CALL FOR PAPERS: Digital Symposium // Queer AI. On the Coming Out of Smart Machines

Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden and GenderConceptGroup  organize a digital symposium on AI and Queerness // June 24th -25th, 2021 Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

In response to the rapid progress in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), research in the humanities, social sciences as well as cultural studies has made an effort to draw attention to the problems of exclusion and marginalization associated with AI. Topics of study include the non-existent opportunities for non-binary (including transgender) people to identify themselves outside of heteronormative structures, the non-recognition of people of color (POC) by computer software, as well as the disadvantaging of women in automated application processing in professional contexts. In the field of research that is slowly consolidating around these topics, many voices are pointing to patchy data sets as a main reason for the malfunctions in AI applications and hold out the prospect of dismantling this exclusion by feeding additional multiperspectival data into the underlying data sets. However, knowledge is understood as particular and situational, then possibilities of engaging with AI beyond reductive categorizations may emerge by transcending these same categorizations. What may becomes clear from a queer perspective on AI is the thought, that the binary coding of digital technologies is based on a simplified understanding of representation that is able to inscribe itself into the digital and beyond the data sets. Taking queerness as a theoretical perspective, it becomes evident that every situation is marked by a surplus of meaning, a constant presence of plurality, as well as ambiguity that cannot be grasped by AI.

Based on the above overview, it must be recognized that AI also reflects certain normative images in regard to gender as well as classist and racialized notions, and that AI mediates bodies, actions, and behaviors corresponding to this image through various applications such as autonomous decision-making systems, monitoring systems, or wearables. This problematic connection between categorized images and a vivid and changing environment leads to the question of technical possibilities for the production of social identities characterized by diversity and plurality, as well as mediated by and through digital technologies. The idea of being able to teach machines ambiguity, idiosyncrasy and fluidity with respect to identity, and not just reduce these traits to rigid classifications, should also find a counterpart in a scientific reflection on thinking beyond technology.

The symposium would therefore like to address the relationship between queerness and AI from a more theoretical perspective after having focused primarily on empirical effects with regard to the use of AI. Research in the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies is especially characterized by a diversity of conceptual tools, critical approaches, and traditions in the history of ideas. Based on the attribution made and in view of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, it seems useful to strive for a specification of the discursive entanglements of AI and queerness, for example with regard to their materialities and aesthetics, their dialectical potential, or the understanding of autonomy attributed to them. The aim of the symposium is therefore to explore, from various points of reference, forms of discrimination and the reproduction of normative stereotypes in connection with AI procedures as well as to explore currently conceivable possibilities of reducing such discrimination by AI.

The following terms and related questions are of particular interest:

Emancipation and Representation: Does, and if yes how does, 'intelligent' automation of social behavior transform the view of and intelligibility of queerness? Can broader inclusion strategies within AI-based systematics dismantle discrimination against queer people, and what are the theoretical approaches to such a process of inclusion? Where is potential for resistance and emancipation, or even transformation of digital technologies apart from inclusive training data sets? How can such emancipation succeed, and what are necessary elements of such strategies?

Disruption and Difference: Which positions do different technical perspectives assign to different people – deviation, 'normal', center, peripheral? Which argumentations are used to justify different technical perspectives? Which and whose politics are currently being consolidated in algorithmic culture? What might forms of 'hacking back' look like? In addition to the prominent concept of bias, what are other terms that can be used to capture the differentiating effects of digital technologies?

Historization and Situativity: How can the above described problematic relations be historicized? To which historical traditions of exclusion and devaluation can current digital technologies be traced? What are the potentials and limits in theoretical and empirical terms? 

Submissions: We look to the following fields of study for this interdisciplinary symposium: Critical Data Studies, Gender Studies, Science of History, Cultural and Media Studies, Art and Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology; and we are equally open to submissions from other disciplines especially Natural Sciences. We invite submissions of proposals by email in the form of an abstract (300-500 words) by February 28th, 2021. Please send your paper as a PDF file to . If you have any questions, notes, comments, suggestions or expressions of interest, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Responsible persons: Dr. Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss, GenderConceptGroup; Ann-Kathrin Koster und Michael Klipphahn, Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden