[Air-L] CfA: Workshop "AI-Technology as Interactional Human Culture: Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle

[fester-seeger at europa-uni.de]

Dear AoIR community,

 

We are organising an interdisciplinary workshop at the European University
Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), where we would like to discuss with scholars
from computer linguistics, computer sciences, sociology, sociolinguistics,
philosophy, anthropology and embodied/enactive/distributed cognitive science
how AI-Technology can be understood as distributed human-to-human
interaction.

 

See below for our call for abstracts 

 

 

***CALL FOR ABSTRACTS***

 

*INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP AI-TECHNOLOGY AS INTERACTIONAL HUMAN CULTURE:
LANGUAGE, DATA PRACTICE AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE*

 

*MARCH 30-31, 2023, EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY VIADRINA FRANKFURT (ODER), GERMANY*

*DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: DECEMBER 31, 2022*

 

*KEYNOTE SPEAKERS*

For now, we are pleased to announce following keynote speakers: 

Emily Bender, University of Washington 


Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, University of Warsaw 


Andreas Hepp, University of Bremen

 

Nicolas Flores-Herr, Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and
Information Systems

 

 

*WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION*

In this interdisciplinary workshop, we discuss AI culture from a critical
anthropological, sociological and linguistic perspective. We treat
AI-culture as human and interactional practice and investigate it as
embedded in wider social structures as well as linguistic conditions. Within
this view, users and programmers of AI are no autonomous individuals but
part of communities based on social affiliation, language, shared cultural
practice and economic intentions. Together with scholars and practitioners,
we seek to give attention to the people behind the systems and to their
societal and linguistic embeddings and critically engage with the role of
living human and 'enlanguaged' beings within AI systems.



*AI-TECHNOLOGY AS HUMAN INTERACTION*


Given that human living beings construct and use AI technologies, we may
understand such technologies as a complex type of interactional culture
whose human participants are distributed in space and time. In this
interactional ecology, language data are central as they ground many
constructions and employments. And yet, languages are themselves an outcome
of socio-technological histories and histories of inequality and not 'raw
data'. In this sense, data "do not offer access to the social world 'as it
is' but an access to the procedures whereby powerful organizations attempt
to construct a world on which they act" (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 
163). 

*WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION*


In this interdisciplinary workshop, we discuss AI-culture from a critical
anthropological, sociological and linguistic perspective. We treat
AI-culture as human and interactional practice and investigate it as
embedded in wider social structures as well as linguistic conditions. Within
this view, users and programmers of AI are no autonomous individuals but
part of communities based on social affiliation, language, shared cultural
practice and economic intentions. Together with scholars and practitioners,
we seek to give attention to the people behind the systems and to their
societal and linguistic embeddings and critically engage with the role of
living human and 'enlanguaged' beings within AI-systems. 

*RESEARCH QUESTIONS*


With the ambition to create an open discussion that is cross-theoretical,
cross-disciplinary and bridges the divide of academic and applied practice,
this workshop focuses on the following questions: 

- How do social values and cultural traditions, among them beliefs about
machines, commercial interests, technological 
affordances and notions of language frame the development of AI technology? 

- How do traditions of writing, established language norms, the dominance of
English and people's beliefs about language shape the programming of
speech-enabled AI or translation technologies? What is the role of
non-standardised forms, 
language change and variation, sound-based social positioning, bodily
gestures and poetic functions in AI language models? 

- How do users co-construct and experience technologies in embodied,
language-specific and culturally shaped ways?

How does human-to-human interaction as well as social normative discourse
impact people's use and co-creation of AI-systems in their homes or
workplaces? What is the effect of the affordances of machine interaction on
users' speech as an embodied and conversational practice? Related to these
practices, what kinds of human language data feed back into servers of
companies? 

- And, finally, what do we learn from all this with regards to the question
what constitutes democratic, culturally sensitive and human-centred AI? 


*WHAT TO DO*

Please send abstracts (up to 500 words plus references) to
fester-seeger at europa-uni.de by December 31, 2022. 
The organizers expect to make final decisions on the program by January 31,
2023. 

*ORGANIZERS* 

Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger, PhD 
Prof. Dr. Britta Schneider

 

 

 

Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoc Network Brandenburg


Professur für Sprachgebrauch und Migration

Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät

Europa-Universität Viadrina

 <mailto:mt.fester.seeger at gmail.com> mt.fester.seeger at gmail.com |
<mailto:fester-seeger at europa-uni.de> fester-seeger at europa-uni.de

 

Open call for abstracts for International Workshop "AI-Technology as
Interactional Human Culture: Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle" at
European University Viadrina (March 30 & 31 2023).  

You can find CfA and further information here.
<https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/sw/sprachgebrauch-und-migration
/Vortraege_-Talks/AI-Technology-as-Interactional-Human-Culture/index.html>