Living with AI
– Critical Questions for the Social Sciences and Humanities

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!

Conference Workshops

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.

Keynotes

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.

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!

Coming soon…

Tentative Conference Program and Schedule

November 15

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

9:30 – 10:30 Keynote
Sarah Cook, WASP-HS Guest Professor at Umeå University

10:30- 11:45 – Panel lII – 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
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

12:00 – Have a good trip back home!

Registration

Register via the form below to attend the conference.

Conference Chairs

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