AI Imaginations: Narratives in Digital Futures

How societies imagine artificial intelligence (AI) and how these socio-cultural imaginaries shape innovation, policy, and human–machine relations.

The aim of the workshop is to investigate how societies imagine artificial intelligence (AI) and how these socio-cultural imaginaries shape innovation, policy, and human–machine relations. The project analyses ‘narratives’ engaging AI technologies including AI embodied robots and disembodied chatbots, in literature, films, artistic practices, public discourses, the visions of cultural economy and politics. By doing so, we can consider how and why public imaginaries of AI and its narratives are constructed and diffuse various meanings and practices in order to better understand digital futures. Although research on AI ethics and the potential risks of AI has been extensively discussed, little attention has been given to the ways in which historical traditions, social discourses and political visions in different contexts shape the narratives of AI technologies. Hence, our discussion will draw on an analysis of these narratives to foster dialogue across the boundaries between nature and culture, human and non-human, and the West and the East.

Speakers:
Rainer Winter (Alpen Adria-Universität in Klagenfurt)
The relationship between Al and humans in films and TV series: between domination and humanisation

Marc Ortmann (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Al as Protagonist and Mirror: Socio-Narratives in the Age of Algorithmic Storytelling

Philipp Weitzel (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Worlding Al: Sociotechnical Imaginations as Socionarratology

Tomoko Tamari (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Techno-animism in Japan: Posthuman and Al Futures

Contact: Tomoko Tamari for further information t.tamari@gold.ac.uk

Dates & times

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