www.enrichmentart.com/#!portfolioKrauth, A. (2023). When the Songbird Speaks. https://thedigitalreview.com/issue04/alintakrauth/index.html Leonardo/ISAST. https://leonardo.info/McKay, L. J. (2020). The Animals in That Country. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52527550-the-animals-in-that-countryMeowTalk AI. https://www.meowtalk.app/Sharma, P., et al. (2024). "Contextualizing Sperm Whale Codas." Nature Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8Slobodchikoff, C. N. (2012). Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263199506_Chasing_Doctor_Dolittle_Learning_the_Language_of_Animals Whitman, W. (1855). Leaves of Grass https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322Woollahra Digital Literary Award. https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/whats-on/digital-literary-awardThis work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Jhave and Scott discuss recent developments in AI and forecast new developments in AI storytelling, reasoning, efficiency, organoids, and medicine coming in 2025.ReferencesAmodei, D., & Hernandez, D. (2018). AI and Compute. https://openai.com/index/ai-and-compute/Jumper, J., et al. (2021). Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2Snell, C., et al. (2024). Scaling LLM Test-Time Compute Optimally can be More Effective than Scaling Model Parameters. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03314Wang, Z., Li, J., Lin, H., Yoon, J., & Bansal, M. (2024). DreamRunner: Fine-Grained Compositional Story-to-Video Generation with Retrieval-Augmented Motion Adaptation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.16657Watson, J. L., et al. (2023). De novo design of protein structure and function with RFdiffusion. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06415-8This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this AI update, hosts Scott Rettberg and David Jhave Johnston dive deep into the connection between AI and violence. Tune in for the latest AI updates, and the last episode of the year. We will continue the season in the new year. References Calvo, Serena, et al. 2024. Does suicide contagion (Werther Effect) take place in response to social media? A systematic review. Spanish journal of psychiatry and mental health.HBO Entertainment. 2011. Game of Thrones. HBO. Lystad, Reidar P., Brown, Benjamin T. 2018. “Death is certain, the time is not”: mortality and survival in Game of Thrones. Inj. Epidemiol, (5)44. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-018-0174-7Ree, Benjamin, [director]. 2024. “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.” Netflix. 1 hr., and 24 min. Ritchie, Hannah. 2024. “Australia approves social media ban on under-16s.” BBC News. Effective November 29, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9oThe New York Times. 2024. “Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?” The New York Times. Effective, October 23, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teensuicide.htmlWeizenbaum, Joseph. 1967. ELIZA. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

On today’s episode, recent PhD graduate, Marianne Gunderson, joins Scott for a discussion on creepypasta, fanfiction and monsters, and machine vision. Doctor Gunderson has started her postdoctoral research at the ALGOFOLK (algorithmic folklore) project connected to the Center for Digital Narrative. References Andam, Julie. 2015. Skam. NRK. Atalaia, Nuno, and Marianne Gunderson. “Alexa’s Monstrous Agency: The Horror of the Digital Voice Assistant.” Not available in BORA awaiting publishing. 4Chan. 2003. “What is 4chan?” 4chan. https://4chan.org/. Gunderson, Marianne. 2017. “What is an omega? Rewriting sex and gender in omegaverse fanfiction.” [Master's thesis]. DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.14405.47849. Gunderson, Marianne. 2024. “The Nexus of Algorithmic Visions: Agency, Imaginaries, and the Self in Sociotechnical Situations.” [Doctoral thesis]. https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/handle/11250/3161190.This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this short byweekly AI update, hosts Scott Rettberg and Jhave Johnston talk about the use of AI in filmmaking in places like Hollywood. While actors and writers fear AI could take over their jobs, its use in filmmaking is rapidly growing. ReferencesBateman, Justine. 2024. “Hollywood is dead, according to Justine Bateman. Here’s what comes next.” Fast Company. Effective November 2, 2024. https://www.fastcompany.com/91220089/hollywood-is-dead-according-to-justine-bateman-heres-what-comes-next. Gordon, Devin. 2024. “What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?” The New York Times. Effective November 6, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/magazine/ai-hollywood-movies-cgi.html. Viggle. n. d. “Home.” Viggle AI. Accessed December 2, 2024. https://viggle.ai/home. Wonder Animation Studio. n. d. “Home.” Wonder Animation. Accessed December 2, 2024. https://wonderanimation.us/. Zemeckis, Robert, director. 2024. Here. Miramax. 1 hr., and 44 min. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18272208/. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Mark Amerika is a visual artist, media theorist, and novelist. He is a professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado. In this episode, Scott and Mark will discuss Mark's career in art and academia, and some of his field-defining works.   ReferencesAmerika, Mark. 1997. GRAMMATRON. Alt-X. https://www.grammatron.com/  Amerika, Mark. 1995. Sexual Blood. Black Ice.  Amerika, Mark, Will Luers, & Chad Mossholder. 2023. Posthuman Cinema. https://posthumancinema.com/. Gillespie, William, Rettberg, Scott, Stratton, Dirk, & Marquadt, Frank. 1999. The Unknown [Hypertext fiction]. Web. http://unknownhypertext.com/.   Rettberg, Scott. 2003. Destination Unknown: Experiments in the Network Novel. [Dissertation]. https://retts.net/documents/rettberg_dissertation.pdf  This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Back with a new episode and song, are David Jhave Johnston and Scott Rettberg. In today’s episode, they will discuss AI agents. Secret agents, travel agents, helping you with anything you need. Whether that may be spying on people or booking that holiday you wanted to go on, the AI agents can do it for you. Listen now for this new AI update.   ReferencesFourney, Adam, et al. 2024. “Magentic-One: A generalist multi-agent system for solving complex tasks.” Microsoft. Effective November 4, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/magentic-one-a-generalist-multi-agent-system-for-solving-complex-tasks/ Grosnit, Antoine, et al. 2024. “Large Language Models Orchestrating Structured Reasoning Achieve Kaggle Grandmaster Level.” Hugging face. Effective November 6, 2024. https://huggingface.co/papers/2411.03562. Lu, Yadong. 2024. “OmniParser for pure vision-based GUI agent.” Microsoft. Effective October 8, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/omniparser-for-pure-vision-based-gui-agent Riegler, Michael Alexander. 2024. “Exploring OpenAI’s Swarm: An experimental framework for multi-agent systems.” Medium. Effective October 12, 2024. https://medium.com/@michael_79773/exploring-openais-swarm-an-experimental-framework-for-multi-agent-systems-5ba09964ca18 The Big Sleep Team. 2024. “Project Zero. From naptime to big sleep: Using large language models to catch vulnerabilities in real-world code.” Google Project Zero. Effective November 1, 2024. https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2024/10/from-naptime-to-big-sleep.html#bigsleepteamThis work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Welcome back to a new episode of Off Center. Today, Scott is joined by Talan Memmott, a professor of Mass Communication at Winona State University. They discuss Talan's career as a digital artist and electronic literature artist, highlighting his latest work in cripistemology. Tune in now!References Jackson, Shelley. 1995. Patchwork Girl. Eastgate Systems. Joyce, Michael. 1987. Afternoon, a story. Eastgate Systems. Memmott, Talan. 2024. “A Cripistemology of Breath.” YouTube. 4 min., 32 sec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VRCSILVdgMMemmott, Talan. 1998. BeeHive - Hypertext/Hypermedia Literary Journal, 1(1). https://archive.thenext.eliterature.org/beehive/archive/11arc.html.Memmott, Talan. 2014. Digital Culture World Lecture Tour. [Netprov].Memmott, Talan. 2023. Introducing Lary: The San Biagio Frescoes of Pietro Golamuto. https://talanmemmott.info/?p=729.Memmott, Talan. 2000. Lexia to Perplexia. Electronic Literature Collection Volume One. https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/memmott__lexia_to_perplexia.html.Memmott, Talan, & Scott Rettberg. 2019. The Limerick Diet. Electronic Literature Organisation conference. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this AI update, hosts Scott Rettberg and David Jhave Johnston dive deep into the evolving relationship between AI and human reasoning. They explore how AI models like GPT are learning to "think" through synthetic chain-of-thought processes. Tune in for the latest AI updates.   ReferencesBrown, Noam, and Tuomas Sandholm. 2019. “Superhuman AI for multiplayer poker.” Science 365, 885-890. DOI:10.1126/science.aay2400. Meta Fundamental AI Research Diplomacy Team (FAIR) et al. 2022. “Human-level play in the game of Diplomacy by combining language models with strategic reasoning.” Science 378, 1067-1074. DOI:10.1126/science.ade9097. Tessler, Michael Henry, et al. 2024. “AI can help humans find common ground in democratic deliberation.” Science 386(6719) DOI:10.1126/science.adq2852. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

This week's episode fits the Halloween theme. Spooky places, historical sites, and digital narratives. In this episode, Scott is joined by Nicole Basaraba, Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities at Trinity College in Dublin. They discuss topics such as cultural heritage research and dark tourism.  ReferencesBasaraba, Nicole. 2023. “The Rise of Paranormal Investigations as Virtual Dark Tourism on YouTube.” Journal of Heritage Tourism 19(2): 287–309. doi:10.1080/1743873X.2023.2268746. Basaraba, Nicole. 2022. Transmedia Narratives for Cultural Heritage: Remixing History. Routledge. Sam and Colby. 2014. Sam and Colby. YouTube. [YouTube Channel]. YouTube. Retrieved October 24, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/c/samandcolby/about. Sam and Colby. 2021. Our Demonic Encounter at Haunted Sallie House. YouTube. 1 hr., 10 min. Retrieved October 24, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bqwiR871KU.  This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this short biweekly AI update, hosts Scott Rettberg and Jhave Johnston talk about this year's Nobel Peace Prizes for AI research. John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Tune in to find out what their discoveries and inventions are.  ReferencesBaker Lab. n. d. “Baker Lab.” Retrieved on October 24, 2024, from https://www.bakerlab.org/. Google. n. d. “About.” Google DeepMind. Retrieved on October 24, 2024, from https://deepmind.google/about/.  Hopfield, John J. 1974. “Kinetic proofreading: a new mechanism for reducing errors in biosynthetic processes requiring high specificity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 71(10), 4135–4139. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.71.10.4135. Jumper, John, Richard Evans, Alexander Pritzel, et al. 2021. “Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold.” Nature 596, 583–589. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2. Rumelhart, David E., Geoffrey E. Hinton, and Ronald J. Williams. 1986. “Learning representations by back-propagating errors.” Nature 323, 533–536. https://doi.org/10.1038/323533a0. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

In this episode, Jordan Magnuson, Fulbright scholar at the Center for Digital Narrative, joins us for an interesting discussion about indie games. Jordan has a background in making video games from a very young age. Together with Scott, they discuss the crossover between games and poetry.  References Electronic Literature Organisation. n. d. “Electronic Literature Organisation”. https://eliterature.org/.   Magnuson, Jordan. 2023. Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice. Amherst College Press. Magnuson, Jordan. 2018. “Poetic Videogames”. https://www.poeticvideogames.com/about. Mojang Studios. 2011. Minecraft. Mossmouth. 2013. Spelunky. https://spelunkyworld.com/index.html. Pope, Lucas. 2013. Papers, Please. 3909. https://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/Papers_Please/. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Robert Coover was one of the most important American novelists of the 20th Century, the author of more than twenty books including novels, short story collections, plays and other writings. He was also a leading figure in the field of electronic literature, the teacher of many digital writing workshops at Brown University, the co-founder of the Electronic Literature Organization, and a tireless promoter of the field and of innovation in digital writing. Robert Coover passed away on October 6, 2024, in the company of his family in Warwick, England, listening to “Penny Lane” by the Beatles as he drew his final breath. This collage of voices, adapted from a simultaneously released Off Center podcast, is part of a larger project based on interviews that Robert Arellano and Scott Rettberg have been conducting with critics, creative writers, students, and friends of Coover in 2023-24, including many of the people who knew Coover’s work best. We also include a segment of a lecture titled “A History of the Future of Narrative” that Coover gave at the University of Bergen in 2008, and segments of interviews Larry McCaffery conducted with Coover in 1979 and 1999. In order of first appearance, the speakers include Robert Coover, Scott Rettberg, Robert Arellano, Larry McCaffery, Lance Olsen, Nick Montfort, Stéphane Vanderhaege, Caitlin Fisher, Thomas A. Bass, Tom LeClair, and Alvin Lu.This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

We are back with another AI update about AI produced podcasts. And this time, we have a special guest joining us, Jill Walker Rettberg. In this episode Jill, Scott, and Jhave will discuss the new feature of Google's NotebookLM, that lets you listen to a podcast conversation about your source documents.  ReferencesGoogle. n. d. “NotebookLM”, NotebookLM. retrieved from https://notebooklm.google/.  Infocom. 1977. Zork. Personal Software. PDP-10 mainframe computer. https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/game/infocom/zork1/.   Montfort, Nick. 2011. Curveship. https://nickm.com/curveship/index.html. This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.

Scott Rettberg is joined by Jaroslav Švelch, an associate professor of media studies at Charles University in Prague. In this episode, they will discuss local game production in Czech Republic, gaming the iron curtain, and Jaroslav's book on monstrous antagonists in games.   ReferencesCroucher, Mel. 1984. Deus Ex Machina. Automata UK. Namco. 1981. Galaga. Midway. Spytihněv. 2023. HROT.  Spytihněv. https://store.steampowered.com/app/824600/HROT/.  Švelch, Jaroslav. 2023. Gaming the Iron Curtain. The MIT Press. Švelch, Jaroslav. 2023. Player vs. Monster. The MIT Press.  Unknown. 1989. The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square in Prague on January 16, 1989. Video Game.  This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway Centres of Excellence, project number 332643, Center for Digital Narrative.