Jon Ippolito
How does tech empower and frustrate creators—writers, programmers, media makers—and how do we keep their work alive in the long run? UMaine Professor of New Media, Director of Digital Curation; former Guggenheim Curator of Media Art https://jonippolito.net
- On March 9th I’m helping launch AI Foundations for Educators, a 5-week online course that goes beyond workshop-level knowledge to guide teachers and school staff in developing a personalized framework for adapting classrooms to AI. DM me with any questions or visit learnwithai.org/courses.html
- I've been worried AI will crowd out human voices. Now an AI copy has replaced my 2006 Connected Knowledge site, warping context and displacing the original work online. Are we going to be able to stop this creeping ensloppification? www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Reposted by Jon IppolitoAgenda from an upcoming faculty meeting, which I'm choosing to interpret as a Fluxus score:
- Where are AI’s scientific breakthroughs? It’s been three years since ChatGPT’s release, and still no headlines about AI discovering new particles or curing diseases. When AI does help science, it's not the kind Sam Altman and co. are shilling. www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Another Maine town just defeated a data center in its backyard. In this Women Talking 'Bout AI podcast, Joline Blais explains how her community rallied to the cause, and why AI is only a small part of the reason these are being built www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Give yourself the gift of digital permanence by applying for a DPOE grant to pay for digital preservation training this spring. Students who've applied it to my online DIG 550 class digitalcuration.umaine.edu say it's easy and paid for the course. --- www.dpoe.network/training-opp...
- I just spoke to WGME CBS/Fox last night about a data center proposed for an old Maine mill. Lewiston's climate and water resources are a better fit than in the southern US, but city managers still overestimate the benefits to local economies—about 20 jobs post-construction, many remote.
- You can't make this stuff up www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/u...
- We've updated the What Uses More app to reflect last week's finding by Luccioni and Gamazaychikov that "reasoning" mode increases energy and water usage by 30x. The study casts doubt on the improved efficiency AI companies are claiming for newer models www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Growing up, I considered becoming a medical illustrator due to its combination of scientific and artistic rigor. Neither is on display in this derivative AI image shared by a surgeon too lazy to find the real thing. www.linkedin.com/posts/amanda...
- November is digital heritage month. Anyone needing help with a collection can register now for my spring course in preservation or apply to UMaine's all-online graduate certificate, which has been called "a national standard for the study of digital curation." digitalcuration.umaine.edu
- Every post you write is first read by a machine. Should the nature of writing change to accommodate that? I look at the pros and cons of adopting an AI-friendly grammar www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- The What Uses More calculator was featured in Mark Cuban's October AI Bootcamp newsletter, along with Susan Ray's Carbon Footprint Chatbot. Both let students compare AI's environmental footprint to more familiar activities like Netflix or Zoom. sh1.sendinblue.com/3gmy4fvm079p...
- Great news for anyone preserving a collection: DPOE grants now fund training like my online digital preservation course on everything from checksums to DNA storage. A number of my past students have landed these grants; you can apply now for my class starting Jan 20. digitalcuration.umaine.edu
- 🗳️🇺🇸 Tomorrow (Tue 4 Nov) Mainers will decide a referendum that could shape elections for years to come, especially for older/disabled/rural/on-call workers. More at saveabsentee.me. Please vote! #MEpolitics
- Google has teased 60-second AI videos from Veo, which sounds impressive until you realize that requires not 10x, but 100x the energy of a 6-second clip. Confirmation of quadratic scaling of AI video footprint: www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp... Techradar on Veo 3.1: www.techradar.com/ai-platforms....
- Terrifying to think the 21st century is a quarter over! Even more so if your library, archive, or museum is still stuck in the previous century. In UMaine's online Digital Curation program, we teach the digital skills necessary to bring your collection into the 21st. digitalcuration.umaine.edu
- 🗳️🇺🇸 Hey, Maine! 2 weeks from tomorrow (Nov 4) you’ve got a referendum that could shape elections for years. It may be an off-year but the outcome will decide who can vote, especially for older/disabled/rural/on-call workers. Bipartisan info at ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.p...
- We've integrated lessons on AI's technology, ethics, and techniques into our online Digital Curation grad cert digitalcuration.umaine.edu to support jobs like this Critical Artificial Intelligence Librarian: www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43... HT to our Dartmouth collaborator @novomancy.bsky.social!
- "The amount exceeded all US dollars in circulation and surpassed the entire cryptocurrency market combined" Nothing to see here, move along news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/...
- Reposted by Jon IppolitoFollowing a student mispronunciation yesterday, I'll be referring to all LLM output as the Ship of Thesis going forward. Thank you for your time.
- Funny how the same tech moguls who side with politicians dismantling government in the name of efficiency happen to make their money off of the most top-heavy, bloated software around (*cough* PeopleSoft)
- Recent example: developers.slashdot.org/story/25/09/...
- The surge in watermark removers within days of Sora 2’s release reminds us that most AI detection is just security theater at this point. www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- This week we lost avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, whose flickering experiments with film and light reinforced the lesson of variable media preservation: we keep things alive by keeping them moving. blog.still-water.net/ken-jacobs-a...
- Did you know that the Learning With AI toolkit has a speakers bureau for AI and education? Filter for expertise like "agents + administration" or "data + bias," then click on presenters to watch recordings that demonstrate their presentation styles learnwithai.org
- We offer rolling admission for our online grad certificate in Digital Curation, so you can apply any time. Our spring 2026 courses will cover #DigitalPreservation #DigitalStorage #Metadata #Migration #Emulation #DigitalForensics #WebArchiving and more digitalcuration.umaine.edu
- Will AI in the classroom mean students asking ChatGPT for help with algebra homework, or strapping on a headband that streams their brainwaves to teachers and parents? In China, teachers are already policing attention with the latter www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- A new finding demonstrates the brutal carbon math of AI video: a 6-second clip can burn 4x the energy of a 3-second one. I’ve updated the What Uses More digital footprint calculator to show why “just a bit longer” gets disproportionately expensive. www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- On yesterday's Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else podcast, I talked about AI's impact on the environment and classrooms—and argued that it isn’t reinventing education so much as exposing bad habits we should’ve let go years ago www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Will a new startup topple Nvidia's dominance with more efficient AI chips? I suggest it may not make much difference to AI's environmental footprint in this piece from Inc. magazine www.inc.com/ben-sherry/w...
- Reposted by Jon IppolitoPlaying with @jonippolito.net's app What Uses More to compare generating an AI image with streaming Netflix for an hour or storing 5 GB in the cloud. How can we get away from unnecessary streaming and cloud storage, since they use a lot more than most AI except video generation? what-uses-more.com
- Artists once worried about people downloading images. Today, AI has them so rattled that hackers are extorting them by threatening to submit their work to training datasets. it.slashdot.org/story/25/09/...
- Reposted by Jon IppolitoWhat a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
- "They’re unknowingly becoming the bad guys”: AI-powered bounty hunters think they’re helping, but their fabricated bug reports are overwhelming solo maintainers like cURL’s Daniel Stenberg—who’s paid $92K for real flaws and now may scrap the program. www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
- Trying not to blame @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social for manifesting the textpocalypse...
- Reposted by Jon IppolitoHighly recommend checking out this interview with Jon Ippolito regarding impact of AI on creative practice. Especially if you're teaching in a creative field this fall, its crucial listening!
