Overview

The University of Cambridge is hosting a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Histories of AI: A Genealogy of Power from May 2020–December 2021. The Seminar is co-hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the Faculty of English. Sawyer Seminars support comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments. This Seminar aims to develop an international interpretive community capable of offering a structural, historical perspective on the promises and problematics of AI and machine learning.

From 12-16 July 2021, the HoAI Summer School will convene a community of scholars from around the globe interested in offering historical perspectives on the promises and problematics of AI and machine learning. Participants are welcome from a variety of fields and backgrounds including activists, AI practitioners, artists, citizens, critical theorists, decolonial scholars, historians of science and technology, and scholars of race, gender, and disability studies. We will engage in critical and comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments in AI technologies to investigate their entanglement in systems of politics, power and control. Four themes guide our considerations: hidden labour, encoded behaviour, cognitive injustice and disingenuous rhetoric. These themes direct our inquiry without narrowing the contributions we plan to support.

Run of Show

This Summer School will be entirely virtual. We will host two sessions per day at hours designed to accommodate participants from a range of time zones. The first is a workshop that will feature a discussion of draft contributions accepted for our journal special issue proposal. Each author’s contribution will be introduced by another contributor, followed by a general discussion inviting participants' feedback on these papers individually and collectively. To access the paper drafts please email us at . The second session is a keynote lecture on a working draft of new research followed by engagement with respondents and Q&A.

On 12 July, the opening day, we will host a social 'Meet and Greet' Poster Session from 13:00-14:30 BST in which members of the community can meet each other and learn about each others' research projects. On 16 July, we will host a closing event that allows for social exchange and celebration of the Seminar.

12 July - Monday

13:00-14:30 BST - Meet and Greet' E-Poster Sessions

See Posters here!

Marina Hassapopoulou (New York University)

Back to the Future: Exploring Artificial Intelligence’s Creative Potential through Film Historiography

Ranjini Raghavendra (Public Health Foundation of India)

Controversies around Covid-19 contact tracing app in India

Adriana da Rosa Amaral and Caroline Govari (UNISINOS University, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos)

Music & AI in Brazilian Scholarship: first observations

Hugo Felipe Idárraga Franco (Universidad de los Andes)

Critics on classification and control in artificial intelligence artistic practices

David I. Stokes (UCLA)

Experts Seeking Consensus: Scientific Professionalization, Collaboration and Processes

Ted Pedersen (University of Minnesota, Duluth)

Automatic Recognition of Hate Speech on Twitter - The Case of Ilhan Omar and Islamophobia

15:00-17:00 BST - Keynote by Prof. Wendy Chun (Simon Fraser University)

Respondent: Prof. Joy Rohde (University of Michigan)

Respondent: Prof. Ted Pedersen (University of Minnesota, Duluth)

13 July - Tuesday

13:00-14:30 BST - Workshop 1 'Pre 1960s: Origins?'

Chair: Richard Staley (University of Cambridge)

Sananda Sahoo (Western University)

Multiple Lives of Mahalanobis’ Biometric Data Travel as Biovalue to India’s Welfare State

Commentator: Aaron Mendon-Plasek (Columbia University)

Bo An (Yale University / Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

A Critical History of Early Artificial Intelligence in the People's Republic of China (1950s-1980s)

Commentator: Flora Lysen (Maastricht University)

Aaron Mendon-Plasek (Columbia University)

How the idea of creativity in 1950s machine learning produces social and political possibility

Commentator: Jonnie Penn (University of Cambridge)

Jonnie Penn (University of Cambridge)

Animo Nullius: Locating AI’s Foundations in the Colonial Doctrine of Discovery

Commentator: Bo An (Yale University / Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

Flora Lysen (Maastricht University)

Histories of AI in image-based medicine: diagnostic assemblages in radiology (1950s – present)

Commentator: Sananda Sahoo (Western University)

15:00-17:00 BST - Keynote by Prof. Ruha Benjamin (Princeton University)

Respondent: Prof. Ronald R. Kline (Cornell University)

Respondent: Dr. Clarissa Ai Ling Lee (Universiti Malaya)

14 July - Wednesday

13:00-14:30 BST - Workshop 2 '1960-1970s: Interactions'

Chair: Matthew Jones (Columbia University)

Andrew Meade McGee (Carnegie Mellon University)

Institutions and AI: Organizational Capacity, Structures of Power, and Sites of Discourse in the Development of Artificial Intelligence as a Field, 1960-2020

Commentator: Sam Schirvar (University of Pennsylvania)

Rosamund Powell (University of Cambridge)

Positivism, power and politics: an exploration of disingenuous rhetoric in 1970s social critiques of machine intelligence

Commentator: Andrew Meade McGee (Carnegie Mellon University)

Olessia Kirtchik (HSE University, Moscow)

The Soviet experiences with AI: if a machine cannot “think”, can it “rule”?

Commentator: Rosamund Powell (University of Cambridge)

Sam Schirvar (University of Pennsylvania)

From Man-Machine to Human-Computer Interaction: Psychologists, Secretaries, and the Personal Computer at Xerox PARC, 1973-1983

Commentator: Olessia Kirtchik (HSE University, Moscow)

15:00-17:00 BST - Keynote by Prof. Kalindi Vora (UC Davis)

Respondent: Prof. Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University)

Respondent: Os Keyes (University of Washington)

15 July - Thursday

13:00-14:30 BST - Workshop 3 '1980-1990s: Disciplining ideologies'

Chair: Stephanie Dick (University of Pennsylvania)

Michael Castelle (University of Warwick)

Are Neural Networks Neoclassical? The Economic Origins of Contemporary AI

Commentator: Harry Potts (University of Cambridge)

Luke Stark (Western University)

Artificial Intelligence and the Conjectural Sciences

Commentator: Michael Castelle (University of Warwick)

Harry Potts (University of Cambridge)

Reading Machines: Bell Labs and the Neural Network ‘Revolution’

Commentator: Youjung Shin (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Youjung Shin (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Scientific Pluralism and New Possibilities of AI?: The Rise and Fall of 'Soft Science' in South Korea in the 1990s

Commentator: Luke Stark (Western University)

15:00-17:00 BST - Keynote by Prof. Ulises A. Mejias (SUNY Oswego)

Respondent: Prof. Hunter Heyck (University of Oklahoma)

16 July - Friday

13:00-14:30 BST - Workshop 4 - 2000-2020s: Search and monitor

Chair: Syed Mustafa Ali (The Open University), Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)

Alexa Hagerty (University of Cambridge), Florencia Aranda, Diego Jemio

Algorithmic Expectations: Foresight and Predestination in a Predictive Model for Teenage Pregnancy

Commentator: Fernando Delgado (Cornell University)

Fernando Delgado (Cornell University)

Domain Search: Prospecting the Professions

Commentator: Simon Taylor (UNSW Sydney, Australia)

Simon Taylor (UNSW Sydney, Australia)

Agri-cultures of AI: how monitoring animals optimises AI labour management strategies.

Commentator: Bruno Moreschi (University of São Paulo, Brazil)

Bruno Moreschi (Group on Artificial Intelligence and Art (GAIA) and Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism - University of São Paulo, Brazil)

Beyond visual surfaces – What and how to see the images that train commercial Computer Vision

Commentator: Alexa Hagerty (University of Cambridge)

15:00-17:00 BST - Closing Meeting

A celebration of the Seminar's activities over the past year. We will enjoy a variety of artistic works chosen or created by Seminar participants that inform understandings of AI.

Histories of Artificial Intelligence: 2021 Summer School