Pandora's Bot: technology and culture

This is the personal blog version of Pandora's Bot on Substack, a place where I consider technology and how we relate to it, in higher ed and beyond. I have decided to cross-post here, in part because of Twitter's decision to "punish" Substack in its algorithms.

A note on the image below: I first prompted NightCafe with “a silver robot creating a book.” It returned four images—all female, and all anthropomorphic. I do believe that anthropomorphizing AI is both inevitable and deeply problematic. I also think it’s an apt image because much generative AI is built—generally without consent—on human creations, many of which themselves anthropomorphize AI.

I initially chose to use generative AI ironically, but in solidarity with our fellow human creative artists, my teen artist daughter made me a new one. The new image’s robot has a visor to suggest “reading” without “seeing” (my kid's idea).

I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to contact me.