Codification 3.0

Codification 3.0 is a research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. It advances the thesis that the programming or coding of artificial intelligence (AI) can be analysed productively from the viewpoint of a political-juridical understanding of processes of codification. Social bots or driverless cars, for example, not only relocate the established division between analogue and digital, but represent far-reaching modifications of our social world. These transformations take place through code as the relevant medium: an artificial, impenetrable language which could thus be regarded as pure means. Explaining the coding of AI as a process of codification allows to study the developments as systematic forms of normalization and normativisation, similar to the drafting of a legal code. This approach suggests to perceive of AI not as a mere technology, but a political practice that constitutes our social world through such inscriptions. On this approach, the normalizing and normativising effects become subject to juridical description and hence political argument, contributing to the terms and structure of the public debate about AI technologies.

More info (in German): http://portal.volkswagenstiftung.de/search/projectDetails.do?ref=93157