Niklas Egberts//The Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Artificial General Intelligence
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Research Associate
NameNiklas Egberts
Doctoral project
Working title: Design After AI: On the Notion of Design in the Age of Agential Computing
Subject area: Cultural Studies
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern, Dr. Andrea Augsten
Abstract
The dissertation project addresses the question of how current developments in Artificial
Intelligence, in particular so-called generative AI, challenge existing notions of design and aims to expand its conceptual repertoire. At the center is design not only as an aesthetic discipline, but as a medium that shapes and influences our perceptions and interactions with the world around us.
In the past two years, research in Artificial Intelligence has seen a rapid surge. Consumer-facing products like OpenAI's ChatGPT have been breaking records in technology adoption and produced remarkable results in benchmarks. Based on the Transformer Architecture, a new type of neural network emerged that has been described as Foundation Models. Among their properties are multimodality, emergence and an increased capacity for generalized learning. These underly the current wave of generative AI technologies and provide the grounds for new affordances to be shaped through design.
Design is investigated on a historical level, considering the genealogy of Human-Computer
Interaction, User Experience Design and Design Thinking, and a conceptual level, which
understands design as a notion that connects concepts such as intelligence, artifice and agency, and inquires into their shifting constellations with regards to AI.
Curriculum Vitae
| since 05/2024 | Fellow of the Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden |
| 2018 | M.A. Cultural Theory and History, Humboldt University of Berlin |
| 2014 | B.A. Communication and Cultural Management, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen |
Academic Presentations
2019 - Techno-ecological Storytelling in Ian Cheng's Emissaries. Presentation at The GreatEnvironemntal Switch: Technology, Ecology and Thinking, hosted at University of Stockholm.
2015 - Towards a Systems-Theoretical Approach to Quantified Self. Presentation at 15th StudentSociology Congress, hosted at University of Tübingen.
Teaching
2017 - 2018: Soft Technologies. Teaching a research-oriented seminar in Cultural Theory at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.