Mercedes 🤦‍♀️ Bunz

A line chart titled “Accuracy vs. Sparsity (Iterative Magnitude Pruning)” showing model accuracy as weights are pruned. The x-axis represents sparsity from 0% to 100%, and the y-axis represents accuracy from 0% to 100%. A blue line with circular markers shows that accuracy stays around 80% from 0% to roughly 90% sparsity, then drops sharply toward 55% near 100% sparsity. A dashed red horizontal line labeled “80% target” runs across the chart near 80% accuracy, indicating the desired baseline.

I posted this last night cause I kind of wanted to bury it. I got cold feet about putting it out there.

embedding-space.github.io/sparse-netwo...

The subject is WHY neural networks work, and I think the answer I offer is kind of interesting. Maybe even a little correct, possibly.

Expressions of interest: artificial intelligence humanities sandpits: Canada, UK and US AHRC and SSHRC invite expressions of interest to attend a humanities-led, interdisciplinary research sandpit looking to put humanities insights and methodologies at the heart of artificial intelligenc...

This might interest some of you 👉 Doing AI Differently ⚡️sandpit and funding call – open to UK, Canada, US researchers for 4 projects integrating humanities into core AI development, benchmarks + tools that enable AI to handle cultural complexity. Deadline 31 Oct: www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

Join us if you are in London to discuss the language of LLMs! Wednesday, 15 October 4pm. 👇

Oh yes. 🫶👇

Same.

“First is sight, that is to say the eye; second is the form of the thing seen; third is the distance from the eye to the thing seen …” Piero della Francesca

Spending the day at Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino 🖼️🎨🏰

New preprint on "Computational Hermeneutics," co-authored by too many people to list in one post. TL;DR: GenAI is a cultural technology, and needs to be evaluated in ways that recognize situatedness, plurality, and ambiguity as the conditions of meaning — not noise to be minimized.

Call for abstracts: Special issue - Including public voices in AI  - ESRC Digital Good Network AI promises to profoundly and pervasively transform the social and natural world. Yet public voices are rarely included in research and development that shapes AI […]

We have a new call for papers. If you're working on AI, democracy and public voice, please take a look. You'll need to move fast! digitalgood.net/call-for-abs... @mrsbunz.bsky.social @divya.bsky.social @meredithmeredith.bsky.social

Oh no, what a development. Fingers crossed all will be well, I wish you all the time you need for a full recovery! 🦋

I really don’t like our times.

Fabian Offert, Mercedes Bunz, Hannes Bajohr in a Venice patio.

Hand holding up the program of the conference ‘Chat Token Vector’.

… quite enjoyed this conference ‘Chat Token Vector’ 🤖🧮↗️ … with @mttpsq.bsky.social, @hannesbajohr.de, @atg-dbp.bsky.social and many others.

Ok I guess I have to go through that Apple paper.

My immediate issue is the framing which is super binary: "Are these models capable of generalizable reasoning, or are they leveraging different forms of pattern matching?" ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-i...

Poster of an event 4th June in Braunschweig at the Hochschule

Join me at the HBK Braunschweig, Germany next Wednesday June 4 to discuss caring about data and technical collectives. ✊

Applications just opened for a postdoctoral position in Digital Media Studies with Markus Krajewski and myself at the Department of Media Studies and the Digital Humanities Laboratory at the University of Basel. (1/3)

Blue to green gradient graphic with headshots of the speakers for the Technomoral Conversations event, and text reading: Technomoral Conversations, AI and Creative Labour. Join us on 10 April at 6pm in Edinburgh & online, where we will hear from: Shannon Vallor (University of Edinburgh), Caroline Sinders (University of Arts London, CoRD Labs), Paula Westenberger (Brunel University London), and Richard Combes (The Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society).

Just over a week until our Technomoral Conversation on AI & Creative Labour!

We’ll be looking at issues ranging from the AI industry’s copyright violations, responses from creatives, and the wider ethical & political questions about the role of AI in creative practice and culture ▶️ edin.ac/3WJhuUH

How about taking your AI research one year to Rome? The project "Machine Visual Culture: Artificial Intelligence and the History of Seeing" has interesting Predoctoral Fellowships
and Postdoctoral Fellowships 👇

www.biblhertz.it/3628094/2503...

It's out, free and open access:

Thinking _with_ AI: Machine Learning the Humanities.

11 essay on AI and how to think with it – by Peli Grietzer (@peligrietzer.bsky.social), Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social), Mercedes Bunz (@mrsbunz.bsky.social), Fabian Offert, Lev Manovich…

King's AI+ Academic Fellowships (leading to an open-ended academic post) King’s is making a major strategic investment into driving AI activity across our nine academic Faculties. Our ambition is to accelerate growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data-driven research...

Applications are now open for 20 interdisciplinary jobs in AI at King’s College London: King’s AI+ Academic Fellowships, advancing AI across *all* disciplines (yes, inc. Arts & Hums — come and work with me!). www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/ki...
@kingsdh.bsky.social @kings-dfi.bsky.social

1 / Executive power now operates via Delete Commands in digital infrastructures. This isn't data management. It's calculated obliteration of who gets to exist in digital memory and knowledge infrastructures. Thank you @verfassungsblog.de for publishing our (@ktmac.bsky.social and my) essay!

Call for papers Call for papers, Computational Social Science meets Qualitative Research. Two-day workshop for 10 November 2025 at LSE.

This looks good:

Computational Social Science meets Qualitative Research
www.lse.ac.uk/Methodology/...

I’ve spent most of the last few years being pretty down on the potential of open source AI and I’m coming back around to believing! Models are here, time to build.

Universities, libraries—the whole nonprofit sector—ought to unite in supporting this. If efforts like this succeed, we have a good chance of remaining relevant in 2040.

its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time in things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further

Sylvia Wynter: Beyond man Radical philosopher, Sylvia Wynter calls on us to rethink the very notion of what it is to be human.

Amazing that @aljazeeraenglish.bsky.social has a lovely little documentary about Sylvia Wynter. I wish it had gotten into the concepts a bit more, but still v charming. I’m impressed a news site would commission this 🫶✨
aje.io/vkxgyf

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Public compute — state provision of computing resources — could be a powerful tool for reshaping the AI sector.

In our report, Jai Vipra and I offer an overview of existing approaches, and recommendations for avoiding industry capture, reducing environmental harms, and delivering public value

1/5

We're up to 43 by 12:12pm. They will find me slumped over my keyboard, emailed to death.

maybe 250 words describing status

250-ish social justice words

smaller text -- 400 words on social justice and gender?

And another 150 or so on race

The number of people surprised by the long list of words NSF is targeting makes me think many of you all have not seen this: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

real world (not in frame) 📲🌐

Release me from your technical collective! by @mrsbunz.bsky.social yesterday at @transmediale.bsky.social