“AI and/versus the Humanities” is the unofficial title of a course I’m teaching right now — two courses actually, one at the grad (postgrad) level and one upper-level undergrad — and I’m finding that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the news on all things AI: “frontier model” AI agents and their shenanigans, the political economy of the global AI “race” (and/or “bubble”), debates over regulation and policy, public perceptions, and impacts and implications for society, ecology, cognition, culture, etc.
Below is a list of some of the more useful blogs, substacks, and tech news sites I’ve been following lately in order to keep up. It’s followed by a list of some helpful resource pages. Other recommendations are always welcome (in the comments or by e-mailing me directly).
If you’re interested in these topics, I’ll be posting most frequently about them in my Substack Notes, with less frequent but longer pieces in Terrestri(e)alism; my latest piece there was on “The ecology of self-sovereign AI ‘agents‘.” (You can subscribe for free to both.) I’m also working on sharing some related materials, including from last year’s Joanne Brown Symposium on Generative AI and the Future of the Critical Humanities, at EcoCultureLab Vancouver’s “AI and the More-than-Humanities” web page. You can find a description there of the three analytical perspectives we’re bringing to AI in the course (for short, I’m calling them “political ecology,” “critical humanism,” and “technotopianism”). More will come there.
Recommended substacks/blogs and news sites, listed alphabetically (if there’s one I’d start with as an almost-daily voice of reason, it’s Gary Marcus’s “Marcus on AI”):
- AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Melanie Mitchell) – https://aiguide.substack.com/
- The Algorithmic Bridge (Alberto Romero) – https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/
- Atlantic Technology page (excellent coverage) – https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/
- Center for Humane Technology substack – https://www.humanetech.com/substack
- Critical AI (peer-reviewed journal) blog feed – https://criticalai.org/blog-feed/
- Hard Fork (NY Times tech podcast) – https://www.nytimes.com/column/hard-fork
- Into the Machine (Tobias Rose-Stockwell) – https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/
- Marcus on AI (Gary Marcus) – https://garymarcus.substack.com/
- Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter (Émile P. Torres) – https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/
- Understanding AI (Timothy Lee & Kai Williams) – https://www.understandingai.org/
- Wired magazine – https://www.wired.com/
Other helpful resources:
- Against AI reading list – https://against-a-i.com/short-readings/
- AI 2027 (scenarios predicting the future of AI from the AI Futures Project) – https://ai-2027.com/
- AI Data Center Map (U.S.) – https://aidatacentermap.org/map
- Anthropic’s Threat Intelligence reports (just because they’re interesting) – https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence
- Antikythera (Benjamin Bratton’s planetary computation project, and the messiest web page in the world) – https://research.antikythera.org/spoc
- Black Box: The Chatbots (The Guardian’s podcast series, which is essential listening) – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/series/blackbox
- Bozkurt, et al, “The Manifesto for Teaching and Learning in a Time of Generative AI,” Open Praxis 16.4 (2024) (useful summary of educational potentials and risks) – https://openpraxis.org/articles/10.55982/openpraxis.16.4.777
- Bria, Francesca, with xof-research.org, “The Authoritarian Stack” (a handy reference to one variation of the kind of political-economic-military “stacks” being built; see Bratton for more on “the Stack”) – https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/
- Center for Humane Technology (CHT) – https://www.humanetech.com/ (and see especially their “AI Roadmap” https://www.humanetech.com/ai-roadmap)
- Crawford, Kate, “Mapping Empires,” The Long Now Foundation, Dec. 11, 2025 (excellent overview of the political economy/ecology of AI in its historical context) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsBnF4T5ZIU
- Critical AI (excellent humanities-based peer-reviewed journal) – https://criticalai.org/
- Epoch AI’s Data Centers database – https://epoch.ai/data/ai-data-centers
- Future of Life Institute (organization advocating for a pause on frontier AI development and a global AI agreement) – https://futureoflife.org/ (and see its Global Governance page: https://global-governance.ai/)
- Marx, Paris, “Getting Off US Tech: A Guide” – https://disconnect.blog/getting-off-us-tech-a-guide
- Pause AI movement – https://pauseai.info/ (and their substack: https://pauseai.substack.com/)
- Romero, Alberto, “How AI Affects the Brain According to the Studies: A (Very Big) Comparison,” The Algorithmic Bridge, April 15, 2026, https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/what-the-studies-say-about-how-ai
- Stanford University 2026 AI Index Report – https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report
- United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Environmental Cost of AI’s Energy Use: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints (report, 2026) – https://walkearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/unu-inweh-report-the_env_cost_of_ai-2026.pdf
Where to follow my writing on the topic:
- Terrestri(e)alism – https://terrestrialism.substack.com/
- Adrian Ivakhiv Substack Notes – https://substack.com/@zbytko1
- “AI & the More-than-Humanities” (EcoCultureLab Vancouver) – https://ecoculturelab.net/ai-and-the-more-than-humanities