AI and the Human: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Intelligence and Ethics
Nashville, Tennessee 19 Nov. 2024
ORGANISATION : Alexis Finet & Cameron Pattison, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University
What does it mean to be intelligent in an age of artificial minds? How does AI reshape our sense of justice, power, and what it means to be human? This seminar invites you to explore these questions and many more with experts from across the globe in fields like ethics, consciousness, and AI. From hands-on sessions exploring emerging technologies to discussions about human rights and the ethics of AI, we’ll dive into how AI is transforming a wide range of topics in the humanities. Join us as we engage in lively conversations with leaders in philosophy who are challenging the boundaries of AI and humanity.
Title of the talk: Algorithms and the Human Experience
Intelligence Artificielle : quels enjeux éthiques au 21e siècle
Istanbul 5. Nov. Ankara 6. Nov., Izmir 7. Nov.
ORGANISATION : Mathilde Dumaine, Institut Français, Turquie
Dans le cadre du Novembre numérique, l’équipe de l’Institut français vous invite à la conférence de la philosophe et écrivaine française Anaïs Nony, «Intelligence artificielle: quels enjeux éthiques au 21eme siècle ?»
Rencontre en français, traduction simultanée en turc.
International Online Conference
1 & 2 Oct. 2024 5-8pm Central Universal Time
ORGANISATION : Andrea Bardin, Marco Ferrari, Anaïs Nony & Gregorio Tenti
The conference is open to anyone interested in a debate on Simondon, ecology, the digital, and politics. The event displays the complexity of Simondon’s philosophical enterprise and its relevance for researchers that are keen to cross disciplinary boundaries and explore new appropriations of his research.
Artificial Intelligence Emergency: What is Caring for the Future with Technology?
Wed. 7 August, 18:00 Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study
ORGANISATION: Victoria Collis-Buthelezi, Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study
Video (art) & the technopoethics of anticipation
Tues 6 August, 18:00 LAPA / Breezeblock Café 29 Chiswick St, Brixton Johannesburg
ORGANISATION :
INVITATION :
Digitalisation, AI and Feminist Futures
Maputo, Mozambique July 25 to 28, 2024
ORGANISATION :
Conference of Feminist Africa and the International Feminist Journal of Politics
ARGUMENT :
The world is in the midst of a technological revolution characterised by the rapid development of digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Like any revolution, this one is full of contradictions, promising new freedoms and opportunities on the one hand, while spawning frightening disruptions and disorienting innovations on the other. The powerful interests fuelling these disruptions are embedded in patriarchal, capitalist and imperial logics. Though digital divides are a major impediment for women and marginalised persons in resource-constrained contexts, this is not only a matter of access. Issues of online violence and harassment, digital surveillance, and new forms of labour informality thrive in these oppressive logics marked by intersecting inequalities of class, race, gender, generation, as well as rural/urban divides. Proponents of AI, notably machine learning, promise that it will enhance human capacities for creating better worlds while ignoring the fact that existing inequalities are often baked into these new technologies.
As technological developments outpace projects of social justice, we consider it urgent to interrogate the phenomenon of digitalisation and AI from the vantage point of the African continent, its diasporas, and beyond. We are proposing a conference jointly organised by Feminist Africa and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. We seek to understand the imperial, neocolonial, and patriarchal dynamics of digitalisation and AI as they play out in the spaces structured by the operations of transnational digital corporations. Convening in Mozambique, we highlight Africa and its diasporas as zones of creativity and resistance in the face of diverse colonial histories and structures of domination, amid shifting geopolitical configurations of power. From a pan-African feminist and decolonial perspective of Africa-centred development, we are interested in exploring the threats and opportunities that digitalisation and AI present for African women and persons Othered by class, rural/urban divides, sexuality, race and other dimensions of inequality, in Africa, its diasporas, and globally. While we privilege contributions from the African continent and its diasporas, we welcome feminist contributions addressing the dynamics of digitalisation and AI elsewhere in the world. We recognise that across the globe, multiple structures of inequality shape polities, economies, and societies in contextually-specific ways; our focus on the dynamics of digital technologies and AI in diverse contexts engages this complexity by decentring the nation-state and facilitating transnational, transregional, and transdisciplinary conversations. The locus of our attention, all the while, is on the implications for building feminist futures that transcend capitalism, patriarchy, and imperialism, that is, feminist futures which sustain freedom from violence and injustice, while promoting human flourishing. We invite proposals for papers on three broad themes, outlined in greater detail below: a) governance and democracy; b) work; and c) knowledge production.
Pharmakon Studies Seminar
Online, 3 July 2024
ORGANISATION :
Noel Fitzpatrick, Anne Alombert, Michael O Hara, Sara Baranzoni, Paolo Vignola
ARGUMENT :
« Ce que je dis, c’est vous qui le dites » Bernard Stiegler
With this expression often used during the pharmakon.fr seminars and the Epineuil Summer School Bernard Stiegler liked to underline the diversity of potential interpretations of his discourse. What was at stake in that diversity was the cultivation and development of psychic and collective individuation, and for the production of knowledge. The process of interpretation ‘singular- plural’ allowed the concepts coined by Stiegler to be constantly re-individualised by the researchers who attended the seminars from all sorts of localities (different regions in France but also Ireland, Italy, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ecaudor, Hong Kong, China etc.). During the seminars, it was therefore possible to appreciate how the concept always remained metastable, open to further evolution. Indeed, we could propose that the seminars were workshops to forge these concepts.
At the same time, this process of thinking and development of concepts was opened up outside philosophy, not only to contemporary scientific theories but also to the contemporary technological and political issues (economic war, terrorism, the end of consumer capitalism, vanity and symbolic misery of marketing, the consequences of (anti)social networks, the dangers of the transhumanist programme, the emergence of the ecological crisis, the role and status of universitates, COViD etc,). Stiegler called upon different conceptual characters, such as Florian or Greta Thunberg, who were symptomatic of issues of the contemporary era. Participating in the seminars allowed the entrance into one of the spirals of the ‘idiotext’ imagined by Bernard, thus generating multiple resonances and recurrences but also bifurcations, stereotypes and traumatypes. This, for Bernard, represented thinking passing into action, showing us the power of transforming a state of fact into a state of law.
Many of us have tried to extend the of pathway of this magnificent and infinite collective forms of individuation, by contributions, seminars, workshops, projects, translations and essays, and we would like to thank all those who have kept the flame alive. This flame symbolises the promethean anticipation and collective protention that the work of Bernard generated, but also the Epimethean delay, the traces and retentions that these reflections left behind, the temporisation: the experience that we have lived and what we have learnt. It is from that advance and this delay that we wish to revisit this ‘rational dream’ (rêve rationnel) which was Pharmakon.fr. That is to say, not to repeat it – something which is obviously impossible – but to continue through other means by referring to the intuitions which Bernard left as other ‘already there (s)’ ready to be re-adopted, re-transformed, differanciated (différanciées).
The purpose of the seminar will be to re-orientate thinking, between the concepts of pharmacology, organology and the neganthropology. The ambition is to continue to pursue the life of spirit la vie de l’esprit started in the pharmakon.fr seminar by prolonging the individuations which came to light and start new noetic bifurcations which make the philosophical life worth living. It will mean putting the thought of Bernard to the test, framed by new emerging challenges. These emerging challenges often appear as very entropic and resistant to a neganthropic future.
We invite friends and colleagues to construct with us the spirals of a seminar inspired by pharmakon.fr, conceived as a motor for new individuations of contemporary philosophy. You are welcome to construct with us a new Pharmakon Studies Seminar.
Emergencies: Media in an Unpredictable World
İzmir University of Economics, İzmir, Turkey, 27–29 June 2024
ORGANISATION :
Ahmet Gürata, Batuhan Keskin, Derya Özkan, Serkan Şavk, Ebru Uzunoğlu, Zeynep Aksoy, Hakan Tuncel, Serra Evci
ARGUMENT :
Global warming, earthquakes, wildfires, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the escalating threat of wars and nuclear disasters are severely endangering life on Earth. Emergencies today transcend geographical borders and affect all living beings, giving rise to substantial crises that require mobilization and intervention. However, the scale and severity of the current conjuncture are also leading to desensitization and a reluctance to act. Emergency situations are often considered exceptional and isolated incidents that are in no way linked with the larger social, political, and economical context. The role of film and media in this context becomes as important as the crises themselves, since the representations and remediations of emergencies affect their perceived reality, urgency, and the choices to be made. The NECS 2024 conference aims to explore the various ways in which film and media have historically responded to emergencies and to problematize its engagement with current ones.
Capitalism benefits from emergency situations, by exploiting shocks and disasters to generate more profit. Emergencies are also employed by governments as a pretext for implementing anti democratic regulations, as seen in the concept of the state of emergency. Film and media have the capacity to play a multifaceted role in dealing with emergencies. For instance, the growing infusion of disinformation, or ‘fake news’ within the age of post-truth, intensify or prolong the consequences of crises. However, film and media also promise innovative ways of responding to and dealing with emergencies. By raising awareness, they can highlight the structural roots of crises and challenge hegemonic discourses.
The popular concept of “emergent media” makes a foray on this terrain with all its ambiguities and ambivalences. Whether digital technologies will help us overcome the dichotomies and forced choices that characterize the media landscape or remain the latest installment in a dialectic of the old and the new is very much an open question. The already blurring divisions between the old and the new suggest that there is hope. In fact, 21st century media, with low cost devices and increasingly accessible broadband connections, are offering new venues of participation and resistance. What possibilities do traditional and emergent forms of film and media offer in terms of shaping the perception of emergencies? How can we make film and media cultures more inclusive and empowering through their representations of emergencies? In what ways can we reclaim the media and activate their potential for social change? As we seek sustainable ways to improve human life on earth, what role can film and media actively play in their communication and realization? What can we learn from a historical analysis of media and its relationship to emergency to reflect on today’s ongoing states of emergency?
Critiquing Big Tech: A Humanities Perspective
Tilburg, Netherlands, 6-7 June 2024
ORGANISATION :
Niels Niessen, Nuno Atalaia, Rianne Riemens
ARGUMENT :
This conference brings together critiques of how Big Tech invades all domains of public and private life, transforming those domains in the process. The conference explores how the humanities can contribute to a better understanding of this development. At the same time, we are interested in how humanities research changes in relation to this development. While critiquing Big Tech, it is important to acknowledge that for many, platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, and X (Twitter) are places of consciousness building and activism. It is also safe to say that without these platforms, movements like MeToo, Trans Liberation, and Black Lives Matter would not have happened the way they did. Yet while these platforms help liberate personal and collective life in some respects, ultimately they are not designed for emancipation, but to maximize user engagement. The confer-ence examines the ways in which Big Tech interpellates people as users, through its technologies and its discourses. We will also discuss potential forms of resistance against this interpellation.
Automédias : Le Médiactivisme Disrupté ?
Salle Triangle, Centre Georges Pompidou, 26 avril 2024 17h30 à 19h30
ORGANISATION :
Igor Galigo & Viviana Lipuma du Collectif Automedias.org
Autonomie esthétique des usager.è.s des plateformes numériques: processus de subjectivation et création d’imaginaires collectifs
Les défis sociaux contemporains nous invitent à élaborer un concept plus exigeant de ce qu’on entend par “domaine public”, et donc à aller au-delà de sa définition purement négative d’un domaine qui n’est pas (encore) dans les mains des grands acteurs du capitalisme. L’exigence démocratique de protéger et d’étendre ce qui nous appartient collectivement doit porter sur notre santé, nos manières d’habiter la ville, nos manières de communiquer, mais aussi sur nos imaginaires et nos mises en récit. Or, à l’encontre de l’espoir d’un “espace public parallèle” (Mattelart) en opposition au dispositif télévisuel, à ses clichés et à son fonctionnement vertical aux débuts de l’internet, depuis les années 2000 la tendance est au contraire à l’infotainement, à la consommation passive de signes et à la production par tout un.e chacun.e de contenus convenus en des formats convenus. La page de l’aventure collective du médiactivisme semble définitivement tournée:en même temps qu’une dépossession des moyens de production et une perte de savoirs techniques, on assiste à l’affaiblissement des capacités collectives à façonner des visions du monde. Le concept de “sémiocapitalisme” de Franco Berardi décrit cette main-basse sur les signes de la part des instances techno-économiques du capitalisme numérique qui en contrôlent la diffusion algorithmique, mais aussi la production à travers les icônes du web (youtubeurs et influenceurs) soumis à leurs contraintes de valorisation financière (audience, likes).
Machinations
Dispositifs, algorithmes et autres rouages en arts et médias
Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 11-12 mars 2024
ORGANISATION :
Alberto Romele, Antonio Somaini, Guillaume Soulez
ARGUMENT :
Avec la diffusion, à travers tous les secteurs de la société et de l’économie contemporaine, de différentes formes d’« intelligence artificielle » fondées sur des algorithmes de deep learning, la question de la machine est à l’ordre du jour dans la pratique, la théorie et l’enseignement en arts et médias. Mais, de la grue à l’automate, la machine a toujours accompagné l’histoire des arts et médias. Une partie de la théorie des « médias » est une théorie des machines dans la mesure où ces « médias » sont, notamment, définis en lien avec des technologies qui emploient des machines qui prolongent ou décentrent les puissances sensibles de humain. L’IA n’est que la dernière version, en ce sens, d’un fantasme ou d’une
angoisse de la machine autonome.
Ce colloque vise à mieux comprendre la part des machines aujourd’hui et à la situer dans une perspective historique et pluridisciplinaire pour étudier les arts et médias, tant du point de vue de la production, de la réception, de l’imaginaire que du faire de la création elle-même. La question de la machine est partie prenante du lien entre arts et médias : considérer les arts comme des médias, c’est aussi montrer la part de machine en eux et, inversement, si l’on peut agir sur les médias mettant en œuvre des textes, des images, des sons, des écritures et des mises en scène, etc. c’est qu’ils ont toujours en eux une part qui les relient à la manipulation technique du sensible. En ce sens, la machine s’accompagne d’une pensée de la machination à comprendre comme recherche ingénieuse de nouveaux procédés et (dé)montage, voire autopsie, des machines déjà là pour en investir les potentiels jusque-là non explorés. Parmi les multiples questions que posent les nouvelles machinations contemporaines, ce colloque étudiera trois pistes :
(1) Invisible/visible : comprendre et visualiser machines et rouages
(2) Création, médiation, théorie
(3) Les algorithmes comme nouvelle forme d’agentivité machinique et d’entrelacement avec les pratiques en arts et médias
A Call for Social Justice and Sustainability Summit
March 9, 2024
ORGANISATION :
Hana Siddique, Agile in Education
ARGUMENT :
Social Justice and Sustainability are two interrelated concepts that aim to promote a more equitable and environmentally friendly world. Social justice refers to the idea that all people should have equal access to basic human rights, such as education, health care, food, water, and security. Sustainability refers to the idea that human activities should not deplete or degrade the natural resources and ecosystems that support life on Earth.
One of the main challenges of achieving social justice and sustainability is the unequal distribution of power and wealth among different groups of people and countries. This leads to various forms of oppression, discrimination, exploitation, and violence that violate human dignity and rights. It also leads to overconsumption, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change that threaten the well-being and survival of current and future generations.
Enthousiasme ! Théories critiques pour une métamorphose des images et des techniques.
Université de Starsbourg, 10 au 12 janvier 2024
ORGANISATION :
Raphaël SZÖLLÖSY et Benjamin THOMAS, avec le soutien de l’ACCRA et de la Faculté des arts de l’Université de Strasbourg.
ARGUMENT :
Nous postulons ici qu’il existe un point de vue qui ne peut se satisfaire de la caractérisation aliénante — mais combien de fois si évidente ! — des techniques de productions d’images et de sons. Un point de vue qui après la mélancolie, et sans doute en composant avec elle, œuvre à arracher à la mainmise de l’industrie capitale quelques espèces de contrepoints, quelques espaces contradictoires, appréhendables à partir du principe de « l’optimisme militant » (Ernst Bloch).
Quelles images et quels sons réinvitent au cœur de notre époque la puissance de la diversité des théories critiques tout en incarnant la réalité d’alternatives aux consumérismes déterministes ? Quelles Histoires de ces images, de ces sons, de ces théories où des techniques qui les médiatisent peuvent être menées afinn de subvertir notre contemporanéité ? Quelles esthétiques s’échappent aux lissages machiniques qui peut–être trop souvent enveloppent l’actualité des formes artistiques ?
En 1931, Dziga Vertov parvenait à la version finale de son film Enthousiasme (Symphonie du Donbass), le dernier à être produit par l’Ukraine soviétique. Il y déployait l’inventivité de ses expérimentations visuelles en même temps qu’il inaugurait avec avant–gardisme l’usage de l’enregistrement sonore mobile mis au point par Alexandre Chorine. Si nombre de soutiens se déclareront, l’œuvre se heurtera aux profonds conservatismes qui régissent son temps. C’est dans un tel lieu de confrontation entre optimisme de l’art et pessimisme du monde que nous organisons cette recherche commune.
© Ludovic Duhem
Où sont les technologies d’avenir ? 1. De Simondon à la science-fiction.
Cerisy-la-Salle, 30 août au mardi 5 septembre 2023
ORGANISATION :
Vincent BONTEMS, Christian FAURÉ, Roland LEHOUCQ
ARGUMENT :
En 1983, le philosophe Gilbert Simondon estimait que “La technologie approfondie doit apprendre non seulement à inventer du nouveau, mais à réinsérer l’ancien et à le réactualiser pour en faire un présent sous l’appel de l’avenir“. Quarante ans plus tard, tout ceux qui réfléchissent à l’avenir de notre civilisation en conviennent : les technologies qui pourront relever les défis matériels, énergétiques, informationnels et environnementaux ne correspondent pas forcément aux promesses futuristes des innovations accélérées récentes ; ce sont celles qui fondent un avenir moins éphémère pour les vivants et les machines dans leurs milieux intriqués.
La pensée contemporaine doit concevoir cet avenir en faisant appel à la convergence de multiples disciplines et en surmontant la désorientation actuelle qui résulte de l’abandon des représentations linéaires du progrès technique : des technologies dominantes préemptent la vision du futur alors qu’elles sont des “zombies” (elles sont mortes au regard des exigences de la survie de l’espèce), tandis que d’autres, négligées, oubliées ou enfouies dans des traditions locales, possèdent sans doute de plus grands potentiels.
D’où cette interrogation : Où sont les technologies d’avenir ?
De la philosophie des techniques à la science-fiction, en passant par l’histoire, la physique, les méthodologies de la conception, l’architecture ou la prospective éco-technologique, ce colloque interrogera ce qui définit une technologie d’avenir. De façon à la fois spéculative et concrète, nous approfondirons des enjeux tels que la redéfinition des obsolescences en fonction des échelles, l’étude des couplages et découplages entre les technologies et leurs milieux associés, les implications de “l’écotechnologie”, la réflexion sur les affects technologiques, l’opportunité de stratégies de bifurcation et les orientations technopolitiques à privilégier pour l’avenir.
À l’ère de la coexistence des flux massifs d’information, des crises énergétiques, sanitaires et militaires, et des dérèglements climatiques, la réflexion technologique se doit d’élaborer de nouveaux critères pour penser le progrès dans toutes ses dimensions, pour dépasser l’addiction à la puissance, et pour inventer la “Right Tech” qui réponde à l’appel de l’avenir.
La philosophie en montagne. Été 2023
ORGANISATION :
Librairie indépendante Plume, Esquièze-Sère
