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_Mind

Chamberlain, W., & Thomas Ettrick [Racter]. (1984). The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Policeman%27s_Beard_Is_Half_Constructed

Grossman, 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.html

Lake Forest College. (n.d.). Humanity’s Understanding of the Machine-Assisted Nexus (HUMAN) https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/krebs-center-for-the-humanities

Sanchez 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.

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)Richard Powers Short Story - Escapes

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.