New Article "Neural 'freedoms'" of Orit Halpern published in the Book "Queer Reflections on AI"

Abstract of this Book: "Queer Reflections on AI"

This volume, published by Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/schauflerlab, offers a socio-technical exploration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it reflects and reproduces certain normative representations of gender and sexuality, to ultimately guide more diverse and radical discussions of life with digital technologies. It summarizes the lab´s 2021 conference “Queer AI. On the coming out of smart machines”.

Moving beyond the examination of empirical examples and technical solutions, the book approaches the relationship between queerness and AI from a theoretical perspective that posits queer theory as central to understanding AI differently. The chapters pose questions about the politics and ethics of machine embodiments and data imaginaries on the one hand, and about technical possibilities for a production of social identities characterised by shifting diversity and multiplicity on the other, as they are mediated by and through digital technologies.

Transgressing disciplinary boundaries to engage a diversity of conceptual tools, critical approaches, and theoretical traditions, this book will be an important resource for students and researchers of gender and sexuality, new media and digital cultures, cultural theory, art and visual culture, and AI.

Article by Prof. Dr. Orit Halpern:

Neural “freedoms”: Population, choice, and machine learning

Neural “freedom” Contemporary American political economy integrates older ideas of popu-lation, race, and species survival inherited from the 18th and 19th centuries with new assemblages of technology and epistemology. Characterised by slogans such as “Make America Great,” attacks on reproductive rights and freedoms such as the recent Dobbs decision, apocalyptic and evangelical religious fundamentalism, and violent forms of xenophobia and racism, the current Right, and particularly the Republican Party, appears to extend older histories of race, nation, and sex, while using the latest in media technics and propaganda... 

Full text "Neural freedoms"
Further information about this book in German