I’ve been exploring some Derridean implications of the distributional understanding of meaning in language models (one, two, three, four), following a couple of papers by Lydia Liu that situate an important strand of LLM development in Wittgenstein.  From there, I’ve argued that a good Derridean contribution is in seeing the politics behind the non-Wittgensteinian view…

Last time, I started a look at the work of the early AI researcher Margaret Masterson of the Cambridge Language Research Unit (CLRU).  As demonstrated by Lydia Liu in a pair of articles (here and here), Masterson proceeded from Wittgenstein to a thorough deconstruction of traditional ideas of word meaning, moving instead to treating meaning…

This paper, which has been forthcoming in Journal of Medicine and Philosophy for a while, is my foray into AI and healthcare, particularly medical imaging.  It synthesizes some of what I have to say about structural injustice in AI use (and why "bias" isn't the right way to assess it), and uses a really interesting…

Last week we heard the latest installment in the prophesized AI jobs apocalypse.  This time, it was Dario Amodi, the CEO of Anthropic, who told Axios that “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years” (italics original).  Axios adds: “Imagine…

By Gordon Hull Over a couple of posts (first, second), I’ve used a recent paper by Brett Frischmann and Paul Ohm on “governance seams” – basically, inefficiencies (sometimes deliberate) in sociotechnical systems that are moments for governance – to think about what I called “phenomenological seams,” which are corresponding disruptions in our experience of the…

The House budget bill is deeply stupid.  No, I don’t mean the massive tax cut extensions for people who don’t need them, done on the backs of food and medical care for the poor, although it also does that and it’s stupid.  I mean the provision that bans states from regulating AI.  Tucked inside is…

Last time, I set up a topic by reading Brett Frischmann’s and Paul Ohm’s “Governance Seams.”  Governance seams are frictions and inefficiencies that can be designed into technological systems for policy ends.  In this regard, “Governance seams maintain separation and mediate interactions among components of sociotechnical systems and between different parties and contexts” (1117).  Here…

As a final installment of reviewing some older “injury in fact” cases, I’d like to look at a few older state libel cases, because the distinction emerges especially clearly in them.  A North Carolina case, for example, noted that “he who publishes slanderous words even as those of a third person with the intent, (to…

I’ve been indirectly pursuing the question of the problems faced by privacy plaintiffs in data cases by looking at the origins of the Supreme Court’s standing doctrine.  Basically, plaintiffs have to show an “injury in fact,” and courts often find privacy harms not to meet this standard.  Although presented as dating from time immemorial, the…