The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan Witnessing, with Michael Richardson
Aug 25, 2025
Michael Richardson, Associate Professor of Media and Culture at UNSW Sydney and author of " explores the concept of 'Nonhuman Witnessing.' He discusses how algorithms and AI shape our understanding of the world, highlighting the implications of deepfakes and their impact on human rights documentation. The conversation dives into the political economy of violence in AI development, emphasizing ecological and labor costs. Richardson's insights on witnessing beyond the human challenge us to rethink justice in an era marked by war and technological capture.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Rethink Witnessing For Nonhumans
- Michael Richardson argues a human-centric notion of witnessing is insufficient for planetary-scale crises like autonomous warfare and climate catastrophe.
- He proposes including nonhuman agencies and systems in witnessing to better account for data-driven, distributed harms.
Flight Simulator Reveals Algorithmic Worldmaking
- Microsoft Flight Simulator used ML and mapping datasets to generate 3D worlds people could explore during the pandemic.
- Glitches revealed the simulator's non-indexical generation and exposed the algorithm in operation.
From Photographic To Datalogical
- Richardson calls the cultural shift from photographic to datalogical: the world is now captured, manipulated, and reproduced as data.
- This change transforms how we make knowledge and how witnessing must respond.
