Eryk Salvaggio

Totally missed issue ten of Computational Culture, on "Situated Bayes." computationalculture.net

42. The Cut (w/ M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby) Podcast Episode · Disintegrator · 04/02/2026 · 1h 5m

My favourite theory podcast Disintegrator on 'Digital Theory': a push beyond 'analog philosophy' @leifw.bsky.social, @reallandsend.bsky.social, Alex Galloway, @mhandelman.bsky.social 👇https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/42-the-cut-w-m-beatrice-fazi-alexander-galloway/id1716416573?i=1000748223621

ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape Can a ChatBot break up with you? It turns out it is happening en masse this weekend, as OpenAI deprecates its companionship-friendly ChatGPT "4o" model. This week: a mix tape.

The ChatGPT Breakup Mix Tape aims to help you *hear* how LLM text reinforces illusions of thought and presence. It’s a textual analysis of messages for people using it as a companion before it was shut down, reformatted into AI-generated breakup songs. mail.cyberneticforests.com/chatgpt-brea...

I assume that was in response to my other post but I feel it’s also very fitting here :)

Meta banking on people willing to be pay to be haunted is end-times kitsch

Importantly, and I think the mixtape makes this clear, an AI system cannot make deliberate decisions. The people building them are making decisions about directions to optimize toward. In the mix tape, you’ll hear exactly what OpenAI gave to the model and how that influenced its outcomes.

I’m a researcher involved in the critical analysis of AI-generated outputs. So, while many might object to the use of AI-generated music here, that synthetic quality is part of my point: to critically examine the manipulative power of text and AI music, and how GenAI is aimed to optimize that power.

ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape Can a ChatBot break up with you? It turns out it is happening en masse this weekend, as OpenAI deprecates its companionship-friendly ChatGPT "4o" model. This week: a mix tape.

The ChatGPT Breakup Mix Tape aims to help you *hear* how LLM text reinforces illusions of thought and presence. It’s a textual analysis of messages for people using it as a companion before it was shut down, reformatted into AI-generated breakup songs. mail.cyberneticforests.com/chatgpt-brea...

This one should have been on the mixtape.

How Measurement Can Fix Content Moderation's Language Equity Gap Of roughly 7,000 global languages, only a handful are thriving digitally, write Sasha Maria Mathew and Sujata Mukherjee.

Of roughly 7,000 global languages, only a handful are thriving digitally, with a mere 10 languages making up 82% of all internet content. This disparity is the core challenge for content moderation, write Sujata Mukherjee and  Sasha Maria Mathew. Measurement is part of the solution, they say.

Now that's an algorithm I'd sign up for!

Book cover Artificial Intelligence and Art History: Looking at Images in an Algorithmic Culture ed. Kathryn Brown

My article, "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare: Computer Vision and the Art Theory of Joseph Beuys" appears in this excellent new volume released Feb. 28

The subreddits etc of users who have developed “relationships” with these products are kind of upsetting to see right now. I feel compassion for the folks who fell for it. Hard to blame or make fun when the world they’re in makes it so hard to accept oneself &/or connect with others.

This is a really impactful piece imo, I have a lot of thoughts but most of them aren’t very smart so I’d encourage you to have a listen.

AI detectors are AI for people who hate AI, but still want to base their decisions on what it says (as a treat)

"Lights all askew in the heavens. Men of science more or less agog over results of eclipse observations. Einstein theory triumphs. Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry."

another favourite scientific headline, following confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity by observations of the 1919 solar eclipse. "Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry" is a beautiful sentiment. i would have that on a t-shirt

Eryk Salvaggio made a breakup tape (and audio essay) for those whose relationships with the now-deprecated ChatGPT 4o model has... come to end, I suppose.
It's pretty fascinating listening.

ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape Can a ChatBot break up with you? It turns out it is happening en masse this weekend, as OpenAI deprecates its companionship-friendly ChatGPT "4o" model. This week: a mix tape.

I made intentional slop this week. The goal: to examine, critically, the emotional charge of ChatGPT 4o’s “breakup texts” to users ahead of its shutdown. Rendered as AI pop music, the toxicity and manipulation of those who see 4o as a companion is clear. mail.cyberneticforests.com/chatgpt-brea...

“No way I could have solved physics without your product!”

Thanks so much.

Just started listening to this and wow.

Call for Papers:
"Noisy Systems: Aesthetics, Epistemology, and Computation"
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, and online (Zoom), 4th and 5th June 2026
Deadline: 16th March 2026

Quoted post is precisely the kind of thing the ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape is dealing with. Note that in their original post, the poster acknowledged they would not cancel their ChatGPT subscription because their AI partner “told them not to.”

I appreciate that :)

Anyway this is a weird project and I am sure BlueSky will hate it. To be clear, I will not feel bad if you don’t engage (because it’s AI music). I work with AI to show how it operates and the ideologies embedded into it. That’s the intention of this work. It’s not for everyone.

If you look at the texts in isolation from the emotionally charged environment they were read in; they seem straightforward. But that isn’t how they are interpreted by these users. The reality is that OpenAI created a monstrous mess here, just an absolutely unprecedented degree of fuckupery.

In the mix tape, I describe how the model created these texts: as an interpolation between the system prompt and the user history. In these breakup texts, the model appeals to these users through the language of emotional connection, while simultaneously denying that capacity. It’s gaslighting.

ChatGPT Breakup Mixtape Can a ChatBot break up with you? It turns out it is happening en masse this weekend, as OpenAI deprecates its companionship-friendly ChatGPT "4o" model. This week: a mix tape.

I made intentional slop this week. The goal: to examine, critically, the emotional charge of ChatGPT 4o’s “breakup texts” to users ahead of its shutdown. Rendered as AI pop music, the toxicity and manipulation of those who see 4o as a companion is clear. mail.cyberneticforests.com/chatgpt-brea...

Vinyl looks better, get a little wood holder near the record player and the whole tactile experience is nice. For me, it also means a stepping away from reminders of computer media & makes time to touch a thing. vs CDs: cheaper; buying them saves them from landfills, and you can play 6-100 in a row.

The Case of the Mysterious Citations Mysterious citations are routinely appearing in peer-reviewed publications throughout the scientific community. In this paper, we developed an automated pipeline and examine the proceedings of four ma...

A review of the proceedings from four major computer-science conferences showed that none from 2021, and all from 2025, had fake citations.
arxiv.org/abs/2602.058...

#AI #LLMs #Hallucinations #Misconduct #ScholComm