Mark Dingemanse2d ago

New! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies https://zenodo.org/records/19452872

Why do Anthropic engineers talking to Claude sound like Azande witch doctors addressing their potions? What does Mambila spider divination have in common with prompt engineering? Why are LLMs so irresistible to interact with?

If you're interested in questions like that, and in luminaries like Lovelace, Adorno, Suchman and Weizenbaum, you may be interested in this paper: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19452872

Show threadMark Dingemanse2d ago

I was supposed to finish this last week but then the #Claude Code leak happened, promptly giving me an excellent opening example (h/t @jonny for their digital archaeology work that drew my attention to the magic prompting techniques)

(I think it is likely btw that #Anthropic shifted the #Mythos announce forward to this week to bury the leak & its security implications)

Show threadMichael Bacon2d ago

@dingemansemark @jonny

I look forward to reading this! (And I promise to set aside my intense dislike of Adorno for it!)

Show threadMark Dingemanse1d ago
@MichaelTBacon @jonny 😊 can't say I've read a lot of Adorno, but I found his The Stars Down To Earth (1957) pretty amazing as an early example of critical analysis of horoscope columns and their attractions, with wide-ranging implications also for today
Show threadMichael Bacon
@dingemansemark @jonny It’s his writing on jazz that makes me dislike him so much. It’s the epitome of a European leftist essentializing nonwhite phenomena as fundamentally derivative of and only relevant to prior European standards and having no relevance or existence beyond that. It’s so, so bad and colonialist.
Apr 9 at 1:53pmWeb
Show threadMichael Bacon1d ago
@dingemansemark @jonny that’s perhaps unfair to judge someone so harshly for one bit of analysis, but it’s so bad that it makes me suspicious of anything else he wrote. It doesn’t help that he wrote to Walter Benjamin and used the jazz analysis as proof of a bigger point.
Show threadMark Dingemanse1d ago
@MichaelTBacon oof that doesn't sound great 🫤
Show threadMichael Bacon1d ago

@dingemansemark

A lot of people like him. I don't mean to throw you off. But sometimes you get hung up on a thing and it stays with you.