[Commlist] Call for AI Otherwise Summer Institute

https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/iccit/ai-otherwise-iccit-summer-institute

AI Otherwise: ICCIT Summer Institute

May 30-June 1, 2023

The Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCIT)

University of Toronto Mississauga

AI Otherwise  'AI Other ways  AI Other ones

The ICCIT Summer Institute will be held from May 30 to June 1, 2023, at 
the University of Toronto Mississauga. With this Summer Institute, we 
assemble to investigate the limits of AI, a theme we locate as part of 
the development of a critical turn in AI research and prototyping. We 
understand limits in the philosophical sense of threshold or horizon as 
well as limits in the socio-technological sense of boundary and boundary 
object (Leigh Star, 2010). We ask what happens to the uncertainties that 
arise around the boundaries of science and technology knowledge when AI 
itself draws boundaries in what is included and what is excluded. How 
does the local history of colonialism and anti-colonialism, 
racialization and anti-racism, across space and time impact the 
boundary-making and -remaking of AI? How can boundaries be re-arranged 
otherwise? (McQuillan, 2022). To counter the re-emergence of a 
technological sublime of advanced automation—a mindset that understands 
ubiquitous computing as enclosing every aspect of life and everyone 
indiscriminately—and its associated “AI spring”—signaled by a growing 
availability of funding—we locate critical technologies of revealing, 
refusal, and resistance, whether we look at critiques such as 
“surveillance capitalism” or “datafication” or “extractivism.” In the 
critical tradition of feminist STS and decolonial thought, we call for 
an AI Otherwise and gather to think through interdisciplinary frameworks 
of other ways of making and doing AI.

The three-day Summer Institute is organized a day after the ICA 2023 
(May 25-29, Toronto) and will feature speakers, paper presentations, 
roundtables, workshops, and experimental sessions. We invite key 
thinkers across critical and technical domains that include machine 
learning, AI ethics, design, history, legal, labour, and platform 
studies, among others, to share work and build a discursive community on 
the subject of AI. Participants will be invited from an international 
community of scholars and researchers as well as the ICCIT and other 
University of Toronto faculty. One of the goals of the Summer Institute 
is to create a community of scholars who are working on these issues 
from multiple fields to challenge the doxas surrounding AI and bring 
complexity to the discussion of its boundaries. We call for submissions 
of papers, panels, round tables, workshops, or experimental formats, 
e.g. critical design interventions, video content etc., on the topic of 
AI Otherwise or thinking the limits of AI across a range of disciplinary 
views. For the Summer Institute, we prioritize panel and workshop 
configurations that include graduate students and emerging scholars. 
Financial support (travel, etc.) for graduate students and emerging 
scholars who are accepted participants can be made available—please inquire.

Submissions

Papers: title + 250 word abstract with specification of disciplinary 
field(s) and a short bio (<50 words).

Panels: a panel title and description (300-400 words), 4-5 paper 
abstracts (title + 250) with specification of disciplinary field(s) and 
short bios (<50 words) of each author.

Round tables: 250 word abstract describing topic of roundtable + short 
description of participant

contributions and short bios (<50 words) of each participant

Workshops: 250-500 word description of workshop + framework for 
participant (e.g, graduate students or mixed group) and short bios (<50 
words) of each participant

Experimental formats: let us know what you have in mind in 250-500 words.

Apply below before March 15, 2023.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfL1jM_4ntdsriIEUqqjeAsvQYbLrfHR2_DAOmD3xPNOwLGdg/viewform 


Read more here.

AI Otherwise: ICCIT Summer Institute team

Co-chairs: Beth Coleman, Julie Chen, Tero Karppi, Lilia Topouzova

Postdoctoral researcher: Sophie Toupin

Jeremy Packer, PhD

Professor

Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology

University of Toronto, Mississauga

Faculty of Information

University of Toronto, St. George

Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine (Duke 2020) 
<https://www.dukeupress.edu/killer-apps>

Prison House of the Circuit: Politics of Control from Analog to Digital 
(Minnesota, 2023) 
<https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-prison-house-of-the-circuit>


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