(re)programming: AI
Better Machines for Better Humans With Kate Crawford

Kate has travelled the planet, visiting the sites that reveal the true costs of artificial intelligence as an extractive industry, consuming natural resources, labour and vast quantities of data. In the process, she has also imagined better ways of building and deploying those technical tools in ways that empower people to improve their lives and communities.

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence. Her work focuses on understanding large-scale data systems in the wider contexts of history, politics, labor, and the environment. She is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR-NYC, and she currently holds the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Kate’s work also includes collaborative projects and visual investigations. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler won the Beazley Design of the Year Award, and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her collaboration with the artist Trevor Paglen produced Training Humans – the first major exhibition of the images used to train AI systems. Their investigative essay, Excavating AI, won the Ayrton Prize from the British Society for the History of Science. Crawford’s latest book, ATLAS OF AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligenc, was published by Yale University Press this month, and has been described as “timely and urgent” by Science.

Reading List:

[Book]: ATLAS OF AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

[Installation]: Anatomy of an AI System

[Talk]: You and AI (The Royal Society)

Special guests:

Sanela Jahić is an intermedia artist who, through technological tools and often in cooperation with experts in mechanical engineering, automation, software and electronics, constructs visual and technologically supported kinetic objects and installations that problematize society and individuals in it.

Lenart J. Kučić is a journalist and podcaster at investigative medium Pod črto, editor of podcasting network Marsowci, and co-editor of Disenz magazine. He follows the trends in telecommunications and information technologies (IT) and tracks the changes brought about by the convergence of the communication and media industries. He is the author and co-author of several books, expert articles and studies on the topics of media ownership and new media.

Nika Mahnič is a researcher of the digital condition(ality), and a PhD student in Politics at Queen Mary University in London focusing on proprietary analytics and automated decision-making systems in the UK public administration. They are a co-curator of Grounded festival of electronic music, critical thinking and activism.