Kelly Clancy

“Cartography of Generative AI (2024)” shows a sprawling, diagrammatic ecosystem of how generative AI is produced and maintained. The background is light pink with turquoise and yellow highlights. The left side has a turquoise vertical sidebar with labeled sections such as AI imaginaries, Critical expertise, Data sciences, Silicon Valley, and AI harms. The main diagram maps the flow of generative AI development from top to bottom: Top left: A globe icon with arrows represents global energy consumption, linked to servers and calculation power (chips, GPUs, and companies like TSMC). Top center: Rows of red server racks show data centers, connected to big data platforms and pipelines of training data (shown as orange blocks). Top right: Yellow stacks and schematic diagrams depict the supply chain of raw materials (e.g., cobalt, lithium) and scenes of mining. Upper right corner: A vignette labeled digital colonialism shows resource extraction sites and cables crossing oceans. Middle section: Blue isometric office-like spaces labeled AI start-ups and Silicon Valley venture capital, with tiny illustrated workers at desks, computers, and whiteboards. Orange and yellow arrows and blocks represent the movement of datasets, training, and alignment processes. A section labeled human labour shows rows of workers annotating data. Lower section: Gridded platforms in orange and yellow depict data extraction from the internet—social media, images, sound, text—and web scraping from sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube. Groups of small figures interact with large wireframe cube models labeled generative AI engines. Other vignettes show AI products (like chatbots), digital gig work, and consumer use. Far right: Layers of stacked chips show advanced chip production and global supply chains. A blue network node diagram illustrates the infrastructure economy behind AI technologies. Boxes at the bottom describe research and governance structures.

Hadn't seen this "Cartography of Generative AI" before. From Estampa, a collective of programmers, filmmakers and researchers working in the fields of audiovisual media and digital environments: cartography-of-generative-ai.net

I reviewed two books about games, @kellybclancy.bsky.social's superb Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Marcus du Sautoy's more superficial Around the World in 80 Games, which come at some of the same subjects from different angles: meadowparty.com/blog/2025/09...

So glad you enjoyed it, thank you so much!

Any rich dems want to fund an independent science news and commentary outlet, hmu

(climate, vaccines, energy, public health, biomedical research, assults on science writ large, etc)

Ooh that sounds like such an awesome class, thanks so much!

The Dice Roll On What do caribou bones have to do with AI technology?

What do caribou bones have to do with AI? Graphic artist Drew Dernavich made an awesome comic explainer for part of my book, Playing with Reality, and did an amazing job of crystallizing dense ideas into lovely art! whisperbubble.substack.com/p/the-dice-r...

There's gotta be a German word for the phenomenon whereby I like a particular book/show/media but consider it a red flag if someone else likes it.

Yes! What’s exciting is how cultural and technological systems can display macroevolutionary patterns we usually associate with biology — diversification, collapse, persistence. Arcade games are just one tractable case study.

Also NY’s Christopher Ortloff! 30 years in the house and has since been convicted!

That's great advice! Also might be worth checking out 'Turing's Cathedral' if you haven't already, it is...obsessively detailed :)

Arguably what my book is about! Maybe also explains why it didn’t sell 🤷‍♀️

He chose to activate the electrode in his centromedian nucleus, which gave him the sense that he was almost, nearly, at the tip of remembering or understanding something. It's an incredibly seductive feeling.

In a crazy 1960s experiment, a patient was implanted with 50 different stimulating electrodes in his brain--including in an area that gave him orgasmic feelings. He could stimulate any of these at will.

Support indie magazines and pick up @thebeliever.net! I have a little story in this delightful new issue, which was mainly an excuse to get a cute illustration of my cats into the magazine. But every issue is packed with goodness! Why not subscribe and get strange and profound observations all year?

Those who have incorrectly ascribed much of the progress made in the last century to capitalism are about to learn where it really came from.

Preamble | United Nations

I recommend everyone consider reading the United Nation’s charter these days.

I wonder why we don’t talk about it more. Imagine the world if we truly resolved ourselves to join efforts toward the aims of the UN charter.

www.un.org/en/about-us/...

Yarvin attempting to justify autocracy with word play has precisely as much explanatory power as a New Age healer willfully mispronouncing disease as “dis-ease”

I wrote a quick-start guide for people to replicate this across the country. It was, in our experience, a very effective way to get real action in a short amount of time.

People are willing to talk to scientists! And when you provide everything, they are happy to contact their reps too. Try it!

Aw thanks! Hope you enjoy—psyched to read yours!

Congrats! Looks fascinating!

Pleased to say "Space, Time, and Memory", an academic book by Oxford University Press edited by the inimitable Lynn Nadel & Sara Aronowitz is now out.
I contributed a chapter, "Memory and Planning in Brains and Machines".
You can download the entire book for free:
library.oapen.org/bitstream/ha...

Woo congrats!! What an awesome premise!

Entirely beautiful thread, you can add ‘can bring readers to tears before breakfast’ to your list of accomplishments

decision trees in human play in the game of go before and after the arrival of superhuman AI, showing gradual change rather than revolutionary disruption

🚨 New preprint! 🚨

I looked at 400+ years of cumulative cultural evolution in the Game of Go from feudalism to superhuman AI. Did AlphaGo etc. completely disrupt human play? No! More like human-machine convergence, rather than revolution.

Check out these decision trees!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

AI is moving forward at the hands of people utterly ignorant of 2500 years of epistemology. I beg philosophers to stop thinking that the only issues with AI are ethics issues.

Aw thanks!

An absolute honor to be included among these authors 🙏

Kentucky needs to stand up for science; ask lawmakers to stop federal research cuts | Opinion OpEd: In particular, the University of Kentucky’s federal research funding generates medical breakthroughs, sustains thousands of Kentucky jobs, and trains Kentucky students to be the leaders of tomor...

Inspired by @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social , I wrote an op ed for my hometown newspaper (the Lexington Herald-Leader) about the importance of protecting science and universities from destruction by the government. Think about writing one of your own! www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-e...

What a world. Capitalism "externalizes" costs to the point where the costs are "externalized" into our own bodies.

I just received my copy of "Evolution Evolving," and I read chapter 1 and loved it: "nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of development." @kevinlala.bsky.social