AI and Robotics – Social Robot Futures

Watch now: Four talks questioning human-like properties of AI

Jun 11, 2024

Four fascinating talks at the University of Toronto’s public workshop, “Intelligence in the Absence of Life,” are now available on video. Delivered to a packed audience on April 9, 2024, these talks put the so-called human-like properties of AI under the microscope and raised questions concerning the meaning of creativity, intelligence, and ethics today. Hosted by U of T’s Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI), the workshop was organized and moderated by Teresa Heffernan, a 2023-24 Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellow at the JHI.

The talks can be watched on the JHI website or via YouTube:

Paris Marx: Don’t Buy the AI Fantasy
Elke Schwarz: Ethics in Absentia: The Curious Absence of the Human in Moral Reasoning about AI Weapons
Lucy Suchman: Absent Presences in Military Imaginaries of AI-enabled Warfighting
Ron Deibert: AI and the Absence of Civil Accountability

Events

Lecture on AI and the (Post-) Apocalyptic Imaginary

Oct 18, 2022Feb 8, 2024

Starting November 8th, 2022, the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at the University of Heidelberg will be live-streaming a series of weekly lectures that consider “end of the world” themes in artificial intelligence and climate change discourses, and Late Capitalist consumer culture, among other areas of interest.

Discussion

Review of Kate Crawford’s “Atlas of AI”

Mar 22, 2022Jan 31, 2023

By Ellen Nantau

In Atlas of AI (Yale 2021), Kate Crawford takes an ambitious and innovative approach to addressing misconceptions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Through the course of her book, she reveals the human and planetary resources being appropriated at every stage in AI industry supply chains and their associated social and ecological impacts. In doing so, Crawford irrevocably dispels the illusion that portrays AI as a closed system, of a non-human mind existing free of “social, cultural, historical, and political forces” (Crawford 2021, 4-5).

Events

Cyborg Futures Edited Collection

Nov 18, 2020Jan 31, 2023

— Online discussion of new edited book

Join Dr. Teresa Heffernan this Thursday, November 19th (12 noon) for a lively online lunchtime discussion of Cyborg Futures: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Edited by Dr. Heffernan, Cyborg Futures brings together perspectives from fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, sociology, literary theory, and robotics to critically examine the impacts of AI on our work, play, creative expressions, and social interactions.

Events

AI, the Immortality Industry, and the Ethics of Death

Oct 14, 2020Jan 31, 2023

This talk by Teresa Heffernan considers the far reaches of the multi-billion-dollar immortality industry and the money and power behind the scenes that fuels this fantasy science even as the planet teeters on the brink of collapse. After examining some contemporary fictions that challenge big tech and its paradoxical escalation of the end of all life even as it hankers after life without death in its relentless focus on a future that is always “future,” this talk then turns to archaeology and the future’s archaic longings.

News

CFP: AI and Robotics Book Series

Jun 19, 2020Sep 16, 2021

The Social and Cultural Studies of AI and Robotics is an exciting and innovative book series that expands the debates about robotics and artificial intelligence, exploring the pressing concerns about its social and cultural impacts. From the restructuring of work to the automation of historical inequities to the concentration of wealth and power of Big Tech to the founding myths and fictions of AI to its environmental impact, this series welcomes contributions from humanities and social science researchers working at the intersection of technology and humanity.

Discussion

The Tyranny of Life Under Algorithms: A Short Meditation

Nov 24, 2019Jan 31, 2023

By Teresa Heffernan

Alan Turing–the force behind theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and the Universal Turing Machine–was instrumental in cracking intercepted coded messages, which enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis. He was charged with “gross indecency” in 1952 and punished for homosexuality. He submitted to chemical castration in lieu of prison.

Talks/Presentations

On Ethics, AI, and the Humanities

Oct 5, 2019Sep 16, 2021

— Video

In a presentation on the ethical challenges emerging with the rapid expansion of AI and robotics, in which the humanities too have become a target of automation, Teresa Heffernan argues that it is only by maintaining the tensions between these domains that we can hope to have an informed debate about the limits and possibilities of the emergent technology.

Events

The Ethical Imagination: Humanities vs. AI

Sep 2, 2019Jan 31, 2023

— A forthcoming talk by Teresa Heffernan

The era of “disruptive” technologies has given way to an ethical quagmire. Biased algorithms, invasive facial recognition software, proprietary black boxes, the theft and monetization of personal data, and the proliferation of hate-spewing bots and deepfakes have undermined democracy. Killer robots and the automation of war have led to a new arms raise with Vladimir Putin declaring whoever leads in AI will rule the world.

Discussion

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

Jun 4, 2018Jan 31, 2023

By Bryn Shaffer

This March, Saint Mary’s University played host to an engaging and heated debate on the use of autonomous weapons of war, as part of the Automaton! From Ovid to AI public lecture series. The debate, video of which is available at CBC News, was between acclaimed BBC commentator and activist Dr. Noel Sharkey, and Dalhousie philosophy professor Dr. Duncan MacIntosh. It was moderated by Dalhousie professor of philosophy Dr. Letitia Meynell.