AI in Society Seminar

The seminar offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussing Humanities 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

This seminar is a reading seminar and we welcome seminar participants to bring thoughts and questions about the texts for each session.

The seminar is currently led by Hannah Pelikan, PhD student in Language and Culture at the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS). It is co-organized by Jesper Olsson (IKOS), Ericka Johnson (Tema) and Katherine Harrison (Tema).

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

Programme spring 2022

Seminars

The seminars are held the first Monday of each month, between 13.00 and 15.00.

In preparation to the seminars we will read 1-3 articles. We encourage you to bring questions, ideas and remarks to the seminar for a lively discussion. You will find the articles beneath. The seminars are held in English.

The seminars are held on Zoom, until the situation allows us to meet in real life on Campus Valla.

AI & Sustainability

Monday, February 28, 13:15-15:00

Led by Katarina Sperling & Hannah Pelikan

Vinuesa et al. 2020

Galaz et al. 2021

Contact

Contact Hannah Pelikan for questions, access to articles and link to Zoom.

Previous seminars

AI, Language & Anthropomorphisation

October 4, 2021

Led by Leelo Keevallik & Hannah Pelikan, IKOS, SKI

Texts:

Dingemanse (2020)

Stokoe et al. (2021)

Brooker et al. (2019)

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.