Off Center

On this episode, Jhave and Scott tackle the intersection of artificial intelligence, theology, and human dignity, sparked by Pope Leo XIV's landmark AI encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas . From philosophical debates over the "TESCREAL" ideology and Isomorphic Labs' massive $2.1 billion funding and how to navigate mundane office politics using AI ethics, which Scott tires himself with a real time conv...

Scott and Jhave are back to talk even more AI controversy. Is it okay for AI to kill up to 100 people? Is there a dark money campaign to spread Anti-China-AI fear? Are "deep fakes" out and "shallow fakes" so in right now? That, and so much more. References https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2051454585420521501   . A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI...

Join Scott and Jhave for a candid, slightly cynical deep dive into the ethical quagmires currently reshaping the tech landscape on The AI Update . This episode tackles everything from the military entanglements of Anthropic and Palantir to the unsettling rise of AI-driven bioweapons and global cyber warfare. Amidst a flurry of deepfakes and "supervillain" corporate maneuvers, the duo que...

In episode eight of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta chats with Craig Ryder, postdoctoral researcher with the ERC-funded project SMALLPLATFORMS at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, about his ethnographic journey from Sri Lankan digital activism towards platformed extreme speech.

In this episode we present a live recording of "The Wrong Body; Diverse Bodies and Digital Narratives" panel that took place at the CDN Equinox event on 20th March 2026, with Hannah Ackermans, Ella Holi and Sérgio Galvão Roxo.

In episode seven of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta catches up with Bokar N'Diaye, doctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, regarding the past and future of creativity and generative models.

On this episode Scott and Jhave talk about AI Consciousness, debating whether recent research into mechanistic interpretability suggests that frontier models are developing introspection, nascent sentience, and/or a "society of thought." References  Aranyosi, M. (2026), Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08017   Butlin, P. et al ....

When Professor Kishonna Gray visited the Center for Digital Narrative in February 2026, she showed us “synthetic Kishonna”, an AI-generated version of Kishonna somebody made to share on social media with a generic AI-generated quote about diversity. In this podcast, Kishonna talks with Jill Walker Rettberg about what was so disturbing about this image, which took Kishonna’s huge grin and very embo...

What happens when we treat AI not just as a tool, but as a character? In this episode of Off Center, guest host Jill Walker Rettberg sits down with Lukas Wilde to explore the evolution of AI personas. Drawing on transmedia theory and the "Eliza effect," Wilde breaks down three ways we encounter AI: as fictional robots (like Star Trek’s Data), as co-authors in creative media, and as inter...

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, a...

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. References Barlow, John Perry (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence Blankenship, Loyd (19...

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) References Agarwal, N. et al. (2025) Cosmos World Foundation Model Pla...

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...

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 Roin...

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. References Crary, J. (1999) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture https://archive.org/details/s...

Scott and Jhave are back talking billions of dollars and discussing whether the new AI economy truly is "too big to fail". References Artificial Analysis (2025) Models Leaderboard   Fortune (2025) Without data centers, US GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025   GLM-4 (2025) GLM-4.6: Open-Source Bilingual Intermediate Model https://github.com/THUDM/GLM-4 Kimi (2025) Kimi k10 / K2...

In this wide-ranging conversation, host Scott Rettberg sits down with renowned media theorist Roberto Simanowski to map the seismic shifts in digital culture over the last quarter-century. Starting with the early avant-garde experiments in "born-digital" literature and the founding of the journal Dichtung Digital , they trace the evolution of the screen from a space of poetic play to a s...

Scott and Jhave are here to talk about a major class-action lawsuit that will reward authors for the fact that their books were used for AI training data... and this is not just any class-action lawsuit: the largest publicly reported settlement in human history. References: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/ My Book Was Stolen by an AI Company. Why Does Suing Them Feel Wrong? Thea Lim h...

In episode three of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta visits Minna Ruckenstein, a Professor in Emerging Technologies in Society at the University of Helsinki's Consumer Society Research Center, for a deep dive into her work on algorithmic folklore. References Booker, T. (2013), Programmed Sociality: Enclosure, Governance and Critical Theory Lönnrot, E. (1835), The Kalevala https://www.gutenberg.org/eb...

On this episode Scott talks to Espen Aarseth, Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, to trace the origins and evolution of game studies. From his early fascination with text adventures to writing his groundbreaking dissertation Cybertext , Espen reflects on the "human legwork" required to build an entirely new academic field from the ground up. References A...

In episode two of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Guro Flinterud, a folklorist and cultural studies researcher, about her research on social media and digital platforms as an interface between the police and the public. References Bakhtin, Mikhail (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays , https://monoskop.org/images/7/7b/Bakhtin_Mikhail_Speech_Genres_and_Other_Late_Essays_1986.pdf Cultu...

On this episode we talk about our upcoming exhibition "An Eye for AI Cinema" at the Bergen International Film Festival, running October 15th-23rd. Is artificial intelligence destroying cinema as we know it? Are we entering the age of the computer-generated DIY film? AI brings tumultuous changes to the established film industry, at the same time as it is creating new opportunities for ind...

On this episode, author, data scientist, and journalist Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks to Jill Walker Rettberg about his relationship with AI in producing his Salvage Crew Trilogy of novels.  References Yudhanjaya Wijeratne: “The Machine as Provocateur” Keynote at CDN Summer School 2025 -    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ZdWvzk2JE StarMap – galaxy generator code on GitHub: https://github.com/yudha...