I have been elected as a member of the editorial board for „Big Data and Society“.
The recording of my talk and discussions with Koketso Moeti has been released on youtube and Medico‘ site. For now it’s German only, English and Spanish will follow… Be sure to also check the other parts of the series!
Publishing sometimes takes time, but finally the new book edited by Maria Robaszkiewicz and myself is out: Hannah Arendt: Challenges of Plurality collects revised contributions to the conference we organized with Jochen Schmidt in 2018. I covers Arendtian perspectives on pressing issues such as migration, the change of public spaces, affects in politics or racism. It also puts Arendt into dialogue with thinkers as diverse as Adorno or Pierce.
On Monday, 15 November Koketso Moeti and I will be guests and Medico International’s lecture series Troubling Psyches. We will discuss which affective dynamics emerge in public spheres controlled by algorithms and which approaches of a new digital activism enable local and transnational alliances between the excluded. You can join online!
Der neue Sammelband von Florian Sprenger über „Autonome Autos“ ist erschienen. Neben vielen anderen Lesenswerten Beiträgen findet sich dort mein Text: Die Fußgänger:innen der autonomen Kraftfahrzeuge. Dort geht es darum, wie Fußgänger:innen für autonome Kraftfahrzeuge vermittelt werden — nicht nur technisch sondern auch in Bezug auf grundlegende Dispositive des Verkehrs aber z.B. auch die Arbeitsteilung in der Informatik und den Ingenieurswissenschaften. Der Text illustriert die von mir entwickelte Methode der algorithmischen Dispositivanalyse. Sie baut auf Foucault auf und bietet eine kulturwissenschaftliche Methodik für den Umgang mit Texten aus der Informatik.
Das alles gibt es Open Access!
Starting this month at the universities Paderborn and Bieleld: The Collaborative Research Center „Constructing Explainability“ (TRR 318). Our aim is to develop a new approach to explainable AI that is driven by insights from social sciences and cultural studies. This goes beyond often criticized hopes for transparency and considers explanation as a socially situated, constantly negotiated praxis. I am happy to be one of the members of the core team of the TRR and looking forward to the coming reasearch.
Heute Abend 18 Uhr mit Amina Aziz, Jacqueline Saki Aslan, Agnieszka Roguski und mir: „Muster der (In)Differenz: Gossip, Code und Kolonisierte Körper“ (leider nur) im Livestream aus dem M1 Hohenlockstedt. Es geht um die politische Rolle von Gossip in und durch soziale Medien.
On 15 July at 18:00 I will be guest in the lecture series of the CRC „Affective Societies“ in Berlin. The series discusses „affective publics“ and I will talk about „Understanding the affect of algorithmic publics“. I look at the concepts of affect that are at work in widely discussed affective technologies, such as Cambridge Analytica’s predictions or so called „dark patterns“ that aim at manipulating users of digital media. I will show that these concepts of affectivity conform to a very specific view on affect that is driven more by computational feasibility rather than social adequacy. I will present a different reading of these technologies based on affect theories from cultural theory.
The lecture as well as the rest of the series is open for participation online!
Im Rahmen des Begleitprogramms zur App „StadtLandDatenFluss“ habe ich beim Deutschen Volkshochschul-Verband mit Lorena Jaume-Palasí über die Frage diskutiert, inwiefern Algorithmen gerecht sein können oder gerecht gemacht werden können. Die Aufzeichnung der Diskussion ist nun auf Youtube abrufbar.
During the last year, I had the chance to work with many many colleagues in Paderborn and Bielefeld to develop a new approach to explainable AI. In contrast to many others working in the field we do not conceive of explainability as the theoretical availability of information about algorithms and their function. Rather, we take explanation seriously as an act of communication, e.g. in order to justify or scrutinize an algorithmic result. In such uses explanations need to speak to certain social settings, conform to ethical or legal requirements and respect the interests and capabilities of the receiver of explanations. We aim to develop a concept of explainable AI that does justice to these requirements. Our approach has now been published here.