@jonippolito.net
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
How green is your prompt?
This workshop aims to cut through the hype on both sides of the AI debate to clarify the environmental impact of your work and what you can do about it.
April 2, 2026, 12:00 pm EDT with @jonippolito.net
Register: content.fromthepage.com/april-2026-w...
Saw that, but AFAICT Prime did not describe a bot rewriting its soul doc?
Sure, but OP seemed to imply OpenClaw bots could rewrite their soul docs or other system prompts. I don't recall ever hearing that.
"the “soul” document that defines an OpenClaw agent’s personality. These documents are editable by the human who sets up the AI, but they are also recursively editable in real-time by the agent itself" Is this capability confined to OpenClaw?
Where in the real world has this been played out?
Normally I'd say you couldn't tell, but given OpenClaw's lack of security that might just be possible.
It certainly possible that a human directed the bot, either by writing the post manually or just adding a tendentious system prompt. But the blog entry is classic chatbot-speak and feels like legit AI
Some speculate that this behavior could have been encoded into the bot's system prompt. But AI-augmented trolls are not what I was looking forward to in 2026 ☹️
Facts! Games provide ritual humiliation, and we keep coming back for more.
A rogue AI enrolls in your online class, then publicly shames you when you remove it. This just happened in a dev forum. Are we ready if it happens to our courses? www.linkedin.com/posts/jonipp...
A graphic showing a teacher, robot, and students collaborating in a workflow, next to the words "AI Foundations for Educators," UMaine Online, March-April 2026
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 know, right? A little squished, but better than nothing
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...
1. Announcements 2. Generative AI 3. Other business
Agenda 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...
Yeah I can see some uses for AI in conservation, especially for non-destructive actions. But in-painting is like language translation on steroids – interpretation with a level of cultural context that should not be reduced to statistics.
Hard to believe this won't have unpleasant consequences.
Great idea! I haven't researched it yet but an excellent comparison
Screenshot showing that a UMaine digital preservation course is eligible for grant funding
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.
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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...
Fascinating that there's a historical precedent for this very question!
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...
Or Rauschenberg's making a comeback
A word cloud of concepts related to digital curation
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...
Decorative graphic
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...
A screenshot of the DPOE website showing UMaine’s Digital Preservation class as a recommended training
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