[Commlist] Call for Interventions and Contributions: Shifting AI Controversies

Call for Interventions and Contributions: Shifting AI Controversies

On behalf of the international research project Shaping 21st Century AI, 
the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and 
the ZeMKI, University of Bremen, in cooperation with the research group 
“Politics of Digitalization” at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), 
invite to an international conference on the topic of AI controversies.

The conference will hold keynotes, panels and interventions on the topic 
of AI controversies. Abstracts should be submitted no later than 30 
October 2023.

CONFERENCE
Shifting AI Controversies
Prompts, Provocations & Problematisations for Society-Centered AI
29 & 30 January 2024
Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), Germany
https://www.hiig.de/en/cfc-shifting-ai-controversies/ 
<https://www.hiig.de/en/cfc-shifting-ai-controversies/>

Controversies about AI abound, especially since ChatGPT took over the 
Internet by storm, becoming the most popular applications in the Web’s 
history within only a few months. The current excitement about the 
perils and prospects of general purpose AI applications like ChatGPT is 
only the most recent wave of public interest in the long history of 
“artificial intelligence” (AI). With its metaphysical imaginaries of 
human-machine symbiosis, anthropomorphic robots and machine thinking, 
arguably oversized scientific claims and technological developments in 
this field have always raised concerns. What the current debate makes 
much more visible than previous attention cycles, though, is that 
contemporary AI companies and scientists dominate not only the discourse 
promoting AI’s prospects but also that on AI’s perils. From engineers at 
OpenAI to research pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, technologists and 
industry-based scientists increasingly articulate warnings that AI might 
cause serious and fundamental damage to societies. With this move, the 
already dominant players are now also occupying the space of public 
critique, yielding the risk that activism, social science, critical 
journalism and the arts are pushed even further to the margins of public 
and expert debates. Are we currently having the public controversies on 
AI that we should have, or is AI panic derailing us from actual and 
relevant concerns? How do we get to the controversies that we need and 
to the exploration and articulation of society-centered AI?

Read the full call 
text:https://www.hiig.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Shifting-AI-Controversies.pdf 
<https://www.hiig.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Shifting-AI-Controversies.pdf>

Submission

We welcome contributions from scholars of diverse disciplines as well as 
interventions from civil society, practitioners and developers. Your 
submissions should engage with the questions and provocations posed in 
the complete call for contributions.

Extended abstracts of approximately 4,000 to 6,000 characters in length 
(excl. references) should be submitted no later than 30 October 2023 via 
the link below. Speakers will be notified by 16 November 2023.
https://www.hiig.de/en/cfc-shifting-ai-controversies/ 
<https://www.hiig.de/en/cfc-shifting-ai-controversies/>

Contact

Christian Katzenbach, (katzenbach /at/ uni-bremen.de)
Lena Henkes, (lena.henkes /at/ hiig.de)

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