AI companies are writing constitutions. The White House wants to overrule the states. States are refusing. Defense agencies want fewer red lines. Export controls are already turning advanced AI into a geopolitical access regime. Meanwhile, everybody keeps saying "alignment" as though this were merely an engineering concern.

This General Seminar is for policy advisors, strategists, technologists, public-interest technologists, governance teams, and institutional decision-makers who need a better language for what is actually happening: a live struggle over legitimacy, access, and who gets to write the rules for powerful models.

A Certain Obscure Chinese Encyclopedia

In this episode of the Near Future Laboratory Office Hours, we swam into the evolving landscape of consumer surveillance, sparked by the introduction of always-on AI glasses. The discussion was rich and multifaceted, touching on the cultural, ethical, and practical implications of these devices. We explored the Ban Ray project, a culture-jamming initiative aimed at making AI glasses socially unacceptable through a distributed toolkit of stickers, stencils, and design interventions. The conversation also highlighted the importance of social conventions in shaping technology adoption and resistance, as well as the need for nuanced regulatory approaches that distinguish between genuinely assistive technologies and those that are primarily extractive. Overall, it was a thought-provoking session that underscored the complex interplay between technology, society, and individual agency in the face of emerging surveillance tools.

Are you asking yourself how to find your path in this crazy world in which we are feeling the anxiety of AI but also the excitement of new possibilities? Do you have a sense of what you want to do next, but are not yet sure how to make it real enough to be seen and recognized? If so, then this info session for the Pitch, Picture, Prototype workshop is for you. Carl DiSalvo, Lisa Konishi and I will walk through the workshop structure, the kinds of projects it is built for, and how to tell whether it’s right for you.

The Enshittificator finds things to make the world worse and then he makes them worse..but it doesn't really pay off..until he realizes that in fact...it does pay off if can convice people that they need the enshittified version of the thing.

It's a story about how capitalism and human nature can create a feedback loop of degradation, but also about how sometimes you can make a little bit of money by being the one who makes things worse for everyone else.

Imagine rehearsing peace like we rehearse for a play or a sports game. That is,through Design Fiction so as to bring the everyday one might inhabit that world into focus. This is the spirit of Design Fiction for Peace, an initiative exploring how speculative design can make conflict reduction and mitigation (deterrence) visible, discussable, and shareable. I’m excited to be giving the opening keynote and mentoring alongside incredible collaborators at Design Factory Manchester and Aalto University. Curious to hear your thoughts on where imagination is essential in peace work—and where it risks becoming too tidy or distant. (Photo by Sunyu on Unsplash)

In the seminar we found all kinds of ways to talk about the moment we are inhabiting, and the one we are rushing into. We talked about the difference between agents that follow instructions and agents that make choices. We talked about the uneasy slider between convenience and consent. We prototyped physical objects that could help us navigate the swarm of agentic AI that is arriving. We imagined a chair that filters interruptions like a physical boundary you can sit inside. We found ourselves talking about active decision making cancellation, and how to keep it on when you want to ask an agent to do something for you, but not have it do too much for you.

A funny one. Looking around at the latest developments in generative AI, we got into ethical considerations, design fiction applications, and the evolving landscape of human-AI collaboration. There was a continuing discussion of tabletop gaming as futures simulation, which got a little bit weird in a slightly aggrevating way. Hard to describe. Didn't really come out in the notes, but there was a slightly funky vibe it seemed to me? I don't think it's a “just me” sort of thing so much as a sensitivity to how I can sometimes bring something into a room out of excitement, only to see it leveraged to advantage that is not so much a leveraging in the spirit of reciprocity (as we've been saying) but wanting to win the game. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But it was a little bit of a vibe, and it made me feel a little bit weird, and I think it was worth noting.

This edition of Office Hours got itself all into the latest developments in generative AI, exploring ethical considerations, design fiction applications, and the evolving landscape of human-AI collaboration. We also share updates on our ongoing projects and discuss upcoming events in the design fiction community.