WSI Distinguished Lecture with Professor Phil Howard
Event Information
Description
Abstract
Tomorrow’s Leviathan: Intelligent Machines in a Political World
When will an Artificial Intelligence run for elected office? This may seem like a strange provocation-- just an invitation to futurism and speculation. Yet AI systems are rolling out across economic, cultural and political life. Professor Philip Howard explores how AI is changing our experience of politics and rewriting democracy’s “terms of service”.
About the Speaker
Philip Howard is the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and a Statutory Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. His research has demonstrated how new information technologies are used in both civic engagement and social control in countries around the world. His research and opinion writing has been featured in the New York Times, Financial Times, and many other international media outlets. Recently, he was awarded the National Democratic Institute’s 2018 “Democracy Prize” and Foreign Policy magazine named him a “Global Thinker” for pioneering the social science of fake news.
Organiser Web Science Institute, University of Southampton
Organiser of WSI Distinguished Lecture with Professor Phil Howard
The Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton was launched in November 2013 to investigate how the World Wide Web is changing the world and the world is changing the Web.
The Web is the largest information system ever constructed. It is a social and technical phenomenon that has transformed the world and continues to do so in innovative and unexpected ways that will shape our future. We can’t predict how the Web will change our society, but Southampton has taken a lead in developing new forms of economic, social, political, technological and cultural resources based on a deep understanding of the Web's technologies and social construction.
The Web Science Institute (WSI) acts as a focal point, co-ordinating and putting into practice education, research and enterprise initiatives on web-related developments at the University of Southampton. Its aim is to secure a sustainable future for inter-disciplinary research across the University that has Web Science at its core.
