Centre forThe Centre for Speculative AI (CSAI) is a research centre concerned with speculative AI, design fiction, speculative design, critical design, generative AI and HCI. It uses large language model outputs as material for design fiction. Some content on the site changes when the site is refreshed, drawing on contemporary research in HCI, technological trends and contemporary news items. The contents in these pages in no way reflect the views of the Director or any member of staff of the Centre. Any resemblance to real people or technologies is purely coincidental.
Director
Mark Blythe is Director of the Centre for Speculative AI and Professor of Interdisciplinary Design. His research explores fiction, speculation and critical theory in design, with a particular interest in the increasingly peculiar relationships between people and artificial intelligence. His recent work uses generative AI as a material for design fiction, exploring creativity, institutions and everyday life. He writes about himself in the third person, like Caesar.
Reader
Kien Mensonge is an independent researcher and Reader at the Centre for Speculative AI. His research concerns provenance, authenticity and the uncertain status of evidence in generative systems. He has a particular interest in counterfactual design fiction and anachronistic design, as well as disputed archives, misattributed sources and documents which appear to substantiate events that may not have occurred.
Senior Research Fellow
Ilze Baldois is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Speculative AI. She is interested in second- and third-order effects, unintended uses, and the tendency of technological systems to acquire purposes their designers never anticipated. She is currently preparing a critical edition of the collected papers of Valdis Ozols, despite continuing disagreement about whether the collection—or indeed Ozols himself—actually exists.
Technologist in Residence
Lin Xiaoyu is Technologist in Residence at the Centre for Speculative AI. Her work reconstructs lost objects and systems known only through rumours, discarded notebooks, incomplete diagrams and other fragments. She uses generative AI to fill gaps in the historical record and build working prototypes of technologies that may never actually have existed. Several current devices have purposes that remain unknown.
Research Assistant (0.4 FTE, fixed term)
Paul Dennistoun is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Speculative AI. His research interests include generative AI, precarious academic labour and the increasingly uncertain distinction between automation and delegation. He undertakes much of the Centre’s experimental work using borrowed equipment, free software trials and computing resources to which he may or may not still have authorised access. His contract expires shortly.
Research Fellow in Artificial Language and Learning
Mariia Aleksieieva is Research Fellow in Artificial Language and Learning at the Centre for Speculative AI. Her research asks what it means to learn another language when AI can translate, correct and generate speech and writing instantly. She is interested in how this changes ideas of fluency, competence and ‘correct’ English. She is currently developing an AI language assistant that treats Standard English as a foreign language and creatively mistranslates it.
Appointments for 2026–27 will be announced shortly.
Hosted by the University of Lagado
Further information is available from the relevant department.