[Air-L] LIVE STREAM TODAY, 12pm EDT: "Apparatuses of recognition: Google, Project Maven, and targeted killing" with Lucy Suchman

[Christian Sandvig]

Hello AoIR: A reminder that this event is today if you would like to tune
in to the stream.  Christian



On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 11:03 AM Christian Sandvig <csandvig at umich.edu>
wrote:

>
> Hello AoIR:
>
> We are launching a new research center soon called ESC: The Center for
> Ethics, Society, and Computing.  We are in a "soft opening" phase right now
> and this Friday we will do our first ESC experiment with a more
> external-facing event. ESC will be live-streaming Lucy Suchman's talk on
> image recognition technology and drone warfare. Prof. Suchman will discuss
> the controversial Pentagon program that led to protests and resignations at
> Google.
>
> Her bio below is too modest: Prof. Suchman is very well-known as an expert
> on human-computer interaction, is famous for her early work at Xerox PARC,
> and was recently president of 4S.
>
> I wanted to flag this for your attention in case you are interested in
> watching. Of course you are also invited to forward this announcement as
> appropriate.
>
> Christian
>
> --
> http://umich.edu/~csandvig/
>
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
> TITLE
> Apparatuses of recognition: Google, Project Maven, and targeted killing
>
> SPEAKER
> Lucy Suchman
>
> DATE, TIME, AND LOCATION
> Friday, April 19, 2019; 12pm-1pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC/GMT-4)
> Light lunch will be served
> Ehrlicher Room, 3100 North Quad, 105 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
> Directions to this room: http://bit.ly/Ehrlicher (follow path #2)
> Free and open to the public, no RSVP is required.
>
> FOR REMOTE PARTICIPANTS
> VIDEO FROM THIS TALK WILL BE STREAMED LIVE
> For video, during the event visit this URL: http://umsi.info/suchman
>
> ABSTRACT
> In June of 2018, following a campaign initiated by activist employees
> within the company, Google announced its intention not to renew a US
> Defense Department contract for Project Maven, an initiative to automate
> the identification of military targets based on drone video footage.
> Defendants of the program argued that that it would increase the efficiency
> and effectiveness of US drone operations, not least by enabling more
> accurate recognition of those who are the program’s legitimate targets and,
> by implication, sparing the lives of noncombatants. But this promise begs a
> more fundamental question: What relations of reciprocal familiarity does
> recognition presuppose? And in the absence of those relations, what schemas
> of categorization inform our readings of the Other?
>
> The focus of a growing body of scholarship, this question haunts not only
> US military operations but an expanding array of technologies of social
> sorting. Understood as apparatuses of recognition (Barad 2007: 171),
> Project Maven and the US program of targeted killing are implicated in
> perpetuating the very architectures of enmity that they take as their
> necessitating conditions. I close with some thoughts on how we might
> interrupt the workings of these apparatuses, in the service of wider
> movements for social justice.
>
> SPEAKER BIO
> Lucy Suchman is Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology at
> Lancaster University in the UK. Her research interests within the field of
> feminist science and technology studies are focused on technological
> imaginaries and material practices of technology design, particularly
> developments at the interface of bodies and machines. Dr. Suchman’s current
> research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of
> human-computer interaction to contemporary warfighting, including the
> figurations that inform immersive simulations, and problems of “situational
> awareness” in remotely-controlled weapon systems. Dr. Suchman is concerned
> with the question of whose bodies are incorporated into these systems, how
> and with what consequences for social justice and the possibility for a
> less violent world.
>
> --
>
> This talk and the speaker series listed below are part of the "soft
> opening" of ESC: The Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing.
> http://esc.umich.edu/
>
> This event is generously supported by the School of Information; the
> Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research; and the
> Department of Communication Studies in the College of Literature, Science,
> and the Arts at the University of Michigan.
>
> Event details on the Web:
> http://esc.umich.edu/event/critical-x-design-lucy-suchman/
> A PDF flyer for this series:
> http://esc.umich.edu/ESC_Events_Flyer_Fall_2019.pdf
>
> ________________________________
>
> All events in this series:
>
>
> CRITICAL x DESIGN: A new event series about ethics, society, and computing
>
> Mar 20 (Wed) 3-4pm, 3100 North Quad, snacks provided
>
> Katherine Behar: Digitally Divided: The Art of Algorithmic (In)Decision
>
> Mar 27 (Wed) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided
>
> Ben Grosser: Less Metrics, More Rando: (Net) Art as Software Research
>
> Apr 11 (Thu) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided
>
> Joy Rankin: Old, Raw, or New: A (New?) Deal for the Digital Age
>
>
> Apr 19 (Fri) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided
>
> Lucy Suchman: Apparatuses of Recognition: Google, Project Maven, and
> Targeted Killing (*) (†)
>
> ________________________________
>
> *The Ethics and Politics of AI: A Week of Events*
>
> Apr 19 (Fri) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided
> Lucy Suchman: *Apparatuses of Recognition: Google, Project Maven, and
> Targeted Killing* (*) (†)
>
> Apr 22 (Mon) 3-4pm, 3100 North Quad, snacks provided
> Anna Lauren Hoffmann: *Data Violence: Discourse and Justice in a Datafied
> World*
>
> Apr 25 (Thu) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided
> Tarleton Gillespie: *Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content
> Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media* (*)
>
> ________________________________
>
>
> (*) -- This event will be live streamed.
>
> (†) -- This event is in *both* the "CRITICAL x DESIGN" and "The Ethics and
> Politics of AI" event series.
>
>
> All talks will be recorded, pending speaker approval.
>
> *All talks will be held in the Ehrlicher Room, 3100 North Quad*, 105 S.
> State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
> Directions to this room: http://bit.ly/Ehrlicher (follow path #2)
> Free and open to the public, no RSVP is required.
>
> These events are generously supported by the School of Information; the
> Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research; and the
> Department of Communication Studies in the College of Literature, Science,
> and the Arts at the University of Michigan.
>
>
>
>