Diffracting AI and Robotics: Decolonial and Feminist Perspectives
In December 2018, the EU Commission published a draft report entitled Ethics guidelines for a trustworthy AI with the aim to address a technology that according to the commission will thoroughly “alter the fabric of society” in the near future. In a striking way, at the very moment intelligent machines are supposed to become a reality, the question what it means to be human and what sociality entails seems to become the focal point in the call for a “human centered” robotics and AI. While recent research more and more demonstrates that robots, algorithms, and AI often perpetuate gender and racial biases along with social power relations (see, for example, Atanasoski/Vora 2019 and Noble 2018), the question arises how social power relations, bias, and interests built into ‘intelligent’ machines and programmed into AI—both intentionally and unconsciously—could be identified and deprogrammed, in order to get to more just and inclusive futures.
This workshops shall spark a dialog between early carrier scholars from different disciplines critically exploring questions of de/coloniality, social justice, response-ability, dis/ability, and techno-biopower, to name but a few, as well as potential challenges for decolonializing, feminist, queer, crip, and other critical scholars in engaging with ‘intelligent’ machines, code, and algorithms.
We welcome contributions from early career scholars (predocs and postdocs) of all academic fields. In order to register for the workshop, please send a short statement of interest and a description of your research project or the questions you would like to discuss, if you are currently not working on a specific research project, (max. 500 words) to barla@soz-uni-frankfurt.de by 31 August 2019. Notifications will be sent out by the end of August.
The workshop is part of the symposium “Diffracting AI and Robotics” taking place at Goethe University on 11 October 2019. The keynote address will be given by Mitali Thakor, Science in Society Program, Wesleyan University.
The symposium and the workshop are jointly organized by Josef Barla (Goethe University Frankfurt), Pat Treusch (TU Berlin), and Christoph Hubatschke (University of Vienna). For more information, please contact Josef Barla barla@soz.uni-frankfurt.de.