Philipp Weitzel

Digitalisation has impacted us all but who is concerned and how much do different groups worry? New published research by @yanghu.co.uk and colleagues sheds light on these questions

“those with greater digital literacy are more concerned about digital technologies’ potential harms”

Das ist ein wichtiges Paper zum Verständnis der Gegenwart: Große Ungleichheit führt zu (falschen) Aufstiegsträumen und damit zur Ablehnung von Umverteilung (weil man in diesem Traum selbst einmal reich ist) - und damit zur Stabilisierung von Ungleichheit.

Investors expect AI use to soar. That’s not happening Recent surveys point to flatlining business adoption

“we estimate employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work has fallen by a percentage point & now sits at 11%. Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing +250 people. 3 yrs into the genAI wave, demand looks surprisingly flimsy” www.economist.com/finance-and-...

How big tech is creating its own friendly media bubble to ‘win the narrative battle online’ At a time when distrust of big tech is high, Silicon Valley is embracing an alternative ecosystem where every CEO is a star

How big tech is creating its own friendly media bubble to ‘win the narrative battle online’

When OpenAI adjusted ChatGPT’s settings to appeal to more people, some users were left spiraling. Kashmir Hill, who reports on technology and privacy, describes what the company has done about the users’ troubling reports. Read more: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/t...

Digitaler Omnibus: „Größter Rückschritt für digitale Grundrechte in der Geschichte der EU“ Die Europäische Kommission arbeitet an Plänen für einen Kahlschlag bei ihren Regeln für die digitale Welt. Das belegen unter anderem Dokumente, die wir veröffentlicht haben. Im Europäischen Parlament ...

Die Europäische Kommission arbeitet an Plänen für einen Kahlschlag bei ihren Regeln für die digitale Welt. Das belegen unter anderem Dokumente, die wir veröffentlicht haben. Im Europäischen Parlament und in der Zivilgesellschaft formiert sich dagegen massiver Widerstand.

Update zum Endlos-Clusterfuck #Humboldtforum: der Bundesgerichtshof hat nun entschieden, dass Ehrhardt Bödeckers – ein Großspender der Berliner Schlossfassaden - tatsächlich Rechtsradikaler und Antisemit war und die Kritik daran u.a. durch Philipp Oswalt gerechtfertigt gewesen ist. 1/

‘I’m suddenly so angry!’ My strange, unnerving week with an AI ‘friend’ The ad campaign for the wearable AI chatbot Friend has been raising hackles for months in New York. But has this companion been unfairly maligned – and could it help end loneliness?

‘I’m suddenly so angry!’ My strange, unnerving week with an AI ‘friend’

How long until you ask chatGPT what you should do this weekend and it gives you a list of things to buy from Walmart?

My focus: technology imaginaries—how we can counter the #data doxa of our algorithmic present through everyday practices & stories. Grateful to be part of this initiative. Stay tuned for insights & publications as we rethink narratives in culture & society.

Our team will map overlaps between sociology & literary studies while opening new terrain: from the epistemological value of literature to the sociological use of narratology. It’s about cultivating an exciting, interdisciplinary field.

Honored to join the @princeton.edu — @humboldtuni.bsky.social research project “#Socionarratology — Mapping a Field Between Literary Studies & Social Sciences.” A 2-year initiative exploring how literature & sociology intersect to shape knowledge & society.

Excited to present @lancasteruni.bsky.social's #practicetheory & #power workshop! I'll explore #algorithm as practices for cracking open #blackbox myths. I propose to read #code as cultural texts and am looking forward to exciting exchanges and meeting fellow praxeologists. #sociology #phdlife

"A vintage green typewriter with a blank yellow sheet of paper inserted, set against a solid red background."

CONTRIBUTE: The Sociological Review’s #openaccess digital magazine is inviting early career scholars to submit pitches for our #ResearchInsights series.

Editors Iris Pissaride & @juliettephd.bsky.social are seeking proposals for our December issue. Pitch deadline is 5 September.

🔎 buff.ly/Q5KZlcJ

Select tickets – The future of AI and education – Royal Irish Academy Join us for a conference exploring the future of AI and education across the post-primary and higher education sectors. About t...

Join us in the Royal Irish Academy and online for a conference exploring the future of AI and education across the post-primary and higher education sectors on Tuesday 23 September. Book your tickets now. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/royalirishacademy/1804710

Why we still need small language models – even in the age of frontier AI Lean, locally run models can unlock huge benefits for public sector and compute-constrained environments

Interesting work from Turing, adding to the growing evidence that significant performance gains — and possibly real-world utility — can still be gleaned from smaller and previous-generation foundation models

www.turing.ac.uk/blog/why-we-...

Data, algorithms and the asymmetric politics of extraction - Benjamin N. Jacobsen, 2025 The last few years have seen the rollout of several generative AI applications. Yet, it is often claimed by commentators and social scientists that these have o...

Data, algorithms and the asymmetric politics of extraction by @bnjacobsen.bsky.social in The Sociological Review journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

The Art of Decision-Making Your life choices aren’t just about what you want to do; they’re about who you want to be.

We say that we “decide” to get married, to have children, to live in particular cities or embark on particular careers, and in a sense this is true. But how do we actually make those choices?

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing? The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.

The way we write shapes our thinking. We process the world through the composition of text [...]. It’s possible that the ability to write original and interesting sentences will become only more important in a future where everyone has access to the same A.I. assistants. share.google/JhKEPrOpqext...

State-of-the-Art: The Temporal Order of Benchmarking Culture - Digital Society This commentary situates the epistemic values of machine learning’s culture of benchmarking and evaluation within larger temporal structures. Beyond questions of validity, whether model comparisons ar...

The first paper is a short reflection by @alexcampolo.bsky.social titled 'State-of-the-Art: The Temporal Order of Benchmarking Culture', which explores how benchmarks produce certain temporal values and expectations link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Our Cruel Crude Techne? Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Our moment seems marked by cruelty: from best-selling books warning Christians against “toxic empathy” towards immigrant families to online trolls who gleefully torture their v…

"To put it most provocatively, we’ve moved from a moment of masochism to one of sadism." Read Wendy Hui Kyong Chun's "Our Cruel Crude Techne?" on the CI blog.
critinq.wordpress.com/2025/05/13/o...

Wolfram Weimer wird neuer Kulturstaatsminister Der ehemalige Focus-Chefredakteur und Verleger Wolfram Weimer soll neuer Kulturstaatsminister werden. Dass sich der Medienunternehmer für Kultur interessiert, war bislang nicht bekannt.

Wolfram Weimer, Gründer des für ausgewogene Berichterstattung bekannten Magazins Cicero soll Kultusminister werden. Damit hat Merz sich für eine Eskalation im rechten Kulturkampf entschieden. Weimer ist nämlich ein Hardliner. & zwar schon lange /x
www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/wolfr...

Desire, pleasure, control — A deep dive into the contradictions we live every day: "Neoliberalism represents a stage in social formation that is no more liberal than a Hail Mary pass in football is a form of prayer." 👉 hedgehogreview.com/issues/after...

Sneak preview of the program for our exciting @algosoc.org conference The Future of Public Values next week in Amsterdam.

Featuring @marietjeschaake.bsky.social Tamar Sharon, @natalihelberger.bsky.social @ppverbeek.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social @dvshah.bsky.social and MANY MANY more 👏🏼

Data in Motion: Creating the Possibility for Other-than-human Worlds | Somatechnics

Data in Motion: Creating the Possibility for Other-than-human Worlds by Katherine Reilly, Gillian Russell and Rachel Horst in Somatechnics www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...

Palantir: Wer jetzt bei Peter Thiel Software kauft, hat wirklich nichts verstanden Der Bundesrat will, dass die Polizei bundesweit Palantir als Software einsetzt. Das Unternehmen gehört dem rechten Milliardär und Strippenzieher Peter Thiel. Diesem Feind der Demokratie Geld und Daten...

Der Bundesrat will, dass die Polizei bundesweit Palantir als Software einsetzt. Das Unternehmen gehört dem rechten Milliardär und Strippenzieher Peter Thiel. Diesem Feind der Demokratie Geld und Daten in den Rachen zu werfen, ist unverantwortlich. Ein Kommentar.

netzpolitik.org/2025/palanti...

Echte Emotionen. Gene­ra­tive KI und rechte Weltbilder Die radikale Rechte liebt generative KI. Trump wie Musk teilen massenhaft KI-generierte Bilder auf ihren Plattformen, und auch die AfD hat schon lange den Nutzen von Midjourney & Co. für ihren Wahlkam...

#KI -Bildgeneratoren dienen nicht nur der Desinformation, sondern der optimierten #Affekt -Bewirtschaftung: Sie stilisieren „echte Emotionen“ zu lesbaren Bildern. Sie sind #Nostalgiemaschinen & Klischeeverstärker. #mustread bei @g-d-gegenwart.bsky.social

geschichtedergegenwart.ch/echte-emotio...

BU: Mohsen Raoufi (rechts im Bild) von der HU und Vito Mengers (links) von der TU Berlin forschen gemeinsam am Exzellenzcluster "Science of Intelligence" (SCIoI) Foto: SCIoI

🗯️ Warum treffen manche Gruppen bessere Entscheidungen als andere? 🗯️ Mit dieser Frage setzt sich eine neue, in der Fachzeitschrift Scientific Reports veröffentlichte Studie von Forschenden des Exzellenzclusters @scioi.bsky.social auseinander.
Weiterlesen 🔗 www.hu-berlin.de/de/pr/nachri...

Be sure to check out the many new, excellent contributions to COUNTER-N on more-than-binary computing (by Juan Pablo García Sossa), relational computing (by Nicola Bozzi) and metabolic futuring (by Jamie Allen): counter-n.net