Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

Cover by Agnieszka Kurant Featuring my Introduction: Navigating a New Topos and essays by the amazing writers - Allison Parrish, Language Models and Desire: A Lexicon - Ted Chiang, Why AI Won’t Make Art Easy to Make - Annelyse Gelman, The Death of the Death of the Author 1/3

A great and engaged review of Artificial Humanities by AI developer: "What lifts the book into something genuinely energizing is its refusal to stop at diagnosis. Artificial humanities is proposed not as a critique perched safely on the sidelines but as an operating principle."

In her new book, UC Berkeley researcher Nina Beguš explores how art, history and literature provide a window into AI development, revealing a hopeful — and cautionary — path forward for humanity. news.berkeley.edu/2025/12/01/how…

The winner of Publisher of the Year (sponsored by @worldofbookshq) is @BloomsburyBooks ✨ “You can feel the energy and passion in everything it does," said the judges #Nibbies #BritishBookAwards

Leveraging her background in comparative literature and knowledge of generative AI, @BerkeleyISchool and @UCBHistory's Nina Beguš pitted hundreds of humans against generative AI platforms. Humans wrote more creative stories, but AI is advancing — quickly. news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/28/don…

@moltke @NannaInie @Olefrank I kunne tage fat i vicecenterleder @RebekahBaglini. Tak for et fint program i øvrigt.

@NannaInie @Olefrank @madsrt Tro mig, Nanna, vi går ofte en ekstra mil eller tre for at ændre på det. Byd gerne ind med kroge og forslag til kilder.

Skal vi have robotter som konfliktmæglere i fremtiden? Romaner skrevet af AI? Vi spørger prof. i filosofi Johanna Seibt og prof. i litteraturhistorie @madsrt. #Podcast af @DetUngeAkademi og VidenSkaber, med støtte fra @Carlsbergfondet, @lundbeckfonden og @novonordiskfond

SmukScience? Eller forskning til festivalfolket om hvordan man måler lyset hastighed - i øl! 🎓🍻 Til @Smukfest var der fuldt program i en Science Pavillion med fascinerende og underholdende forskning. Mød Ulrik Uggerhøj, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Peter Hald og Jens Chr Bjerring👇🏻

Forskningen er i den grad til stede på årets @Smukfest med Science Pavilion, der er arrangeret af @CERN. I dag har publikum oplevet kemishow med Peter Hald + Ulrik Uggerhøj også fra Kemi, der viste måling af lysets hastighed i øl, og Mads R. Thomsen fra Litteratur om AI & Tekst.

@MushtaqBilalPhD Great thread. Transportation: biking is also very different. Approx 40-45 % of all transportation in Copenhagen is by bike (in hilly Aarhus a little less).

16. Public Transport 🇺🇸The US was built for cars. I love driving in the US. You need to have a car if you want to go from point A to B. You can understand the centrality of driving in American culture and the most common form of identification is one’s driver’s license. Public transport doesn’t seem like an American priority. Probably it has something to do with American individualism. 🇩🇰Danes take their public transport very seriously. My language trainer told me she’d only vote for the candidate the promises more trains and better trains. Denmark has great intercity trains equipped with free Wi-Fi and decently clean restrooms. Danish trains are quite punctual although not as punctual as Swiss trains. Within cities, there are trams and metros that easily accessible.

I lived in the US 🇺🇸 for several years and now I live in Denmark 🇩🇰 Here's a comparison of the two countries (based on my experiences): 1. Entering the country 🇺🇸 If you are a brown man like me, chances are you will be selected for "random screening.”

@askerhboye Rigtig god bedring.

I look forward to @ulf_db and Ea Lindhardt Overgaard's online @clai_aarhusuni talk on disciplinary voice and generative AI at 1.30 pm later today: cc.au.dk/en/clai/events….

Lindsay Weinberg gives a @clai_aarhusuni short talk on "AI and the Politics of Refusal" April 18 at 1.30 pm CET: cc.au.dk/en/clai/events…

"William Banks does not try to oversell Brandes’s influence or contribution but shows how Brandes develops his thinking...from concrete conflicts." Mads Rosendahl Thomsen on Georg Brandes's Human Rights and Oppressed Peoples, from @UWiscPress: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/mads_rosendahl…

On February 7, @mads Rosendahl Thomsen, @Rebekah Baglini and Kasper Fyhn Borg hosted a visit from VIA University College's International film program to present on the state-of-the-art of Large Language Models, and on AI and creativity. An intense morning with engaged students!

A major step towards the #AI Act. Based on a simple idea: The riskier the AI, the greater the liabilities for developers. For example, if used to sort applicants for a job, or being admitted to an education programme. That’s why the #AI Act focuses on the high risk cases.

In 2016, researchers at the University of Adelaide tested Kurt Vonnegut's theory that, "There’s no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers." They took the emotional arcs of 1300+ novels from Project Gutenberg, turned that into data, used modern tech to analyze the emotional arcs, and then identified 6 patterns seen over and over again in western storytelling. Here they are: 1. Rags to Riches (rise) Your classic underdog tale. A humble, hardworking peasant climbs the mountain to pull the sword from the stone. • Rocky • King Arthur • The Pursuit of Happiness 2. Riches to Rags (fall) Maybe the saddest story of them all. A journey from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. • King Lear • Citizen Kane • Scarlet Letter 3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise) A character’s doing fine, gets herself into a huge problem, but figures out how to overcome it. They often end up better than they started. “You see this story again and again,” Vonnegut says. “People love it, and it is not copyrighted.” • The Martian • The Hunger Games • Shawshank Redemption 4. Icarus (rise then fall) The hero goes on a meteoric rise up New York (or some other) society, calls everyone “old sport,” and throws the wildest parties in town. Then reality sets in, and he realizes he’s too close to the sun. • Macbeth • Great Gatsby • Death of a Salesman 5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise) I’ll leave this description to Vonnegut: “We’re gonna start way down here. Worse than that, who is so low? It’s a little girl… the shoe fits, and she achieves off-scale happiness.” • Red Rising • Slumdog Millionaire • The Count of Monte Cristo This is my personal favorite. 6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall) Up until the ~70% mark of the story it looks like things are sunshine and rainbows. Walter White goes from high school teacher to king of the drug lords, if you will. Then all goes wrong. The original fall is often not their doing while the final fall is. • Hamlet • Gone Girl • Breaking Bad My 3 takeaways: 1. Rags to Riches, Oedipus, and Cinderella rank as the three most popular with consumers. AKA, those books sold the most copies. 2. When you think through a story, give it an emotional shape. Literally draw it. X axis: Time Y axis: Ill fortune to good fortune You might be surprised how much it helps you craft your plot (I was shocked). 3. Vonnegut was a damn genius.

Universities should consider putting together a single class on generative AI that covers the hot button issues: LLM basics, AI literacy, ethics issues, how to prompt & use AI, etc. Otherwise a lot of this content is partially taught & is ad-hoc scattered across various classes.

This Thursday, December 21, CLAI affiliated researcher Asker Bryld Staunæs is giving a talk (online) on "Algorithmic Representation" in the context of his larger project "Automatic Uprisings: Archiving a Techno-Social Sculpture". [1/2]

A few pictures from a full and intense day with @clai_aarhusuni and many new and old friends at @AIAS_dk. Thanks for hosting! cc.au.dk/en/clai/news/a….