Events
Critical AI’s main focal point for Fall 2021 is our Ethics of Data Curation workshop (to be held over Zoom), the product of a National Endowment for the Humanities and Rutgers Global sponsored international collaboration between Rutgers and the Australian National University. The lead organizers for the series are Katherine Bode and Baden Pailthorpe at ANU and Lauren M.E. Goodlad at Rutgers. All of the workshops and associated talks are free and open to the public but space is limited so please register well in advance (see schedule and registration links below).
“Artificial Intelligence” (AI) today centers on the technological affordances of data-centric machine learning. While talk of making AI ethical, democratic, human-centered, and inclusive abounds, it suffers from lack of interdisciplinary collaboration and public understanding.
At the heart of AI’s social impact is the determinative power of data:
the leading technologies derive their “intelligence” from mining huge troves of data (often the product of unconsented surveillance) through opaque and resource-intensive computation.
The Big Tech tendency to favor ever-larger models that use data “scraped” from the internet creates complications of many kinds including
the under-presentation of women, people of color, and people in the developing world;
the mistaken belief that stochastic text-generating software like GPT-3 truly “understands” natural language;
the misguided haste to uphold this technology as the “foundation” on which the future of all AI will be built;
and the environmental and social impact of privileging ever-larger models that emit tons of carbon and cost millions of dollars to train.
Our Ethics of Data Curation workshop invites you to join a network of cross-disciplinary scholars including leading thinkers on the question of data curation and data-centric machine learning technologies. Please join the discussion, or if the time doesn’t work for you, watch the recordings of our workshop meetings and join us on Critical AI’s blog for asynchronous conversations.
Note: at present we are still organizing the details of various sessions, including the readings, but if you register in advance we will be certain to email you as soon as the links to readings are live!
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SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION LINKS
Meeting 1: MARKET ONTOLOGIES
A facilitated discussion of recent articles on the possibility of general artificial intelligence through reinforcement learning and the moral effects of market-mediated data analysis.
Th Feb. 10, 2022 at 5:30 PM EST (Feb. 11, 9:30 AM AEDT)
Register here for the facilitated discussion at 5:30PM EST
Register here for the workshop discussion to follow
- Co-facilitators: Lauren M. E. Goodlad (English/Critical AI, Rutgers) and Caroline E. Schuster (Anthropology/Centre for Latin American Studies, ANU).
- Primary Readings: Silver, Singh et al. “Reward is Enough” & Fourcade and Healy, “Seeing Like a Market”
- Look out for Lee Vinsel’s blog after the event.
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Special Book Event: Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World
A book talk with Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (Sociology, University College London)
Fri. Mar. 4, 2022 12:00 PM EST
Register here for the book talk at 12:00PM EST
Register here for the workshop discussion to follow
- Moderator/Introducer: Jamie Pietruska (History, Rutgers)
- Respondent: Justin Joque (Visualization Librarian, U. Michigan)
- Primary Reading: Komporozos-Athanasiou, “Introduction” to Speculative Communities
- Optional Readings: Komporozos-Athanasiou, “Speculating on Chaos in Financialized Capitalism” & “Winning in the Real Fake”
- Look out for Jamie Pietruska’s blog after the event.
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Meeting 2: SUBMARINE ONTOLOGIES/ONTOLOGIES OF JUDGMENT
A facilitated discussion of recent work by philosopher and information scientist Brian Cantwell Smith (Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human, U. of Toronto)
Th Mar. 10, 2022 at 5:30 PM EST (Mar. 11, 9:30 AM AEDT)
Register here for the facilitated discussion at 5:30PM EST
Register here for the workshop discussion to follow
- Co-facilitators: Katherine Bode (Data-Rich Literary History, ANU) and Christopher Newfield (Director of Research, ISRF)
- Primary Readings: “Introduction” and Chapters 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 13 from Smith’s The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment
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Meeting 3: THE EVERYTHING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD BENCHMARK
A talk and discussion with Emily M. Bender (Howard and Frances Nostrand Endowed Professor of Linguistics, U. of Washington) sharing research prepared in collaboration with Inioluwa Deborah Raji, Amandalynee Paullada, Emily Denton, and Alex Hanna.
Th Mar. 24, 2022 5:30PM EST (Mar. 25, 8:30AM AEDT)
Register here for Emily Bender’s talk at 5:30PM EST
Register here the workshop discussion to follow
- Moderator/Introducer: Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers)
- Primary Readings: Paullada, Raji, Bender, Denton, and Hanna “AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark”
- Optional Reading: Paullada, Raji, Bender, Denton, and Hanna “Data and its (Dis)contents: A Survey of Dataset Development and Use in Machine Learning Research“
- Look out for a blog by Meredith Martin, Natasha Ermolaev, and Grant Wythoff (Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton) after the event.
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Meeting 4: INDIGENOUS ONTOLOGIES
An interview with the creators of an indigenous artworks installation, the Tracker Data Project. Genevieve Bell (School of Cybernetics, ANU) interviews Adam Goodes, Angie Abdilla, and Baden Pailthorpe
Th Apr. 21, 2022 5:30PM EST (Apr. 22, 7:30AM AEDT)
Register here for the interview at 5:30PM EST
Register here for the workshop discussion to follow
- Panel: Adam Goodes (Go Foundation), Angie Abdilla (Art, Architecture, and Design, UNSW), Baden Pailthorpe (School of Art & Design, ANU)
- View in Advance: Tracker Data Project Teaser Video
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Meeting 5: DATAFIED ONTOLOGIES
A facilitated discussion of recent articles on the onto-epistemological dimensions of human data assemblages and the “ghost workers” behind the curtain.
Th Apr. 28, 2022 5:30PM EST (Apr. 29, 7:30AM AEDT)
Register here for the facilitated discussion at 5:30PM EST
Register here for the workshop discussion to follow
- Co-facilitators: Gavin J.D. Smith (Sociology, ANU) and Lori Moon (PhD. and NLP Researcher, Elemental Cognition, NYC)
- Primary Readings: Lupton, “How do Data Come To Matter?Living and Becoming with Personal Data” and “Introduction”, Ch. 1 and Ch. 3 from Gray and Suri’s Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
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Meeting 6: THE ONTOLOGICAL LIMITS OF CODE
A facilitated discussion of recent publications on algorithmic ethics and the notion of interpretable models.
Th. May 5, 5:30PM EST (May 6, 7:30AM AEDT)
Register here for facilitated discussion at 5:30PM EST
Register here for workshop discussion to follow
- Co-facilitators: details coming soon!
- Primary Readings: Ch. 2 from Amoore’s Cloud Ethics and Lipton’s “The Mythos of Model Interpretability"
- Optional Readings: “Introduction” and Ch. 4 from Cloud Ethics
- Suggested Further Reading: Mackenzie & Munster, “Platform Seeing: Image Ensembles and Their Invisualities”
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