Humanising AI Futures: Reimagining data and AI for a future worth wanting
In this half-day symposium we ask: How are data and AI influencing the ways in which we live and relate to one another?
How might data and AI be better designed and governed to support cohesive societies? How can we identify and remove barriers standing in the way of promoting positive social change through these emerging technologies?
The UTS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (UTS FASS) and the UTS Data and AI Ethics Cluster invites you to this half-day symposium to explore these ideas.
Few aspects of everyday life have not been affected by data and AI. Social media sites use it to suggest jobs, partners, and leisure activities. AI and machine learning predict who will learn, steal, or default on loan repayments.
New knowledge infrastructures sort through massive troves of data to help us find needles in haystacks, and make new discoveries about the world. Technological mediation is transforming everyday practices like eating, sleeping, banking, dating, learning, driving, exercise, and even dating.
Technologies designed and deployed with inadequate regard for our social, political, economic, and environmental contexts, risk undermining core values and jeopardise our future. Understanding technology in context is not a “nice-to-have”.
History has shown the damage that technologies can do when they develop unhinged from human values like equality, solidarity and sustainability, or when they fail to account for the people for whom they are ultimately created. A world so steeped in data and AI needs visionary thinkers to shape technologies that will create a better future.
Researchers in the UTS Data and AI Ethics Cluster work to understand how and why people create, use, misuse, and abuse data, AI, and automation technologies.
We work with government, industry, and NGOs to design, deploy, and provide advice on how to govern data and AI technologies. We work across the disciplines, professions, and sectors to investigate technologies both creatively and rigorously.
We put into practice the principles of our public university of technology, and draw on its unique strengths to reimagine how data and AI technologies can foster the common good. Our strengths come from sharing our distinct disciplinary specialties, and our transdisciplinary collaborations.
Conference programme
8.30-9.00: Registration
9.00-9.10: Welcome Prof Alan Davison, Dean, UTS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
9.10-9.25: Opening Prof Kate McGrath, UTS Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
9.25-10.15: Keynote Prof Heather Horst (Western Sydney University - Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society; Director, Institute for Culture and Society):
The Human in the Machine: Understanding Context, Creativity, and Collaboration in AI Futures
10.15-10.55: Panel 1: Understanding data and AI
Chair: Dr Nicole Vincent (Transdisciplinary School)
- Dr Michael Davis and Prof Monica Attard (Centre for Media Transition, FASS):
How journalists use AI - Dr Simon Knight (UTS Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society - CREDS):
How people navigate AI ethics - Dr Adam Berry (UTS Disability Research Network and UTS Data Science Institute):
Intersections between AI and Disability
10.55-11.15: Morning Tea Break
11.15-12.10: Panel 2: Governing data and AI
Chair: Prof Derek Wilding (Centre for Media Transition, UTS Law)
- Prof Simon Buckingham Shum (UTS Connected Intelligence Centre):
Participatory governance of university AI - Prof David Lindsay and Dr Evana Wright (Law):
Regulating Use of Generative AI by Digital Platforms - Implications for News Media - Prof Nicholas Davis (UTS Human Technology Institute):
Corporate governance of AI
12.10-12.50: Panel 3: Reimagining data and AI
Chair: Dr Heather Ford (FASS School of Communication; UTS Data and AI Ethics Cluster, UTS Data Science Institute, and Associate of the Centre for Media Transition)
- Dr Suneel Jethani (School of Communication, Digital and Social Media):
Does AI need a Hippocratic oath? - Dr Monica Monin and Dr Andrew Burrell (School of Design):
The role of creative practice in encountering and critically understanding AI - Dr Michael Falk (School of Communication, Digital and Social Media):
The body of the machine: old ideas about the future of physical AI
12.50-13.00: Close and next steps
The speaker and panel discussions for this event will conclude at 1:00pm followed by a light lunch 1:00-2:00pm.
If you are unable to attend in-person, we will also be streaming this event live via Zoom. Please select "attending online" during registration and the link will be be sent to you a day before the event or in the confirmation email.
| Welcome Professor Alan Davison Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney |
| Opening remarks Professor Kate McGrath Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), University of Technology Sydney |
| Keynote speaker Professor Heather Horst, Western Sydney University |
| Lead Curator Associate Professor Heather Ford Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney |
