[Air-L] Final call: AOIR Preconference AI and infrastructure CFP

[Fenwick Mckelvey]

Hi all
To all AOIR attendees, please consider attending. We have ~20 spots for
presentations but we are hoping to hear from you July to gauge interest. We
are asking for short abstracts to help us organize the conference.

Full-day, 15 October 2025 at AOIR 2025

Big AI’s demands for this world are becoming clearer. Microsoft, in 2023,
announced plans to build new data centers with nuclear power to fuel new
energy-hungry models (Calma, 2023). Google and Amazon made similar
announcements subsequently (da Silva, 2024; Olick, 2024). Plans to build
nuclear-powered AI data centers clearly illustrate the scale and
consequences of AI as a social blueprint — rendering clear “the choices
(implicit or explicit) made in the course of technological innovation” and
demanding reflection on “the grounds for making those choices wisely”
(Winner, 1986, p. 18). Building on the material turn in Internet Studies
(Hesmondhalgh, 2022; Sandvig, 2013), our preconference gathers scholars to
explore ruptures against the growing cyberphysical project of “Big AI” (van
der Vlist et al., 2024) or “AI as platform” (Mahnke & Bagger, 2024).

We welcome all AOIR attendees to participate in our preconference. To help
us organize the pre-conference, please complete this survey to request a
presentation slot, or to be a facilitator:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=hfFpVS_SE06YUM5bGrzS6BGNzWCmCiNHj1pdGOnUcTpUQlRIWlpDUkFWQjRaNDFJUUtFQVE2SFBHMS4u

We ask potential presenters and facilitators to please complete the form by
27 June 2025 to give us time to organize. Please read the preconfernece's
description below.

Our preconference has three objectives:

Share findings and digital methods that expose AI’s global technological
footprint with an emphasis on the Americas or engaged and speculative
research on alternative AI infrastructures that may include local or
regional infrastructure, the fediverse, frugal AI infrastructures,
decentralized, and/or distributed infrastructures;
Facilitate comparative policy research on measures to promote alternative
AI infrastructures as well as benefit public interest and community
benefits for these alternative infrastructures;
Develop a joint statement about recommendations for a new infrastructure
for AI to be written collaboratively by discussants.
Together, our pre-conference seeks to cultivate an international research
community dedicated to understanding AI’s infrastructural impact and its
alternatives. The conference offers international scholars a chance to
develop collaborative projects as well as shape collective policy
recommendations. Outputs directly advance the annual call for “strategies
and tactics to address the ruptures caused by platformization” in this case
of AI?
We focus our call on questioning what public interest infrastructure would
look like for AI. Public interest AI refers to “support those outcomes best
serving the long-term survival and well-being of a social collective
construed as a ‘public’” (Public Interest AI, n.d.). The Paris Charter on
Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest (2025), published after the
Paris AI Summit, aims to “encourage a more comprehensive and inclusive
design of AI in the public interest, in terms of technology, organization
and institutions that serve different jurisdictions and communities in
attaining similar success.” Public interest AI, however, is already a
contentious term and not dissimilar to other terms “AI for Good” or
“Responsible AI” that can act as ethics washing (Bourne, 2024; Wagner,
2018). Scholarly attention is required to define public interest AI as a
critical concept.

The preconference will be a full day to ensure there is time for
presentations, networking, and collaborative activities. Participants will
be selected through a peer-reviewed call with two tracks, one for
presentations and a second for discussants and facilitators. Presentations
will advance objectives 1 and 2 in the morning. The afternoon will leverage
discussants and facilitators to develop collaborative research projects and
synthesize research into a joint statement.

Our schedule can accommodate two parallel tracks to welcome 20
presentations and a total of 50 participants. A closing plenary will
showcase key themes, with discussants offering reflections and key insights
from the day.

Our preconference intends to be multilingual, with collaborators working in
English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The steering committee will
accept abstracts in all four languages.

The preconference is made possible by the Chaire de recherche du Québec sur
l’intelligence artificielle et le numérique francophones and the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Organizers: Fenwick McKelvey-Concordia University, Canada; Mónica
Humeres-Universidad de Chile; Claudia López-Universidad Técnica Federico
Santa María; Veridiana Domingos Cordeiro-University of São Paulo; Luciano
Frizzera-University of Waterloo; Nicolas Chartier-Edwards – Institut
national de la recherche scientifique

References
Calma, J. (2023, September 26). Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI
ambitions. The Verge.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23889956/microsoft-next-generation-nuclear-energy-smr-job-hiring

da Silva, J. (2024, October 15). Google turns to nuclear to power AI data
centres. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2022). The Infrastructural turn in Media and Internet
Research Proposal review. In P. McDonald (Ed.), The Routledge companion to
media industries (pp. 132–142). Routledge.

Mahnke, M. S., & Bagger, C. (2024). Navigating platformized generative AI:
Examining early adopters’ experiences through the lens of data
reflectivity. Convergence, 30(6), 1974–1991.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241300857

Olick, D. (2024, October 16). Amazon goes nuclear, plans to invest more
than $500 million to develop small modular reactors. NBC News.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/amazon-goes-nuclear-plans-invest-500-million-develop-small-modular-rea-rcna175673
Public Interest AI. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2025, from
https://publicinterest.ai/

Sandvig, C. (2013). The Internet as Infrastructure. In W. H. Dutton (Ed.),
The Oxford Handbook of Internet studies (pp. 86–108). Oxford University
Press.
The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest. (2025,
February 11). Elysee.Fr.
https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2025/02/11/the-paris-charter-on-artificial-intelligence-in-the-public-interest

van der Vlist, F., Helmond, A., & Ferrari, F. (2024). Big AI: Cloud
infrastructure dependence and the industrialisation of artificial
intelligence. Big Data & Society, 11(1), 20539517241232630.
https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241232630

Wagner, B. (2018). Ethics As An Escape From Regulation: From
“Ethics-washing” to Ethics-shopping? In E. Bayamlioğlu, I. Baraliuc, L.
Janssens, & M. Hildebrandt (Eds.), Being Profiled (pp. 84–89). Amsterdam
University Press; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvhrd092.18

Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age
of High Technology. University of Chicago Press.

--
Be good,
Fen

Be good,
Fen