[Air-L] Join for a talk by Elizabeth Losh at Utrecht Uni, March 17, 2025. Registration required

Fri Feb 28 00:22:39 PST 2025

   Hello AoIR Friends!

   ***event announcement w/ the usual apologies for crossposting ***

   On March 17, I’ll launch the first of a series of meet-up events at
   Utrecht University as part of my new initiative, the Futures +
   Literacies Lab. We’re delighted to invite the amazing Elizabeth Losh,
   who will give a talk entitled AI Literacy and Public Memory: Generating
   Future Pasts, followed by discussion among participants. Please join if
   you’re in the area, and if there’s enough interest, we can livestream
   the talk.

   When: Monday, March 17, 15:00-16:45
   Where*: Room 0.04, Muntstraat 2a, Utrecht University, 3512EV Utrecht,
   the Netherlands)
   RSVP: Yes, please register for this event
   here: [1]https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7

   Event is in person, but if you can’t be here in person and still want
   to attend? Register, and indicate this in the registration and we’ll
   try to accommodate!

   (*location may change depending on number of participants )

   Talk title: AI Literacy and Public Memory: Generating Future Pasts
   Featuring special guest: Professor Elizabeth Losh, William & Mary
   University, USA

   Abstract: As new machine learning technologies are created to predict
   the future, they may also destabilize the past. Generative AI has been
   known to fabricate quotations from historical records and change
   depictions of prior events. Even when these instances are rare, they
   undermine the stability and coherence of public memory. For example,
   Google’s Gemini produced misleading images when prompted to produce
   illustrations for “a US Senator from the 1800s” or “a 1943 German
   soldier." In response to the controversy, the company’s senior vice
   president admitted that the system would “occasionally generate
   embarrassing, inaccurate or offensive results.” Generative AI may also
   perpetuate biased narratives through reliance on information and
   opinions already in circulation, rather than drawing from new research
   and marginalized or historically suppressed perspectives, and it may
   neglect intersectional understandings of identity. However, it is also
   important to highlight creative uses of these technologies to imagine
   other possible origin stories that emphasize the agency and resilience
   of people of the past, the richness of “little data," and innovative
   approaches to speculative nonfiction. This talk will
   feature experiments with generative AI by galleries, libraries,
   archives, and museums to explore the making of future pasts.

   About the speaker: Elizabeth Losh is the Duane A. and Virginia S.
   Dittman Professor of American Studies and English with a specialization
   in New Media Ecologies at William & Mary, USA, where she also directs
   the Equality Lab. Losh is well known for her research about communities
   that produce, consume, and circulate digital content. Much of this body
   of work concerns the rising influence of AI and simulation
   technologies, the legitimation of political institutions through
   digital evidence, representations of war, violence, and disease in
   social media and games, and online discourse about human
   rights.Previously she directed the Culture, Art, and Technology Program
   at the University of California, San Diego. She currently co-chairs the
   Modern Language Association - Conference on College Composition and
   Communication Joint Task Force on Writing and AI.

   Losh is the is the author of Selfie Democracy: The New Digital Politics
   of Disruption and Insurrection (MIT Press, 2022), Hashtag (Bloomsbury,
   2019), The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital
   University (MIT Press, 2014), and Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History
   of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster,
   Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press, 2009). She also edited the
   collection MOOCs and Their Afterlives: Experiments in Scale and Access
   in Higher Education (University of Chicago, 2017) and co-edited Bodies
   of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital
   Humanities (Minnesota, 2018) with Jaqueline Wernimont.

   When: Monday, March 17, 15:00-16:45
   Where*: Muntstraat 2a, 0.04*
   RSVP: Yes, please register for this event
   here: [2]https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7

   All the best, and of course, if you have questions, feel free to email
   me directly,

   Annette

References

   1. https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7
   2. https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7
   3. https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/department-of-media-and-culture-studies
   4. mailto:a.n.markham at uu.nl
   5. http://www.uu.nl/staff/anmarkham
   6. https://annettemarkham.com/