Hello AoIR: We are launching a new research center soon called ESC: The Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing. We are in a "soft opening" phase right now and this Friday we will do our first ESC experiment with a more external-facing event. ESC will be live-streaming Lucy Suchman's talk on image recognition technology and drone warfare. Prof. Suchman will discuss the controversial Pentagon program that led to protests and resignations at Google. Her bio below is too modest: Prof. Suchman is very well-known as an expert on human-computer interaction, is famous for her early work at Xerox PARC, and was recently president of 4S. I wanted to flag this for your attention in case you are interested in watching. Of course you are also invited to forward this announcement as appropriate. Christian -- http://umich.edu/~csandvig/ ----------------------------------------- TITLE Apparatuses of recognition: Google, Project Maven, and targeted killing SPEAKER Lucy Suchman DATE, TIME, AND LOCATION Friday, April 19, 2019; 12pm-1pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC/GMT-4) Light lunch will be served Ehrlicher Room, 3100 North Quad, 105 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 Directions to this room: http://bit.ly/Ehrlicher (follow path #2) Free and open to the public, no RSVP is required. FOR REMOTE PARTICIPANTS VIDEO FROM THIS TALK WILL BE STREAMED LIVE For video, during the event visit this URL: http://umsi.info/suchman ABSTRACT In June of 2018, following a campaign initiated by activist employees within the company, Google announced its intention not to renew a US Defense Department contract for Project Maven, an initiative to automate the identification of military targets based on drone video footage. Defendants of the program argued that that it would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of US drone operations, not least by enabling more accurate recognition of those who are the program’s legitimate targets and, by implication, sparing the lives of noncombatants. But this promise begs a more fundamental question: What relations of reciprocal familiarity does recognition presuppose? And in the absence of those relations, what schemas of categorization inform our readings of the Other? The focus of a growing body of scholarship, this question haunts not only US military operations but an expanding array of technologies of social sorting. Understood as apparatuses of recognition (Barad 2007: 171), Project Maven and the US program of targeted killing are implicated in perpetuating the very architectures of enmity that they take as their necessitating conditions. I close with some thoughts on how we might interrupt the workings of these apparatuses, in the service of wider movements for social justice. SPEAKER BIO Lucy Suchman is Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology at Lancaster University in the UK. Her research interests within the field of feminist science and technology studies are focused on technological imaginaries and material practices of technology design, particularly developments at the interface of bodies and machines. Dr. Suchman’s current research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of human-computer interaction to contemporary warfighting, including the figurations that inform immersive simulations, and problems of “situational awareness” in remotely-controlled weapon systems. Dr. Suchman is concerned with the question of whose bodies are incorporated into these systems, how and with what consequences for social justice and the possibility for a less violent world. -- This talk and the speaker series listed below are part of the "soft opening" of ESC: The Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing. http://esc.umich.edu/ This event is generously supported by the School of Information; the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research; and the Department of Communication Studies in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. Event details on the Web: http://esc.umich.edu/event/critical-x-design-lucy-suchman/ A PDF flyer for this series: http://esc.umich.edu/ESC_Events_Flyer_Fall_2019.pdf ________________________________ All events in this series: CRITICAL x DESIGN: A new event series about ethics, society, and computing Mar 20 (Wed) 3-4pm, 3100 North Quad, snacks provided Katherine Behar: Digitally Divided: The Art of Algorithmic (In)Decision Mar 27 (Wed) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided Ben Grosser: Less Metrics, More Rando: (Net) Art as Software Research Apr 11 (Thu) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided Joy Rankin: Old, Raw, or New: A (New?) Deal for the Digital Age Apr 19 (Fri) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided Lucy Suchman: Apparatuses of Recognition: Google, Project Maven, and Targeted Killing (*) (†) ________________________________ *The Ethics and Politics of AI: A Week of Events* Apr 19 (Fri) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided Lucy Suchman: *Apparatuses of Recognition: Google, Project Maven, and Targeted Killing* (*) (†) Apr 22 (Mon) 3-4pm, 3100 North Quad, snacks provided Anna Lauren Hoffmann: *Data Violence: Discourse and Justice in a Datafied World* Apr 25 (Thu) 12-1pm, 3100 North Quad, light lunch provided Tarleton Gillespie: *Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media* (*) ________________________________ (*) -- This event will be live streamed. (†) -- This event is in *both* the "CRITICAL x DESIGN" and "The Ethics and Politics of AI" event series. All talks will be recorded, pending speaker approval. *All talks will be held in the Ehrlicher Room, 3100 North Quad*, 105 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 Directions to this room: http://bit.ly/Ehrlicher (follow path #2) Free and open to the public, no RSVP is required. These events are generously supported by the School of Information; the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research; and the Department of Communication Studies in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.