Speaker Biography
Asier Amezaga holds a PhD in Sociology and is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at the University of the Basque Country, as well as a member of the INNOkLab-Laboratory for Social Innovation research group. Following the tradition of science, technology, and society studies, and particularly new materialisms, his research interests focus on mediation processes across different domains, including literature, gastronomy, and cultural and technological infrastructures. He is currently responsible for the collaborative project HarilkAI, aimed at prototyping an artificial intelligence platform for the social sciences and communication studies.
Lecture Time & Venue
Lecture Time: April 8 (Wednesday), 13:00
Lecture Venue: Lecture Hall 136, Teaching Building No. 5, Songjiang Campus
Lecture Title
Fissures in the Epistemic Ground of Artificial Intelligence: Learnings from Academic Research in the Social and Communication Sciences
Lecture Abstract
The proliferation of so-called AI tools is disrupting different social spheres, with a direct impact on the ways of doing and understanding research in academia. The widespread adoption of these technologies carries with it specific ways of representing, codifying, and computing the social, as well as networks of knowledge-power that reposition universities in relations of dependency on large platforms. These processes run the risk of becoming black-boxed and configuring an epistemic ground, with effects on what is thinkable, sayable, and true. This presentation outlines some preliminary findings from an action-research experience that seeks to prototype an AI platform oriented towards digital sovereignty, in a collaboration involving several research groups in the social and communication sciences.
