I’m Vivian Mills—an essayist, technologist, and cultural theorist exploring the entangled futures of computation, language, and human meaning-making.
My work traces the cultural logics and contradictions behind generative AI, examining how models are trained, how knowledge is encoded, and how voices—plural, partial, contested—emerge from systems that simulate fluency. I write at the intersection of machine learning infrastructure, critical theory, and multilingual poetics, asking not just what AI can do, but what it is saying.
I’ve spent over a decade leading technical and cross-functional programs in localization, machine learning operations, and AI risk governance. Before that, I served in the U.S. Navy. I hold a PhD (ABD) in Hispanic Studies with a minor in Jewish Studies, where my research focused on medieval Iberia, Sephardic memory, and the politics of archival presence.
This site is a place for thinking in public. Some essays take the form of field notes from inside AI organizations; others build bridges between dialogism, historical memory, and model architectures. All are written in the belief that the future of AI is not just technical—it’s cultural, historical, and irreducibly human.