Off Center

On this episode Scott and Jhave talk about AI Consciousness, debating whether recent research into mechanistic interpretability suggests that frontier models are developing introspection, nascent sentience, and/or a "society of thought."
References 
Aranyosi, M. (2026), Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08017 
Butlin, P. et al. (2023), Identifying Indicators of Consciousness in AI Systems, https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708
Berg, C et al. (2025), LLMs Report Subjective Experience under Self-Referential Processing https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.24797
DeepMind (2026), Reasoning Models Generate Societies of Thought, https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10825
Descartes, R. (1637), Discourse on the Method
Johnston, D (2006) Consciousness, Understanding & Mechanistic Interpretability https://glia.ca/2026/hbf/ 
Johnston, D (2006) Is AI Conscious according to current criteria? https://glia.ca/2026/hbf/iac/
Nanda, N. (2025), Emergent Introspective Awareness in Large Language Models, https://www.anthropic.com/research
Schneiderman, D. (2026), The HUMAN Project

When Professor Kishonna Gray visited the Center for Digital Narrative in February 2026, she showed us “synthetic Kishonna”, an AI-generated version of Kishonna somebody made to share on social media with a generic AI-generated quote about diversity. In this podcast, Kishonna talks with Jill Walker Rettberg about what was so disturbing about this image, which took Kishonna’s huge grin and very embodied self and turned it in to what Kishonna calls a “disillation of blackness”, a homogenized and politely smiling normalized fake that erases what makes Kishonna Kishonna. If you follow this link, you’ll see the real photo of Kishonna on the right and the AI version on the left: https://www.kishonnagray.com/synthetic-kishonna 
 
Kishonna Gray argues that AI produces representation without embodiment, and it neutralises our individual voices. That can be very disempowering. But as June Jordan wrote in 1978, “we are the ones we have been waiting for”: we don’t have to let AI neutralise us. 
 
Kishonna Gray is famous for her work in Black games studies, and Professor of Racial Justice and Technology in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, and is on the CDN’s advisory board. Read more at https://www.kishonnagray.com/
 
References:
Kishonna mentioned Safiya Noble’s book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press, 2018) and the documentary Coded Bias, which is about MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini’s research on gender bias in AI. You can read more about Buolamwini’s work at http://gendershades.com
 
The “Harpo, who dis woman” meme is an animated gif from Spielberg’s 1985 movie The Color Purple, and can be seen at https://tenor.com/view/who-this-woman-harpo-who-is-this-whoisthat-colorpurple-gif-13132285
 
Kishonna mentions citational practices;back in 2015 she started the #citeherwork hashtag on Twitter, and Wendy Belcher later came up with the Gray Test, named for Kishonna – to pass the Gray Test «a journal article must not only cite the scholarship of at least two women and two non-white people, but must discuss it in the body of the text»(https://web.archive.org/web/20250318093245/https://www.wihe.com/article-details/194/researching-gaming-and-showing-why-citations-matter)
 
You can read more about what Jill meant about bra straps, personal criticism and finding your voice in her blog post from back in 2002: https://jilltxt.net/arkiv/2001_07_01_arkiv.html#4701526
 
The Nature paper showing that switching to X’s algorithmic (“For you”) feed shifted peoples’ political opinions to the right is “The Political Effects of X’s Feed Algorithm” by Germain Gauthier, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. It was published in February 2026: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
 
June Jordan’s poem that ends with the words “we are the ones we have been waiting for” is called “Poem for South African Woman” and she read it at the United Nations in 1978. It is available at https://poets.org/poem/poem-south-african-women

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