James E. Dobson

"An English professor at Dartmouth was appointed as the special advisor to the Provost on AI, and drafted a report last year on the adoption of the technology." I can almost hear the NotebookLM hosts saying "wild stuff" when reading that line. Seriously, though, more reporting on AI at Dartmouth.

The Birth of Computer Vision A revealing genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies  Today’s most advanced neural networks and sophisticated image-analysis methods com...

I write all about this history in my 2023 book The Birth of Computer Vision. The cover art sets the scene. www.upress.umn.edu/978151791421...

This is no coincidence as this is the original task and origins of so much of today’s “AI” and Computer Vision. Military targeting and identification is precisely what CV was trained to do.

Percepton is available in print or PDF. It is open-access. Buy a print copy or freely download here: punctumbooks.com/titles/perce...

A Forgotten Pioneer of AI, Recovered Through Poetry and Biography | Faculty of Arts and Sciences In their new book, James Dobson and Rena Mosteirin explore the elusive life of Frank Rosenblatt, whose groundbreaking invention laid the foundation for modern AI.

We did a fun interview about our recent @punctumbooks.bsky.social book Perceptron, our research and writing process, and our fascination with and love for Frank Rosenblatt. Check it out! @renamosteirin.bsky.social fas.dartmouth.edu/news/2026/03...

And here I thought most people were partaking in Critical Digital Humanitiesless Fridays this Lenten season.

If you’re around NYU next week, join us! We have a very exciting list of speakers lined up

LLM-based technology is good for many things, but it is not a reliable tool for autonomous weaponry. LLMs require large GPU computers to operate; you can't put them on standard military platforms, and certainly not on drones.

It's pretty concise and comes with a long bibliography. I'm more than happy to share a copy with anyone wanting one--just DM or email!

The chapter concludes with a look toward emerging "theoretical work addressing conceptual problems arising from the modeling and generation of language...[and philosophical questions of] agency, language, and authorship."

I review developments from "humanities computing" to the present AI-saturated discourse and argue that "the computational transformation of the humanities has been uneven and contested, and remains incomplete." 2/n

My contribution to the digital in the humanities discourse: I have a new chapter freshly out titled "The Digitalization of the Humanities: Recent Trends and Future Prospects." It's in a Morgan Kaufmann collection titled "Digital Transformation in Artificial Systems." 1/n

Dartmouth College went all-in on AI. Then came the tension. - The Boston Globe The swift rollout at the Ivy League school is a case study in the turbulence that AI can bring.

Dartmouth has moved swiftly to embrace AI. @ditikohli.bsky.social and I covered its deal w/ Anthropic, how AI is leading to classroom tension, and how officials are under fire for paying an undergrad to promote a mental health chatbot in the student paper. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/25/b...

Frontiers | Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology Generative AI (GenAI) systems are increasingly recognized as cultural technologies, yet current evaluation frameworks often treat culture as a variable to be...

I'm on a 38(!)-author paper just published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, "Computational hermeneutics: evaluating generative AI as a cultural technology". We splice Schleiermacher and hermeneutic theory into AI debates, arguing AI are "context machines".
www.frontiersin.org/journals/art...

Remembering James Tatum, Pioneering Classicist and Scholar of War and Memory | Faculty of Arts and Sciences The beloved professor brought ancient literature into conversation with modern American culture.

The #Dartmouth Arts and Sciences community mourns the loss of James Tatum, a pioneering classicist and beloved professor who brought ancient literature into conversation with modern American culture.

Dartmouth's engineering program embraces artificial intelligence - Valley News Dartmouth introduces a new AI concentration in engineering, aiming to educate students on responsible AI use and address the AI talent shortage.

A bit of a round-up on AI developments out of Dartmouth in our local paper: vnews.com/2026/02/05/d...

😂

Slide from "Critical AI" course with concluding lines to Birhane et al's "Multimodal Datasets" paper: "We critique because we care. And it is good to care."

Gearing up for another day in the classroom with "Critical AI." Responding to students asking why so much focus on critique?

I want to thank our former provost, David Kotz, for appointing me to this role, for his leadership in this and other areas, and for making my work not just possible but also enjoyable.

This work culminated in a report, which I am happy to now be able to share publicly. While it is focused on our specific institution, I imagine my observations and recommendations will be useful to others in higher education.

I spent last year as Dartmouth College's Special Advisor to the Provost for AI. This was exciting, timely, and eye-opening work. Throughout the year, I learned from our faculty, students, alums, and staff about numerous opportunities and concerns related to the use of GenAI in teaching and research.

A Review of Disaster Tourism by  Rena J. Mosteirin — TriQuarterly The speaker does not posit any panaceas for the ills in our lives, but it does present a mirror in which we can all look into to question our relationship to safety, home, politics, and the environmen...

Thanks for the review!
@triquarterlymag.bsky.social

Cover of Automation by Design special issue of IEEE Annals. The image is the US Census' FOSDIC installation with three professionals at a desk and two behind by the mainframe computer in the background. B&W image.

Our special issue is out! "Automation by Design: Politics, Culture & Landscape in an Age of Machines That Learn"! Eds. Colette Perold, me, Gerardo Con Diaz. Authors: David Dunning, Christos Karampatsos, Polyxeni Malisova, Eliza Pertigkiozoglou, Jason Ludwig, Megan Wiessner, & Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal

Four Frictions: or, How to Resist AI in Education - Public Books We are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.

Promises that tech will transform education are nothing new. What’s remarkable is how little they have changed and how consistently they have failed to deliver.

Get your #OpenAccess copy of James Dobson's & Rena Mosteirin's PERCEPTRON here: punctumbooks.com/titles/perce...

#AI #computing #inventions #neuroscience #cybernetics

​Book cover for A Famous Broken Heart: A Fantasy Novel by Ann Druyan, now in paperback. Shapes of birds and a classical bust show as paper cutouts, displaying snippets of text from book pages, against a teal background.

Book cover for Digital Theory by M. Beatrice Fazi, Alexander R. Galloway, Matthew Handelman, and Leif Weatherby. Close-up view of fern fronds filtered so as to appear purple. Title and author names in individual blocks with black text and white filling.

Today's releases!

-Ann Druyan's A Famous Broken Heart—now in PB!
"A modern Alice in a literary wonderland." —Carl Sagan

-Digital Theory with @mbfazi.bsky.social @leifw.bsky.social @3vilh0mer.bsky.social
that proposes a powerful conception of the digital

Courage is to smile When the doctor jabs the needle Into frightened flesh, thinking (But not saying) “Look, Mother, How brave I am!” Courage is to see dreams crumble, And then shaking out the dust, To dream again; to apprehend The ambush hidden in the path And still go forward; to explore Within the hidden craters Of your own desires; to submit The working and creations of your mind For public judgment. And courage Is to hope When others have surrendered. And courage Is to face surrender When others hope.

My section of Perceptron opens with a poem written by Frank Rosenblatt. It's one of the few non-technical writings he left after his early and tragic death. It's titled "Courage" and we have it because it was read at his memorial and by virtue of family connections, into the Congressional Record.

got to talk literacy (and orality) and go deep on my book on
@ttsgpod.bsky.social with Jay Kang and co-guest Celine Nguyen - book stuff in the second half of an awesome conversation
open.spotify.com/episode/3P8l...

Box of freshly arrived copies of Perceptron. Front cover displays an image of Frank Rosenblatt's U.S. passport.

I am pretty thrilled to announce the publication of Perceptron, a creative-critical reading of Frank Rosenblatt and his world-changing invention. I co-authored Perceptron with Rena J. Mosteirin @renamosteirin.bsky.social, my collaborator and partner in all things. punctumbooks.com/titles/perce...