Click here for program (PDF form) for Rethinking the Inevitability of AI, Part 2: Assimilation and Refusal in The History of AI on December 6, 2024
Attendees may register for the conference link here by December 5th.
Full text of program is also below:
Rethinking the Inevitability of AI, Part 2:
Assimilation and Refusal in The History of AI
December 6, 2024 (registrants will receive zoom link the week before the conference)
Conference time zone is EDT (UTC-4): https://time.is/Charlottesville
Schedule:
9:00 am - 10:30 am EDT (UTC-4)
Opening Remarks
Opening Keynote: "Historicizing AI Abolition: Data Extractivism Across the Life Cycle and the Supply Chain"
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Tamara Kneese, Data and Society Institute and author of Death Glitch
Biography: Dr. Kneese directs Data & Society's Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab (AIMLab). Before joining D&S, she was lead researcher at Green Software Foundation, director of developer engagement on the Green Software team at Intel, and assistant professor of Media Studies and director of Gender and Sexualities Studies at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond (Yale University Press, 2023). Tamara holds a PhD in Media, Culture and Communication from NYU.
Discussant: Khari Johnson, CalMatters and University of Virginia
Biography: Journalist Khari Johnson is a practitioner fellow at UVA's Digital Technology for Democracy Lab. He has written about how artificial intelligence impacts people, their communities, and society for nearly a decade. He initially focused his reporting on consumer technology and startup funding rounds, but today he explores AI policy solutions to protect human rights and how AI is used in policing, schools, and health care. Johnson currently works as a tech reporter at CalMatters and previously worked at WIRED and VentureBeat.
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Panel 1: Education and Justice
Chair: David Nemer, University of Virginia
1. “AI, Ethics, and the Environment: Contextualizing Sociotechnical Systems for Undergraduate Engineering Students,” Bryn Seabrook (University of Virginia)
2. “Computational Coloniality: Parallels Between Physical and Digital Resource Mining in African Communities,” Sanjana Paul (Earth Hacks), Wilhelmina Ndapewa Onyothi Nekoto (Earth Hacks and Masakhane), Camille Minns (Earth Hacks)
3. "Education to Work: How Higher Education Technology Policies Will Shape the Workforce and the Future Through Our Students," Chris Miciek (Thomas Jefferson University)
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Panel 4: Labor and Technology in the AI Boom
Chair: Medhasweta Sen, University of Virginia
1. “Servile Technology & Its Limitation: The Case-Study of South Asian Nations,” Smriti Sharma (University of Virginia)
2. “The Paradox of ‘Poverty Alleviation’ AI Training, Labor and Extractive Media in China,” Suchen Ding (University of California, Irvine)
3. “Tracing progress of anti-Black and intersectional racisms in AI and its predecessors: 1884-2024,” Boz Handy Bosma (IBM)
4. “Agile Production,” Donald Bertulfo (Delft University of Technology)
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm “Lunch” Break
Use the zoom room(s) to chat with fellow conference members over lunch or whatever is the relevant meal time in your time zone. Come and go as you please, stay for all, part, or none!
1:30-2:30 pm
Panel 2: AI’s Environmental Impacts
Chair: Meg Wiessner, University of Virginia
1. “Towards Monitoring the Environmental Degradation Index of AI,” Srija Chakraborty (USRA, NASA Black Marble Science Team)
2. “Reclaiming software: Licensing as a tool for climate action in open-source communities,” Janna Frenzel (Concordia University)
3. “AI Fictions and Futures: An Ecological Framework for AI,” Joanna Boehnert (Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University) and Alistair Alexander (Reclaimed Systems and University of Europe for Applied Sciences.)
4. “The Aesthetics of the Ordinary: Alviso in Silicon Valley,” Sreela Sarkar (Santa Clara University)
2:30-2:45 pm BREAK
2:45-3:45 pm
Panel 3: Eugenics, Race, and Colonialism in the AI Boom
Chair: Coleen Carrigan, University of Virginia
1. “The Eugenics in AI,” Joshua Earle (University of Virginia)
2. “Carceral Diffusion: From Galton's Criminal Composites to Horse-riding Astronauts and Beyond,” Eleanor Dare (University of Cambridge)
3. “Generative Pasts of AI,” Selena Savic (University of Amsterdam)
4. "Frank Rosenblatt and the Perceptron: Origins, Tensions and Inflated Claims," Hugh McCabe (TU Dublin and ECT Lab)
3:45-4:45 pm
Panel 5: Believability and Reliability in AI
Chair: Amanda Wyatt Visconti, University of Virginia
1. “On Believability: Photography and the Artificial Image,” Bethany Berard (Carleton University)
3. “Inventing Inevitability. An historical analysis of the human choices driving the impacts of AI systems,” Diletta Huyskes (University of Milan)
4. “Reconsidering AI’s Inefficiency: Rogue, Video Games, and Computing Resources,” Trevor Redd Smith (University of California, Irvine)
4:45-5:00 pm BREAK
5:00-6:00 pm
Panel 6: AI Infrastructures
Chair: Maria Lungu, University of Virginia
1. “Centering the Data: Artificial Intelligence Infrastructures and their Discontents,” Dibyadyuti Roy (University of Leeds) and Souvik Kar (Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad)
2. “The History of Silicon and the Future of Computers,” Adam Quinn (University of Oregon)
3. “Generative AI And Cascading Infrastructure Failures,” Anthony Bucci (Practitioner, Independent Scholar)
6:00-7:00 pm
Panel 7: Dirty Data and the Environment
Chair: Stephen Johnson, University of Virginia
1. “The Cloud as a Site of Resistance: A comparative analysis of community resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure and data centers,” Jenna Ruddock (Free Press and University of Amsterdam)
2. “Plantation is a Factory is a Supercomputer: Scalability and Openness in the Political Economy of AI,” Valentin Goujon (Sciences Po)
3. “Tracing data centers using computing histories, a tool for comprehensive contestation,” Anushka Mittal (Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam)
4. “The Cloud, the U.S. Civil War, and the ‘War on Coal’: The Rise of Data Centers in Loudoun County, Virginia,” Paul Ceruzzi (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian)
7:00-7:15 Concluding Remarks/Conference Close
