1.-3.12.2021: Artificial Intelligence as a Concept in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Interdiscipli­nary Online Conference

The first conference of the Schaufler Kolleg@TUD aims to focus on the analytical question of appropriate humanities and social science terms and concepts of artificial intelligence in order to complement the current debates on the social, political as well as cultural effects of the use of AI technologies. In contrast to approaches that discuss mechanisms of reproduction and reinforcement of existing social inequalities and forms of discrimination, examine the fragmenting and polarizing political tendencies in public spaces, or analyze the restriction of individual autonomy of action through the implementation of AI procedures in various spheres of life, the conference seeks to foster an interdisciplinary exchange on terms and concepts in order to ground a better understanding of AI as a real phenomenon.

We aim to complement theoretical approaches that seek to understand the adaptive algorithmic processing of information, the data-shaped extraction of knowledge, and its resulting patterns. To this end, we would like to address the following questions: Which concepts are well-suited for a better understanding of AI, especially with regard to its complex embeddedness in social and cultural realities? How can we work on a common language toward a shared understanding of AI? Which bodies of knowledge can be adopted as a source of inspiration and which concepts are better discarded altogether? Further interdisciplinary investigations into current theoretical approaches seem crucial and like a productive task in order to achieve a deeper analytical understanding of AI as an empirical object of study.