24-25.6.2021: "Queer AI. On the coming out of smart machines". Symposium of Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden & GenderConceptGroup
An event of the Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden in collaboration with the GenderConceptGroup, TU Dresden (TUD)
Introduction
In recent years, research in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies in particular has made some efforts to draw attention to the problems of exclusion and marginalization associated with digital technologies in view of the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) processes. These include the lack of opportunities for trans or intersex people to identify themselves outside of heteronormative binary patterns, the unsuccessful perception of people of color through facial recognition software or the discrimination of women in automated application procedures in everyday working life. In the field of research that builds on this problem, many voices point to a patchy data set and hold out the prospect of breaking up exclusion by feeding in additional data from plural perspectives.
However, queer feminist knowledge is always understood as particular, situational and incomplete. This opens up possibilities for dealing with AI that attempt to transcend reductive categorizations. What becomes clear from a queer perspective, however, is that the binary coding of digital technologies is based on a simplified understanding of representation, which inscribes itself into the digital beyond the data sets. Queerness, in contrast, always points to a surplus of meaning, to the constant presence of plurality as well as to ambiguities and ambiguities that can only be grasped in a particular way.
Based on such an inventory, it should have become clear that AI primarily reflects certain normative gender images as well as classist and racialized ideas and systematically conveys bodies, actions and behaviours corresponding to this image through autonomous decision-making systems, surveillance systems or wearables. This raises the question of the politics and ethics of machine embodiments on the one hand and the technical possibilities of producing social identities characterized by diversity and plurality on the other, which are mediated by and through digital technologies. The idea of being able to teach machines ambiguity, uniqueness and fluidity in relation to identity and not just reduce them to rigid classifications should also find a counterpart in a scientific reflection on thinking beyond technology.
The symposium was therefore dedicated to the relationship between queerness and AI from a more theoretical perspective - following the previous empirical focus on the effects of the use of AI. Research in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies is characterized in particular by a diversity of conceptual instruments, critical approaches and traditions in the history of ideas. In view of the diverse disciplinary backgrounds, it therefore seems sensible to strive for a common 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 was to explore forms of discrimination and the reproduction of normative stereotypes in connection with AI processes and to negotiate ways of reducing this discrimination.
You can find individual contributions from the symposium in our media library.
Program
Thu, 24.06.2021
13:15 Welcome and thematic introduction
- Prof. Dr. Lutz Hagen (Communication Science, TUD), speaker Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden,
- Organizers of the symposium from the Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden
13:45 - 15:15 Queer reproduction and artistic intelligence
Dr. Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss (Cultural and Media Studies, GenderConceptGroup, TUD)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Katrin Köppert (Art History, HGB Leipzig)
Chair: Prof. Dr. Carsten Junker (American Studies, TUD)
15:45 - 17:45 Panel 1: Historicization and situatedness
- Queer AI as material-discursive apparatuses
Ann-Kristin Kühnen (Sociology, TUD) - Learning humanism from cyborgs. AI and psy-borgs with an intersectional awareness of privilege
Sabrina Saase (Psychology, Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin) - Universal Environments. The history of image processing in the FRG 1970-1995
Dinah Pfau (Cultural Studies, Deutsches Museum Munich)
Chair: Ann-Kathrin Koster (Political Science, Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden)
18:15 Keynote 1: 'Probably Approximately Correct': Queer Scientific Logics & Algorithmic Regimes in Modern AI
Prof. Dr. Jutta Weber (Media Sociology, University of Paderborn)
followed by a dialog with Jun.-Prof. Dr. Susann Wagenknecht (Sociology, TUD)
Fri, 25.06.2021
12:45 Welcome and thematic introduction
- Prof. Dr. Susanne Schötz (Social History, TUD), Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, TUD and member of the GenderConceptGroup, TUD
- Kirsten Vincenz (Director of the Office for Academic Heritage, Scientific and Art Collections, TUD), Spokesperson of the Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden
13:15 - 15:15 Panel 2: Disruption & Difference
- The face of women lovers. The return of physiognomics with AI?
Dr. Kris Vera Hartmann (Sociology, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg) - Hack back! The historical exclusion of queerness in AI & strategies for "hacking back"
Natalie Sontopski (Feminist Technology Studies and Sociology, Merseburg University of Applied Sciences) -
K(E)I(NE) GESCHICHTEN - hacking queer-feminist historicization.
Malin Kuht (Technofeminist Art and Pedagogy, Kunsthochschule Kassel)
Moderation: Michael Klipphahn (Art History, Schaufler Kolleg@TUD)
15:45 - 17:45 Panel 3: Emancipation, Representation and Performativity
- Queering Classifications
Dr. Eleanor Drage (Technology Studies, University of Cambridge) - After Pathology. Neurological Histories and Queer Futures of Cognitive Computing
Dr. Johannes Bruder (Design and Media Cultures, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland) - Intelligence as Performance: Integrating Human, Artificial, and Organizational Cognition
R Blair Frost (Information Science, University of Toronto) - State a queerness computing
Valerie Felix (Art and Art Studies, Free University of Brussels)
Chair: Lotte Warnsholdt (Cultural Studies, IFK Vienna)
18:15 Keynote 2: Thinking-with Care. Queering the promise of objectivity in AI
Prof. Dr. Corinna Bath (Computer Science and Gender, Technology & Mobility, TU Braunschweig and Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences)
followed by a dialog with Dr. Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss (Cultural & Media Studies, GenderConceptGroup, TUD)