[Air-L] In person and online talk - Jeremy Knox: AI, Education and Agamben's Anthropological Machine

[Gavin Duffy]

Hello,

I am very happy to invite you to the upcoming session in the community lecture series run by the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths. The upcoming talk is on Wednesday 22nd October, 17:00-19:00 (BST), with Dr Jeremy Knox (University of Oxford) discussing his research about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and education. This will be held in person on the Goldsmiths campus at the Professor Stuart Hall Building (LG01) from 17:00-19:00. There will also be a Teams stream of the presentation, the link for which can be found here<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YWJhNWJjMzQtNzY4Ni00Zjc0LTk1ODktOGYyNDczN2Q2YWY3%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%220d431f3f-20c1-461c-958a-46b29d4e021b%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22b822f1ee-ece1-4dc1-bfba-e43590a62b8b%22%7d>.

This talk will develop an experimental application of Agamben’s (2004) concept of the anthropological machine in order to examine the ways ‘human’ teaching is distinguished from the functioning of AI in policy and commercial ‘Ed Tech’ promotion. Examples of Department for Education (DfE) policy in the UK, as well as promotional material from OpenAI, will be analysed to suggest different ways in which the ‘human’ aspects of teaching are differentiated and justified, while advocating for widespread adoption of automated AI technologies across the education sector. Drawing on Agamben’s work, such efforts will be suggested, not only to be contradictory, fabricated, and overly simplistic accounts of conducive human-machine relations, but also to conceal a profound and troubling sub-divisioning of the teaching profession, with the potential to undermine public education. The talk will conclude by situating these educational concerns within the wider unravelling of social relationships exacerbated by AI, and gesture towards the more radical theories of hybrid human-technology entanglements that might inform a social justice orientation to teaching in an era of automated and data-driven technologies.
Further information about the event can be found here<https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=15628>.

These sessions are open to everyone so please do come along if you're interested. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know at g.duffy at gold.ac.uk<mailto:g.duffy at gold.ac.uk>.
Thank you very much,
Gavin Duffy