Pedagogy Meet Robogogy and Data as Labor

Seen above, a humanoid ponders its existence, instead of studying for its algebra exam. 

New theory explores how workers interact with technology in the modern workplace

Sep 2025, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-theory-explores-workers-interact-technology.html

This is about a new theory of workplace communication; the traditional version is called Social Exchange Theory, and it says we engage with people who are rewarding, and avoid people who are costly. Your co-worker might know a lot about a certain subject, but they talk your ear off.

The new theory is called Socio-Technical Exchange, and it says we develop "machine heuristics" - "When they felt expertise was important, people often preferred a human coworker, finding coworkers more efficient and knowledgeable. However, with simple or embarrassing questions, a machine was deemed a superior collaborator."

via University of Kansas: Cameron Piercy et al, Socio-Technical Exchange with Machines: Worker Experiences with Complex Work Technologies, Human-Machine Communication (2025). DOI: 10.30658/hmc.10.3

https://dx.doi.org/10.30658/hmc.10.3

Image credit: hahahaha

Robots learn how to move by watching themselves

Feb 2025, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-02-robots.html

"Kinematic Self-Awareness"

"We humans are intuitively aware of our body; we can imagine ourselves in the future and visualize the consequences of our actions well before we perform those actions in reality. Ultimately, we would like to imbue robots with a similar ability to imagine themselves, because once you can imagine yourself in the future, there is no limit to what you can do."

via Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science: Yuhang Hu et al, Teaching robots to build simulations of themselves, Nature Machine Intelligence (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-025-01006-w

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42256-025-01006-w

Teaching AI models the broad strokes to sketch more like humans do

Jun 2025, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-ai-broad-humans.html

Their method, called "SketchAgent," uses a multimodal language model—AI systems that train on text and images to develop a "sketching language" in which a sketch is translated into a numbered sequence of strokes on a grid. The system was given an example of how things like a house would be drawn, with each stroke labeled according to what it represented — such as the seventh stroke being a rectangle labeled as a "front door" — to help the model generalize to new concepts.

via MIT CSAIL Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory: Yael Vinker et al, SketchAgent: Language-Driven Sequential Sketch Generation, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2411.17673

https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2411.17673

Study argues online clicks and scrolls are 'thin labor' powering AI

Feb 2026, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-online-clicks-scrolls-thin-labor.html

Every time a user solves a reCAPTCHA or browses a social media feed, they provide the training data necessary for AI systems to function. Currently, tech giants extract this value without offering users any bargaining power or fair terms of engagement.

"We must decide if we are merely horses leaving digital manure behind or if we are the essential workers who build the intelligence of the future"

They advocate for the use of data unions, data strikes, and enhanced portability rights to give users a way to negotiate with massive platforms. By treating data as labor, the authors provide a framework for the public to exert collective power against the extractive practices of surveillance capitalism.

"Data strikes and data unions give the public a powerful tool to talk back to technology companies. When we act together to withhold or redirect our data, we transform from passive sources of information into a collective force that can reshape the digital economy to serve everyone, not just a few billionaires."

via Simon Fraser University and Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business: Tae Wan Kim et al, Are We Horses? Rethinking Data as Labor, Philosophy & Technology (2026). DOI: 10.1007/s13347-026-01033-4

https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13347-026-01033-4

Like for example:

Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data

Apr 2026, Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-ai-training-data-2026-04-21/

Post Script of Martin Luther King Jr Quote About Greeley Meatpackers:

"As machines replace men, we must again question whether the depth of our social thinking matches the growth of technological creativity. We cannot create machines which revolutionize industry unless we simultaneously create ideas commensurate with social and economic reorganization, which harness the power of such machines for the benefit of man...the new age will not be an era of hope but of fear and emptiness unless we master this problem. Its solution will require forthright creative social planning from the shop level up to the highest levels of government."  

--Dr. King to the United Packinghouse Workers Union of America on May 21st 1962, and in response to Thousands of workers strike at one of the largest meatpacking plants in the US, Mar 16 2026, AP News [link] 

Art Things

Banksy's 'Valentine's day mascara' mural freezer removed

Feb 2023, CNN Style

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/banksy-valentines-day-mascara/index.html

The mural shows a 1950s housewife with a swollen eye apparently pushing a man into an abandoned chest freezer, but the chest freezer was real, while the rest was painted on the wall. Then the freezer was stolen. So now the refrigerator is a work of art, in part, and art history is being re-written by the day. This was done for Valentine's Day, 2023.

Banksy: Artist confirms new London tree mural is his own work

Mar 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68596824

Islington Council said its graffiti removal team is aware of the artwork and won't remove it.

I'm not even sure how to say this without it coming out wrong, but like you know your society is fucked up when the people are so wholeheartedly supporting illegal activity:

Crowds have gathered to see the mural, with one local saying they were "proud" their street had been chosen.

"It feels like a personal message to us residents, we just feel so proud," said Wanja Sellers, who lives along the street from the mural.

I am left wondering if there is no such thing as public art anymore? Public anything? What happens when there's no more public assets (public art, public music, public space, public parks, public restrooms, public water fountains, public benches, public transit, public public)? People start making their own, illegally, and the rest of the people start supporting it. Please rewind to the movie Death Wish, when hoodlums used a spraycan to terrorize, vandalize, rape and murder a middle class architect and his family living on the Upper West Side of New York City in 1974. Graffiti, and the spraycan specifically, was the ultimate symbol of societal dysfunction, collapse even. It was the mark of the beast, the trumpet of the apocalypse. Today, well things are much different. (Then again, Angela Davis's afro was scary as hell to a lot of Americans and now it's a Halloween costume.)

Post Script: 

The council believes the cherry tree in the foreground of the artwork is around 40-50 years old and is in declining health, with decay and fungi damage. It says it has been maintaining and pruning the tree for some time - both for safety, and to help prolong its lifespan - and will continue working to keep the tree alive. A resident says "It's spring now, and this tree should be bursting forth with leaves, but Banksy must have cycled past and thought how miserable it looks."

Examining why egg yolk was used in Old Masters' oil paints

Mar 2023, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-egg-yolk-masters-oil.html

The work involved creating two types of oil-based paints, both with yolk added. One mixture consisted of nothing but yolk and oil. The other had yolk, oil and pigments to add coloring. The team also created similar paints without using egg yolk. The group then used the paints to create paintings that could be used for testing purposes. Such tests included taking measurements of moisture amounts and movement, oxidation, time to dry and heat capacity.

• stronger bonding between pigment particles for stiffer paint
• reduced wrinkling of the paint to protect the paint against high humidity
• antioxidants in the yolk prevent yellowing
• more pigment to the oil to create more vivid images

via Institute for Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry and at University of Pisa, Institute of Chemistry of Organo Metallic Compoundsin Pisa, and Doerner Institut in Munich: Ophélie Ranquet et al, A holistic view on the role of egg yolk in Old Masters' oil paints, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36859-5

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36859-5

Louise dancing on her 60th birthday - art by Jillian Edelstein  for Breast Cancer Now in Gallery of Hope at London's Saatchi Gallery - Apr 2024

AI photos show people with secondary breast cancer their lost future

Apr 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-68609431

I'm sure there's a history for this, but I'm not familiar with it. People have been aware of their own impending death for a long time, not just because of advances in cancer diagnoses (the guy with the "black spot" in Treasure Island anyone?). And artists have been making shit up forever, it's kind of what they do. All that being said, wow this is bonkers -

Using AI and photos taken by renowned photographer Jillian Edelstein, the images make up the Gallery of Hope at London's Saatchi Gallery.

Louise Hudson, from Caldicot, Monmouthshire, is one of those who took part.

Now 58, she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2022 which then spread to her liver. In February an MRI scan showed lesions on her brain and she was told she had a life expectancy of about six months.

Louise's image at the exhibition shows her celebrating her 60th birthday by performing with her amateur dance company Chelsea Ballet, while her husband of 30 years Barry looks on with pride.

Michel-Marie Carquillat - Joseph-Marie Jacquard woven in silk on a Jacquard loom, 55 x 34 cm - 1839 

The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing : History of Information

https://www.historyofinformation.com/

Just in case this gets lost in the oncominig artificial info wars and subsequent death of the internet, I copy here:

In 1839 weaver Michel-Marie Carquillat, working for the firm of Didier, Petit et Cie, in Lyon, France wove in fine silk a Portrait of Joseph-Marie Jacquard. The image, including caption and Carquillat’s name, taking credit for the weaving, measures 55 x 34 cm.; the full piece of silk including blank margins measures 85 x 66 cm.

This image, of which perhaps only about 20 examples survived, was woven on a Jacquard loom using 24,000 Jacquard cards, each of which had over 1000 hole positions. The process of mis en carte, or converting the image details to punched cards for the Jacquard mechanism, for this exceptionally large and detailed image, would have taken several workers many months, as the woven image convincingly portrays superfine elements such as a translucent curtain over glass window panes.

The Jacquard loom did no computation, and for that reason it was not a digital device in the way we think of digital today. However the method by which Jacquard stored information in punched cards by either punching a hole in s standardized space in a card or not punching a whole in that space is analogous to a zero or one or an on and off switch.

• The Jacquard method was used by Charles Babbage
• It confirmed the potential of using punched cards for the input, programming, output and storage of information in the design and conception of the first general-purpose programmable computer the Analytical Engine.
• It also challenged existing notions that machines were incapable of subtlety, and blurred the clear lines between industrial production and the arts. 
• See Swade, The Cogwheel Brain. Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer. 2000. 107-8.
• More than once this woven image was mistaken for an engraved image.
• In 2012 the only publically recorded examples were those in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Science Museum in London, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.
• The image was the subject of the book by James Essinger entitled, Jacquard's Web. How a Hand Loom led to the Birth of the Information Age (2004).

The Disease Model

That's what they call it -- Susceptible, Infected, Recovered. Disease transmission follows a fairly predictable pattern, just ask the covid epidemiologists.

Totally unrelated image credit: Marco Zoppo - Christ as the Man of Sorrows - 1470

It's about the way things spread within a network; nodes and links. Throw some complexity science in there, and you can model a pretty good simulation of waves of infection, where they spread, how fast. 

But it's not just diseases, which are spread by physical particles floating through the air. Behaviors follow the disease model too, and ideas, and preferences and tastes. They're spreading through people, just like diseases.

That's getting into the science of memetics though. For now, let's keep it more simple than that -- think about how you started using social media, what was your first account and who got you into it, what social networks were you a part of then?

You were being infected.

Honestly I won't even repaste any of this paper, because it does come from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, which seems weird for a paper about disease modeling. But it is from Princeton, and that department does cover some pretty crazy stuff, and some of it is partially related. It concluded that Facebook is going through humans like a wave of the Delta variant, but at the same time, losing the people who recover from the disease. They said there won't be anyone left by 2018, because everyone's either still infected, or been recovered. (Luckily for Facebook, bots are infinite!)

And would you look at that, here's Facebook being called out for misleading investors by blending their actual user numbers with those of their Single Users with Multiple Accounts, i.e., among other things, the botnet.

But long before this information was divulged under congressional testimony circa 2021, this paper, from 2014, and generated from even earlier discussions at a 2012 research symposium, predicted this already -- they followed the disease model on a social network. It makes you wonder why there weren't other studies like it:

Epidemiological modeling of online social network dynamics, John Cannarell, Joshua A. Spechler. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University. arxiv:1401.4208v1 [cs.SI] 17 Jan 2014. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.4208v1.pdf

 

Think about the last few songs you downloaded (do people still?). Where did you hear them, from who?

They infected you.

Music download patterns found to resemble infectious disease epidemic curves

Sep 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-music-download-patterns-resemble-infectious.html

"The researchers found that downloads from the site very much matched patterns of diseases spreading. With infectious diseases, one-to-one contact is needed. With songs...hundreds of people might respond by downloading it." -link

"We draw conclusions about song popularity within specific genres based on estimated SIR parameters. In particular, we argue that faster spread of preferences for Electronica songs may reflect stronger connectivity of the ‘susceptible community’, compared with the larger and broader community that listens to more common genres." -link

via McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind in Canada: Dora P. Rosati et al, Modelling song popularity asacontagious process, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2021.0457

Even ideas can be infectious. They're reproducing in our minds, after all. Memetically transmitted diseases, following the S-I-R model. Dairying was an idea that changed the genome of a lot of humans. And olfactory receptors make up the biggest family of your genome, like 2%, and they're changing all the time, and sometimes because of cultural reasons, like bacon. 

Probably the greatest example of an idea being infectious is the idea against vaccinations, because technically, under the memetic paradigm, the virus, any virus whether measles, covid, or syphilis, is figuring out how to fight the scientific advancement of vaccinations by infecting our minds with antivax thoughts -- they're evolving in more ways than one! (See below for more on this, but be careful, you may want to inoculate your brain first.)

Post Post:

If you're into this topic, prepare to go deep, very deep:

Adaptive Metamemetics, Infectious Disease Networks, and Ludwig Fleck's Thought Collectives

March 2020, Network Address

https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2020/03/adaptive-metamemetics-infectious.html

I had no idea how prescient this would be when I wrote it, but studying Ludwig Fleck prior to a global vaccination campaign wasn't a bad idea.

Post Post Script:

They don't say it but I will, claim of memetic supremacy right here:

[I call it Memetic Supremacy] Parity and time reversal elucidate both decision-making in empirical models and attractor scaling in critical Boolean networks. via Pennsylvania State University, Broad Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Semmelweis University, and Center for Complex Network Research. Science Advances (2021). https://advances.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf8124

 

Digital Body Brokers and the Future Futures Market

AKA The Intergalactic Bodynet

Let's talk about this "digital twin" thing. Twins for the planet, twins for people, twins for everything. And why not? Why shouldn't we all have a backup body, and a backup planet?

But that's not it; the "twin" is for performing future forecasting, simulations, modeling potential outcomes, plugging in variables and testing the results -- You want to try geo-engineering? Why seed silver iodide in the actual sky when you can put it in the virtual-double-sky and see what happens? (Or you could just let China do it like during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and see what happens.)

You want to try intermittent fasting? Why actually do it when you can have your digital twin body double do it and see whether it helps or not? Why ask that girl out when you can have your parallel self ask her parallel self on a date and gauge the outcome? Good time? Worth it? Why waste your time with the real thing when you can run the simulation.

I like to call it the Metabolism of the Anthroposphere; start getting acquainted.

Yet, I can't take credit for the parallel self, so masterfully envisioned by science fiction writer Ted Chiang in his short story "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", in his 2019 book Exhalation.

Image credit: Personalized Digital Twin - N Cary via Indiana University

Digital content on track to equal half Earth's mass by 2245

Aug 2020, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-digital-content-track-equal-earth.html

As we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth's matter from physical atoms to digital information—the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma.

This scientist, Melvin Vopson, is known for the mass-energy-information equivalence, which says information has mass, and is the basis of the universe.

"The information catastrophe," AIP Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1063/5.0019941

also: The mass-energy-information equivalence principle, M Vopson. AIP Advances 9, 095206 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5123794

Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet

Feb 2021, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-scientists-highly-accurate-digital-twin.html

It's called Destination Earth:

A digital twin of our planet is to simulate the Earth system in future. It is intended to support policy-makers in taking appropriate measures to better prepare for extreme events. 

But in addition to the observation data conventionally used for weather and climate simulations, the researchers also want to integrate new data on relevant human activities into the model. The new Earth system model will represent virtually all processes on the Earth's surface as realistically as possible, including the influence of humans on water, food and energy management, and the processes in the physical Earth system.

"Information system for decision-making"

via ETH Zurich: Peter Bauer et al. The digital revolution of Earth-system science, Nature Computational Science (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00023-0

also: A digital twin of Earth for the green transition. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 80–83 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-00986-y

Digital twin technology a 'powerful tool' but requires significant investment, say experts

May 2021, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-digital-twin-technology-powerful-tool.html

Here's a good description in case you missed it: a virtual version of real-life objects that can be used to predict how that object will perform, could predict how a patient's disease will develop and how patients are likely to respond to different therapies.

And further context: "We are making more measurements in patients in the hospital and from remote monitoring and we need to develop methods for rapidly and robustly combining this patient information into a digital twin to provide a single representation of the patient."... "Another challenge is how do we get better at predicting how the heart will operate under extreme conditions. We often want to predict when the heart will fail, however, we only have information that is obtained from them under normal operating procedures."

-Lead author Professor Steven Niederer from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London

In other words, they want to kill the body double just to see how it dies.

Last one: "The promise of data driven coupling of mathematical models with the physical reality they represent, the so-called digital twin, is going to be transformational in how we interact with and control the physical world. "

-Mark Girolami, Programme Director for Data-Centric Engineering at The Alan Turing Institute

via King's College London, The Alan Turing Institute, the University of Cambridge, and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at UT Austin in Texas: Scaling digital twins from the artisanal to the industrial, Nature Computational Science, DOI: 10.1038/s43588-021-00072-5

Digital twins could lead to more proactive, personalized medicine, researchers say

Mar 2021, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-digital-twins-proactive-personalized-medicine.html

The writeup from Medical Express sums it up pretty good: "Obviously, we can't experiment on a real clone of ourselves, but we can research different scenarios with a digital twin."

And what if you could use it for...advertising???

via Indiana University: Reinhard Laubenbacher et al. Using digital twins in viral infection, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf3370

Post Script:

Chinese man kidnapped and killed in elaborate body swap scheme

Apr 2021, BBC News

No better fake than yourself.

This is some good shit: Before he died of cancer in 2017 a man from south-east China told his family he wanted a traditional burial, but in some regions these are banned. His family hired someone to find a substitute body that could be cremated in place of their relative's [so that his real body could then go and be buried, albeit still illegally]. But unknown to them, the man they hired committed murder to provide the body. Spotting a man with Down's syndrome picking litter from the street, Huang persuaded him to get into a car and gave the victim alcohol until he passed out. [He put him in a coffin and sold it to the family for about $15K.] The family then proceeded to have that coffin cremated, pretending it contained the body of their own relative. The relative's actual body was then buried in secret in a traditional way.

Got all that? Bodyswapping it's called, and it's not uncommon. 

Post Post Script:

Full Steam Ahead (aka the Kufizoid, the Kufi-probe), Network Address 2021

Anthromimetic Cosmogenesis (aka the Virtual Facebook World), Network Address 2021

Anthromimetic Cosmogenesis

Facebook bots to create a friendlier universe

Apr 2020, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-facebook-bots-friendlier-universe.html

"Facebook has created a parallel universe called the Web Enabled Simulation that will mimic the actions and behaviors of its users in an effort to detect how to best achieve a more harmonic community."

This sounds absolutely crazy: a virtual neighborhood filled with thousands of interacting socialbots, programmed to engage in good, as well as bad behavior, such as exploiting vulnerabilities of users or hacking personal information.

But this was the part that got me; it's not the content, but the way we're talking about simulated worlds "accidentally" interacting (infecting?) real people:

"Bots must be suitably isolated from real users to ensure that the simulation, although executed on real platform code, does not lead to unexpected interactions between bots and real users," the WES report states.

And to metalevel that shit, we're already enduring that threat, in the form of mis- and dis-information campaigns propagating on these same networks, and where there is NO purposeful separation (quarantine?) between bots and real users.

Metabolism of the Anthroposphere.

Post Script:

WW follows an earlier simulation by Facebook called Sapienz, which studied behavioral trends. But the older program ran on an isolated Facebook platform. WW will operate invisibly in real time on an actual Facebook platform.

Also:

Amid in-game Hong Kong protests, Chinese retailers drop Animal Crossing sales

Apr 2020, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/04/chinese-retailers-bar-animal-crossing-imports-amid-in-game-protests/

AKA:

Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge, 2006

Notes:

WES: Agent-based User Interaction Simulation on Real Infrastructure, arXiv:2004.05363 [cs.SE] arxiv.org/abs/2004.05363

https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05363

 

All Aboard

Sure is a lot of talk about the coming juggernaut that is the 5G network. I'm not so sure that we'll be swimming in holometric datagrams within the next couple years, but I am trying hard to imagine what it will be like. What am I doing today, as a totally routine task, that would have been impossible while I still had a 1x phone in my pocket? Real time traffic? Meh, 1010 Wins.

Those artificial humans though?

She is attractive, emotive, and all-too-real. But Lia is an emotionally intelligent "artificial human"  with expressions and slight skin imperfections that make it difficult to tell that she is digital.

Lia has a virtual brain, virtual nervous system and even digital versions of dopamine and oxytocin that affect her neurons and autonomously trigger facial muscles. She can make eye contact with you—you'll see your own reflection looking at her—and read your face, detecting your emotional state. If you smile, Lia will smile back.
-Soul Machines

image source: Wall Street Journal link

Notes:
5G can make digital humans look real and turn real people into holograms
Mar 2019, phys.org

People think and behave differently in virtual reality than they do in real life
Jan 2019, phys.org

Partially Related Post Script:
An approach for motion planning on asteroid surfaces with irregular gravity fields
Feb 2019, phys.org

^I'm no extraterrestrial scientist but this is the kind of thing that makes even hard science fiction sound soft

Totally Unrelated Post Script:
Just keeping track; more face things:
AI fake face website launched
Feb 2019, BBC