Events

AI Talks – IV

“The Real Life ‘Ex Machina’ Is Here”: Restoring the Gap between Science and Fiction

Teresa Heffernan Professor of English, Saint Mary’s University

Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 3 – 5 p.m. Milieux Institute, EV 10.625 (Speculative Life Research Cluster)

As a literary scholar, I have often been struck by the many references to fiction in discussions about the science of artificial intelligence and robotics, but how is fiction mobilized in this field? Why, for instance, are fictional robots so frequently collapsed with the robotics industry? And how do science and fiction differently imagine robots and artificial intelligence? The ubiquitous claims that fiction is coming true demonstrate a lack of understanding of how fiction works and thoroughly obfuscate the AI field, clouding the science and neutering the critical force of fiction. Referring to the new Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society in Toronto, Geoffrey Hinton said recently “My hope is that the Schwartz Reisman Institute will be the place where deep learning disrupts the humanities.” In contrast, this talk asks how the humanities might usefully challenge deep learning.

Teresa Heffernan is Professor of English at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS. Her current research is on the science and fiction of robotics and AI. Her edited collection Cyborg Futures: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics is forthcoming with Palgrave, where she is co-editor (with Cathrine Hasse and Kathleen Richardson) of the Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI book series. Her previous books include Veiled Figures: Women, Modernity, and the Spectres of Orientalism (2016) and Post-Apocalyptic Culture: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Twentieth-Century Novel (2008).

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AI Talks – III

Better, Nicer, Clearer, Fairer: A Critical Assessment of the Movement for Ethical Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Luke Stark – Microsoft Research Montreal

Friday, February 22, 2019

2 – 4 p.m.

Milieux Institute, EV 11.705 (Resource Room)

We use frame analysis to examine recent high-profile values statements endorsing ethical design for artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). Guided by insights from values in design and the sociology of business ethics, we uncover the grounding assumptions and terms of debate that make some conversations about ethical design possible while forestalling alternative visions. Vision statements for ethical AI/ML co-opt the language of some critics, folding them into a limited, technologically deterministic, expert-driven view of what ethical AI/ML means and how it might work.

Luke Stark is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics (FATE) Group at Microsoft Research Montreal, and an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. His work explores the history, ethics and social impacts of computational media and AI. Luke holds a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and an Honours BA and MA from the University of Toronto.

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AI Talks – II

Experiencing Machine Agency

Chris Salter – University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses/Hexagram/Milieux

Tuesday January 29, 2019

3 – 5 p.m.

Milieux Institute, EV 11.705 (Resource Room)

What does it mean to experience a machine “acting” or “performing?” This talk focuses on artistic projects involving machine learning that explore how temporal agency and experience are re-imagined and re-configured. I aim to basically raise a group of questions: Do these technologies actually make possible new aesthetic experiences? Do they transform human perception or displace human makers and perceivers with reduced understandings of human emotion and behavior? What have artists done historically with these technologies and how do they differ from what engineers and computer scientists do?

Chris Salter is an artist, University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses at Concordia University and Co-Director of the Hexagram network for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technology in Montreal. He studied philosophy and economics at Emory University and completed a PhD in directing/dramatic criticism at Stanford University where he also researched and studied at CCMRA. In the 1990s, he collaborated with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballet in Salzburg, Paris, and London. His artistic work has been seen in festivals and exhibitions all over the world including the Venice Biennale. He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press, 2015). He is creative consultant for the Barbican Centre’s (London) 2019 thematic season: Life Rewired. He is currently working on a book focused on how we make sense in an age of sensors, algorithms, machine learning and quantification.

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