Thread

AI & Technology

5 stories

Dark still life of a long haired writer with VU meters for eyes and a cassette taped over his mouth, holding a poodle in a REKORDR t-shirt among an Underwood typewriter, Steely Dan LPs and stacked archives of his newspaper years

Collected Irritations

A reader once wished my essays were collected in one book so she could hate everything in one place. Her wish is my command.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 28, 2026
An older Filipina in a floral dress sits among teddy bears at a flower-filled window, a lamp glowing beside her in soft painterly light

Shadows fall and I try

Grief tech, Black Mirror bots, and memories of Nanay: she murdered the English language but was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul rolled into one.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 12, 2024
Small glowing video screens filling a dark gallery wall beside sculpted 3D face fragments at the Singapore Art Museum

I am therefore AI: Personhood probed in Singapore Art Museum show

Imagine a blackish mirror reflecting a sky-net of electric sheep playing an imitation game soundtracked by Alphaville’s Forever Young.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 8, 2024
A skull-faced figure in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat types at an old typewriter in a dark room, facing a second skull wired into a tangle of cables and machinery

Who’s afraid of big, bad artificial intelligence?

Talking nicely to the chatbots in case they remember us later, and finding that the scariest thing online is still the people doing the typing.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 28, 2023
Hands hold a tablet showing a dark circular interface ringed with images and menu icons for saved, moments and recent

‘Black Mirror,’ mirror on the wall

Charlie Brooker returns with the year’s scariest monster already in your pocket: selfies, the Cloud, and technology gone clumsily, inadvertently evil.

By Igan D'Bayan · January 1, 2018