AI in Society Seminar

The seminar series offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussing Humanities and Social Science perspectives on artificial intelligence. We trace the historical fascination with building smart machines and discuss implications that machine learning has on our everyday lives, culture and society.

Robot In the future, AI may be used to care for people. Photo credit wonry

About the seminars

What is this?

In our reading seminar we welcome participants to bring thoughts and questions about the texts that are presented in each session. In preparation to the seminars, we usually read 1-3 articles. The articles are briefly summarized at the beginning of each session. We encourage you to prepare questions, ideas, and remarks for a lively discussion. The seminars are held in English.

Who can participate?

The seminar is mainly directed at researchers who work within the Humanities and Social Sciences. It is open to anyone who is interested in societal implications of AI. Students are very welcome to join the discussions.

More information

If you would like to be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact Hannah Pelikan. The articles and Zoom link are shared via the mailing list.

Programme

2025

The seminars are held the first Monday of each month, 13:00 to 15:00.

Information about our seminars 2025 will be updated.

Previous seminars

Information about our previous seminars

2024

Coordinating with Robots

12 februari, Eleonore Lumer (Bielefeld University)

Chater, N. (2023). How could we make a social robot?
Kopp, S. (2010). Social resonance and embodied coordination in face-to-face conversation with artificial interlocutors

Testing AI

Måndag, 4 mars, Sergio Passero and Hanna Pelikan (IKOS),

Eisenmann et al. (2023) “Machine Down”: making sense of human–computer interaction

Weizenbaum (1966). ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine

AI and Trust

May 6, led by Hannah Pelikan, IKOS

Ivarsson, J., Lindwall, O. Suspicious Minds: the Problem of Trust and Conversational Agents. Comput Supported Coop Work 32, 545–571 (2023).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-023-09465-8 on trusting artificial agents.

2023

Chatting with Large Language Models

Monday, October 2, 2023 - led by Hannah Pelikan, IKOS

Bender et al. 2021 On the dangers of stochastic parrots
Chang et al. 2023 An archeology of books known to chatGPT/GPT-4
Dingemanse & Liesenfeld 2022 From text to talk

AI Literacy

Monday, October, 23, 2023 - led by Katarina Sperling, IBL

Long & Magerko (2020): "What is AI literacy"
Druga et al., (2022): "Family as a Third Space for AI Literacies: How do children and parents learn about AI together?"
Laupichler et al., (2023): "Delphi study"

AI and the Meaning of Work

Monday, November 27 - led by Yunchen Sun, IEI

2022

AI & Sustainability

Monday, February 28, 2022 - Led by Katarina Sperling & Hannah Pelikan

2021

AI, Language & Anthropomorphisation

October 4, 2021 - Led by Leelo Keevallik & Hannah Pelikan, IKOS, SKI

Texts:

AI & Culture

November 1, 2021 - Led by Bodil Axelsson, IKOS, KSFM

Texts:

Beatrice Fazi. "Beyond Human: Deep Learning, Explainability and Representation". Theory, Culture & Society, Nov 2020, 1-23.
Adrian Mackenzie. Machine Learners. Archeology of a Data Practice. MIT Press, 2017. Chapter four Machines Finding Functions.
Joanna Zylinska. AI Art. Machine Vision and Wharped Dreams. Open Humanities Press, 2020. Chapter eight. Seeing like a Machine, Telling like a Human.

AI in Society

November 23, 2021

Strimman lecture with Hannah Pelikan and Ericka Johnson.

AI & Responsibility

December 6, 2021 - Led by Katherine Harrison, TEMA G

Text: Madeleine Clare Elish (2019)

Le mur des je t'aime. Place des Abbesses, Paris. By Britchi Mirela [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons.

The Language and Culture research environment

The Language and Culture research environment is a meeting place for linguistic and literary research in a cultural context.