Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center organized another regional workshop, and I was happy to participate. I talked about elections and AI interferences. My main point is that concerns over AI interference are overblown at the moment, but there is a potential for growing interference in the future. The program included many experts and decision-makers in the … Read more
I am writing while we wait for our flight to Istanbul. It is the end of our month-long US trip. I want to list a few apps or services I used during the trip. Nothing too unfamiliar, though! I thank Booking.com. As you might know, Booking.com is not very useful for Turkish users in … Read more
Our long-awaited one-month trip to the US begins now. The plane takes off in an hour. We have a relatively flexible plan. Chilling out more than a frenzy of sightseeing in our minds- Well, Sinem is definitely in that mode. I am thinking of my Google Maps saved list.
We had a productive roundtable on AI with a full house. It was one of the few panels/roundtables on AI, and although most anthropologists keep their distance from emerging technologies, we might have had a good reception (I was told the STS conference in Amsterdam just before the EASA would satisfy me with lots of … Read more
Sinem and I have been planning a month-long trip to the US. It is all a vacation, but catch-up with friends. I will probably blog as it happens, but let me give you the outline. We will first stay in Detroit. Thanks to Jessica, who has been an early reader of this blog and has … Read more
I liked it so much that I subscribed to the pro version. I recently used it to gather news on the topics I wanted to blog about. I asked for a roundup of the pros and cons of using Perplexity. below. Well, it did not include a few crucial pieces written recently about it. A … Read more
The very first post archived here I came back to Istanbul for the fieldwork in 2004. Chris Kelty recommended blogging as a research tool. He set up the first blog at frazer.rice.edu, which does not exist now. I defended my thesis in 2009. However, I kept blogging. It has become a life-long project and a … Read more
POINT organizers were just great. We felt at home, productive meetings, exchanging ideas, and some sightseeing… One of the last places I meant to see was Gazi Husrev-beg’s library When you enter the library, the smell of books hits you. I did some reading there with many in the reading room but did not … Read more
I have landed today in Sarajevo. It is a lovely city that I first visited nearly ten years ago. It was again for a POINT conference. The conference will be followed by IFCN’s summit, and maybe I will see some of the fact-checker friends. The program is very loaded, and I guess I will not … Read more
In the last three weeks, I virtually had no time to document what I was up to. During this physically tiring but mentally satisfying period, I attended several conferences, training programs, and countless graduate thesis meetings. The period started with our Wikipedia event in Arhavi, which I have already blogged about. In four days after, … Read more
We use Turnitin, which also offers AI similarity reports. There is nearly universal acceptance of Turnitin similarity reports in higher education, but AI similarity reports are a different case. I know a few students whom I trust had high similarity rates. This week, we discussed this with my colleagues. Some colleagues are very aggressive and … Read more
Dear Friends and Colleagues, I have started a project with my graduate students that is becoming an edited volume. With an ethnographic sensibility, we are conducting research and collecting case studies on generative AI usage in different fields. I would love to get scholarly contributions from those who read this message. Please feel free to … Read more
Last weekend, I attended the Wikipedians’ gathering in Arhavi, a lovely Black Sea town in Artvin. A group of Georgian Wikipedians also participated in the meeting hosted by Artvin’s only private high school, Artvin Koleji. Wikipedians are very agreeable and hard-working people. There were many young users, and I hope we conveyed the message to … Read more
This piece was originally published in Turkish here. Translated via DeepL How AI will transform education We are in the early years of the productive AI revolution. It is hard to predict what kind of transformation will take place in which sector, but it will undoubtedly affect every industry. Education is one of the most … Read more
This piece was originally published in Turkish. It was translated with DeepL to English. Possible US ban on TikTok could deal a major blow to the fight for internet freedom. The possibility of TikTok being banned in the US has been on the agenda for a while. Prof. Erkan Saka from Bilgi University Faculty of … Read more