Off Center

What happens when we treat AI not just as a tool, but as a character? In this episode of Off Center, guest host Jill Walker Rettberg sits down with Lukas Wilde to explore the evolution of AI personas. Drawing on transmedia theory and the "Eliza effect," Wilde breaks down three ways we encounter AI: as fictional robots (like Star Trek’s Data), as co-authors in creative media, and as interactive agents in our daily lives.
From theme park mascots to "multiverses" of chatbot inconsistency, they discuss how our deep-seated habits of fictional role-play shape how we perceive machine intelligence.
References
Amodei, D. (2024) Machines of Loving Grace https://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace 
Crawford, K. (2021) The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence 
Gray, K. (2020) Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Worlds 
Greimas, A. J. (1966) Sémantique structurale: recherche de méthode 
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory 
Merlan, A. (2023) The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains It All https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7bdba/the-chatgpt-lawyer-explains-it-all 
Pereira, G. (2023) Towards a Critical Folklore of Artificial Intelligence https://www.gabrielpereira.net/ 
Weizenbaum, J. (1966) ELIZA—A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist238/p36-weizenbaum.pdf 
Wilde, L. (2023) The Character Effect and the Eliza Effect: AI Characters as Digital Actants https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375762828_The_Character_Effect_and_the_Eliza_Effect_AI_Characters_as_Digital_Actants 
Wilde, L. and Kunze, T. (2024) A Key Figure: AI Characters Wilde, L. and Thon, J.-N. (2022) Characters in Game Studies and Media Research https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361836017_Characters_in_Game_Studies_and_Media_Research_A_Review_and_Introduction

In episode six of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta and Hanna Lauvli geek out with Santtu Raisanen, doctoral researcher at the Center for Consumer Society at The University of Helsinki, about the pervasive concept of convenience in contemporary algorithmic culture.

What happens when you drop generative AI into the middle of a liberal arts curriculum? This week on Off Center, Scott sits down with Davis Schneiderman at Lake Forest College to find out. We dive into the HUMAN project, a campus-wide experiment putting AI tools directly into the hands of humanities students and professors. Instead of panicking or running from the tech, Davis argues that writers, artists, and historians need to get their hands dirty with AI to actually understand and critique it. From historical Chicago chatbots to the future of experimental fiction, this conversation explores why the creative critical thinking skills taught in the humanities are our best defense in an AI-driven world.

References

 Burroughs, W. S., & Gysin, B. (1978). The Third Mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Mind
Chamberlain, W., & Thomas Ettrick [Racter]. (1984). The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Policeman%27s_Beard_Is_Half_Constructed
Grossman, J. R., Keating, A. D., & Reiff, J. L. (Eds.). (2004). The Encyclopedia of Chicago. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/
Gysin, B. (1960). I AM THAT I AM [Audio / Permutation poem]. https://www.ubu.com/sound/gysin.html
Lake Forest College. (n.d.). Humanity’s Understanding of the Machine-Assisted Nexus (HUMAN) https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/krebs-center-for-the-humanities
Sanchez Burr, D. (2025). Redshift https://morethanmeetsai.uib.no/
Schneiderman, D., & [Kelly]. (2025). You Can Call Me AI 
Taylor, T. (2025). Serious Game

In episode five of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Anya Shchetvina, PhD fellow with the Literary and Epistemic History of Small Forms research group at the Humboldt University in Berlin, to hear about her current work on internet manifestos.

References
Barlow, John Perry (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
Blankenship, Loyd (1986) The Conscience of a Hacker. http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html
Cheng, Jack (2012) The Slow Web. http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-web
Feminist Server Project. (2014) Feminist Server Manifesto 0.01 / Transfeminist Server Wishlist.https://bakonline.org/en/research+publications/prospections/a+wishlist+for+trans+feminist+servers/
Haraway, Donna (1985) A Cyborg Manifesto. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto
Le Guin, Ursula K. (2024) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction
Lialina, Olia. (2005) A Vernacular Web. http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/
Old Boys Network. 1997. 100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism (Referenced as "one hundred and ninety theses on Cyberfeminism"). https://obn.org/cfundef/100antitheses.html
Reynolds, Simon (2011) Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865479944
Sadgrl.online (2021) Sad Girl Online Webmaster Manifesto. https://sadgrl.online/
Turner, Fred. (2006) From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773602.html
VNS Matrix. 1991. A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century. https://vnsmatrix.net/projects/the-cyberfeminist-manifesto-for-the-21st-century

What are “World Models,” and why should we care? Could AI really understand reality? Scott and Jhave sit down to explore the rise of World Models - the "engines" of machine intuition -to discuss how quickly they are evolving and what their existence means for the future of humanity (and the robots living alongside us)

References

Agarwal, N. et al. (2025) Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03575
ByteDance. (2025) Lumine: An Open Recipe for Building Generalist Agents in 3D Open Worlds. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08892
DeepMind SIMA Team. (2025) SIMA 2: A Generalist Embodied Agent for Virtual Worlds. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04797
Deng, J. et al. (2009) ImageNet: A Large-Scale Hierarchical Image Database. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5206848
Fisher, C., Coover, R., & Julian. (2026) [Untitled AR Skiing Project]. [No public URL available for this in-development project]
Li, F.-F. (2025) From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI's Next Frontier. https://drfeifei.substack.com/p/from-words-to-worlds-spatial-intelligence
Mao, J. et al. (2025) Robot Learning from a Physical World Model https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07416
PAN Team, MBZUAI. (2025) PAN: A World Model for General, Interactable, and Long-Horizon World Simulation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09057
Powers, R. (2000) Plowing the Dark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowing_the_Dark