As we face an increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday practices, it becomes more critical than ever to examine how AI affects our lives and society. Researchers in the social sciences and humanities have made essential observations and analyses on this topic. Yet, we still need grounded, situated, and relational understandings of how AI impacts us individually and collectively.
To reach this goal, it is imperative to closely examine the norms, values, and assumptions underpinning current AI research, inquiry about the criticality embedded in scholarly practices, and question the relevance of the methods chosen. We must identify what works well for all groups in society and discuss what needs improvement or change.
This is why WASP-HS welcomes researchers, representatives from industry, and policymakers to discuss these issues on 14-15 November at Malmö Live in Malmö, Sweden.
We look forward to your thoughts and ideas on how to address these challenges so we can work together to contribute to a future we all want to live in.
Welcome to the WASP-HS conference AI for Humanity and Society 2023!
In conjunction with the WASP-HS conference AI for Humanity and Society 2023, WASP-HS arranges workshops with the intention to foster discussion and exchange ideas. Each workshop is a place for conference attendees with shared interests to meet to develop focused discussions; they are also an opportunity to find people who care about the same issues, questions, and research agendas as you and your research group.
Please note that in order to participate in this workshop you must also register for the conference via the event page. Registration for the conference opens on 15 August.
Shannon Valor
Professor in the Ethics of Data and AI, University
of Edinburgh
Human Prediction and Reflection in AI
Would you ever try to chart your path up a dangerous, unfamiliar mountain while looking in a mirror facing behind you? Today’s AI technologies are marketed as the key to predicting and navigating humanity’s uncertain future in a time of crisis. Yet are these new tools clear windows into our future, or are they looking-glass reflections of our past? Can they ever show us what we and our societies can become, where we might go anew, or what is possible for humanity to accomplish together for the first time? In the face of growing planetary and civilizational challenges that require letting go of the unsustainable ways of the past, humanity’s most urgent task is to embrace and renew our capacities for self-creation, moral imagination and above all, wisdom. AI too has a vital role to play in that task – if we have the courage to reclaim, rethink and rebuild these technologies in the name of humane futures.
Sarah Cook
WASP-HS Guest Professor in AI and Art at Umeå University
What can we learn about a world with AI by looking at what artists are doing with information systems?
Works of art made with digital media information systems (including generative AI) can show us, in surprising and prescient ways, what it is like to live in concert with technology, now and in the future. Beyond the media hype around how AI might take the role of artists, my research addresses how artists work alongside and with AI systems (and indeed develop their own). The resulting artworks (in a variety of forms, from performance to poetry, archive interventions to immersive video installations) can communicate complicated issues of life in a data-driven world, such as how we might find kinship with robots, how we might understand or misunderstand one another, what resource intensive computation means for the environment, and whether we can tell the real from the artificial. The ‘Art & AI’ project at UmArts uses transdisciplinarity – interrogating AI as it is used and understood through fields of research in architecture, design, visual studies, law and philosophy – to build curatorial methods for the creation of audience encounters with AI. Working towards a public exhibition of art and AI at the Bildmuseet in 2026, this transdisciplinarity informs the curatorial approach the project takes [distinguishing it from the many previous art exhibitions about AI]. Understanding what each disciplines’ concerns are, ensures that the societal understandings of life with AI systems remain at the forefront of the encounter. Art and AI projects can help us see existing problems anew, can document and date in time common perceptions of technology, and can develop new understandings of the ways we will continue to live with these digital information systems, or not!
Sofia Ranchordas
WASP-HS Guest Professor in Sociology of Law at Lund University
How to be Human Again in the Digital Administrative State
In my presentation I will discuss how to rehumanize the regulation of the digital administrative state. My keynote starts by arguing that in the digital administrative state are losing sight of the citizen, particularly of citizens who need government the most. Administrative law in particular is designed and applied for average citizens. However, drawing on vulnerability theories, I will argue that there is no such thing as an average citizen. Rather, everyone can be vulnerable at some point in life and require some kind of assistance and additional empathy. With the digital government and the growing automation of decision-making, administrative law has become a field of law that is focused on the management of information, the automated assessment of eligibility criteria, the production of automated decisions ‘in bulk’ (e.g., traffic fines), and the formulation of risk factors that anticipate the need of public intervention or predict fraud. This has eliminated any room for assessing the real needs of citizens. My talk will delve into different mechanisms and instruments that we can use to rehumanize the digital welfare state: (i) redesigning the public administration and administrative law procedures with ex ante empathy, considering individual needs in the early stages of social welfare benefits applications; (ii) reshaping the concept of good administration to infuse it with notions of citizenship and meaningful contact; (iii) rethinking how we compensate for the inequality between citizens and the public administration.
09.00 – 12.00 Pre-conference workshops
12.00 – Lunch
12.50 – 13:15 Welcome and introduction
Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change at Lund University
Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Stockholm University
Helena Lindgren, Professor in Computing Science at Umeå University, Acting Program Director of WASP-HS
Kerstin Tham, Vice-Chancellor at Malmö university and professor in Occupational Therapy
13:15 – 14:15 Keynote
Shannon Vallor, Professor in the Ethics of Data and AI, The University of Edinburgh
14:15 -15:30 Panel I: Criticality & AI Studies
Moderator: Katherine Harrison, Associate Professor at the Department of Thematic Studies at Linköping University
Panel: Airi Lampinen, Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction, at Stockholm University
Amanda Lagerkvist, Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Uppsala University
Simon Lindgren, Professor of Sociology at Umeå University
Michael Strange, Associate Professor in International Relations at Malmö University
15:30- 16:00 Break – 30 minutes
16.00-17.00 Keynote
Sofia Ranchordas, WASP-HS Guest Professor in Sociology of Law at Lund University
17.00 –18.15 Panel II: Norms, Assumptions, and Values
Moderator: Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change at Lund University
Panel: Martin Ebers, WASP-HS Guest Professor at Örebro University
Katja De Vries, Assistant Professor in Public Law at Uppsala University
Katie Winkle, Assistant Professor in Social Robotics at Uppsala University
Martin Berg, Professor of Media Technology at Malmö University
18.15 Cocktail and Mingle
9:00 – 9.20 Coffee
09:20-09:30 Lessons from Day One
Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change at Lund University
Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Stockholm University
Liane Colonna, Assistant Professor in Law and Information Technology at Stockholm University, recruited WASP-HS faculty
Donal Casey, Assistant Professor in Commercial Law at Uppsala University, recruited WASP-HS faculty
9:30 – 10:30 Keynote
Sarah Cook, WASP-HS Guest Professor at Umeå University
10:30- 11:45 – Panel III: Methods and Interdisciplinarity
Moderator: Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Stockholm University
Panel: Irina Shklovski, Guest Professor of Communication and Computing at Linköping University
Barry Brown Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Stockholm University
Anne Kaun, Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University
Kivanç Tatar, Assistant Professor in Interaction Design at Chalmers University of Technology, recruited WASP-HS faculty
11:45 – 12:00 Summarizing and Closing Words
Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change at Lund University
Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Stockholm University
12:00 – Have a good trip back home!
Registration for AI for Humanity and Society 2023 is closed. More detailed information about the conference will be sent via e-mail closer to the date of the event to those who have registered.
Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change, Lund University
Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Stockholm University
