There’s no shortage of speculation about what generative AI portends for culture: Visions range from a “dead internet,” in which bots produce the majority of online content, to utopic redistribution scenarios, in which universal basic income grants humans unprecedented creative leisure. But for more than a decade—before many people had ever heard of a large language model (LLM)—artist Trevor Pagle...
Trevor Paglen’s *How to See Like a Machine* offers a provocative critique of how AI-driven image systems reshape perception and power. The strongest version of his argument—steelman—is that we’re entering an era where images function as operational tools, not just representations, with profound implications for surveillance, capitalism, and human agency. His historical parallels (e.g., CIA psyops) and artistic interventions (e.g., *ImageNet Roulette*) effectively illustrate how machine vision no...