Category: PhD
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Flattening the Strata of Digital Texts with Generative Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI technologies like ChatGPT are being treated in education with a mix of awe and fear. On one end of the spectrum, you get wild techno-optimism that AI will somehow revolutionise the education system, democratise creativity, and pretty much do everything except perhaps your laundry. On the other end, there is abject horror at…
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The Semiotics of Synthetic Media: Production and Meaning in Digital Plastic
Lately I’ve been digging in to the metaphor of Generative AI content as “digital plastic”. I first wrote about it back in 2023 in this article, where I defined the media as a “mass produced, synthetic form of data that like its physical counterpart doesn’t degrade much over time” and likened it to the way…
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AI Metaphors We Live By: The Language of Artificial Intelligence
In “Metaphors We Live By,” Lakoff and Johnson emphasise that metaphors are fundamental to human thought and language, not just decorative language. In this post, I’ve examined my own use of metaphors to describe AI and analysed their implications, highlighting the power and limitations of these metaphors in shaping our understanding of AI and its…
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Multimodal Discourse and Generative AI
I’ve been re-reading Kress and Van Leeuwen’s 2001 book, Multimodal Discourse for the nth time, and, despite showing its age in some areas, it still offers some great language for discussing Generative AI. Kress and Van Leeuwen presented a new theory of multimodal semiotics, designed up update monomodal theories of communication with new technologies in…
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The Myth of the AI First Draft
I write daily, often for hours at a time. I’m an author of fiction and nonfiction, and even when I’m not writing something for publication I fill notebooks with ideas and frequently illegible scribbles. I’ve also taught writing for almost two decades, and I understand that not everyone loves writing as much as I do.…
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Digital plastic: Generative AI and the digital ecosystem
I’ve got a love hate relationship with the metaphors we use to talk about Artificial Intelligence, but at the risk of seeming hypocritical I’m going to make one anyway. I’m also going to mangle several fields of science, geology, and archaeology in the process, but hey, it’s all in the pursuit of The Metaphor. I…
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Myths, magic, and metaphors: the language of generative AI
As part of my PhD studies, I read and write a lot of stuff that doesn’t really fit into my research, but which I find interesting anyway. I’m categorising these “spare parts” on my blog, and if you’re interested in following them you’ll find them all here. I’ve written a fair bit about AI ethics,…
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What happens when Generative AI disappears into the woodwork?
As part of my PhD studies, I read and write a lot of stuff that doesn’t really fit into my research, but which I find interesting anyway. I’m categorising these “spare parts” on my blog, and if you’re interested in following them you’ll find them all here. At the moment we’re still in the thick…