Hello AoIR Friends! ***event announcement w/ the usual apologies for crossposting *** On March 17, I’ll launch the first of a series of meet-up events at Utrecht University as part of my new initiative, the Futures + Literacies Lab. We’re delighted to invite the amazing Elizabeth Losh, who will give a talk entitled AI Literacy and Public Memory: Generating Future Pasts, followed by discussion among participants. Please join if you’re in the area, and if there’s enough interest, we can livestream the talk. When: Monday, March 17, 15:00-16:45 Where*: Room 0.04, Muntstraat 2a, Utrecht University, 3512EV Utrecht, the Netherlands) RSVP: Yes, please register for this event here: [1]https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7 Event is in person, but if you can’t be here in person and still want to attend? Register, and indicate this in the registration and we’ll try to accommodate! (*location may change depending on number of participants ) Talk title: AI Literacy and Public Memory: Generating Future Pasts Featuring special guest: Professor Elizabeth Losh, William & Mary University, USA Abstract: As new machine learning technologies are created to predict the future, they may also destabilize the past. Generative AI has been known to fabricate quotations from historical records and change depictions of prior events. Even when these instances are rare, they undermine the stability and coherence of public memory. For example, Google’s Gemini produced misleading images when prompted to produce illustrations for “a US Senator from the 1800s” or “a 1943 German soldier." In response to the controversy, the company’s senior vice president admitted that the system would “occasionally generate embarrassing, inaccurate or offensive results.” Generative AI may also perpetuate biased narratives through reliance on information and opinions already in circulation, rather than drawing from new research and marginalized or historically suppressed perspectives, and it may neglect intersectional understandings of identity. However, it is also important to highlight creative uses of these technologies to imagine other possible origin stories that emphasize the agency and resilience of people of the past, the richness of “little data," and innovative approaches to speculative nonfiction. This talk will feature experiments with generative AI by galleries, libraries, archives, and museums to explore the making of future pasts. About the speaker: Elizabeth Losh is the Duane A. and Virginia S. Dittman Professor of American Studies and English with a specialization in New Media Ecologies at William & Mary, USA, where she also directs the Equality Lab. Losh is well known for her research about communities that produce, consume, and circulate digital content. Much of this body of work concerns the rising influence of AI and simulation technologies, the legitimation of political institutions through digital evidence, representations of war, violence, and disease in social media and games, and online discourse about human rights.Previously she directed the Culture, Art, and Technology Program at the University of California, San Diego. She currently co-chairs the Modern Language Association - Conference on College Composition and Communication Joint Task Force on Writing and AI. Losh is the is the author of Selfie Democracy: The New Digital Politics of Disruption and Insurrection (MIT Press, 2022), Hashtag (Bloomsbury, 2019), The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University (MIT Press, 2014), and Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press, 2009). She also edited the collection MOOCs and Their Afterlives: Experiments in Scale and Access in Higher Education (University of Chicago, 2017) and co-edited Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities (Minnesota, 2018) with Jaqueline Wernimont. When: Monday, March 17, 15:00-16:45 Where*: Muntstraat 2a, 0.04* RSVP: Yes, please register for this event here: [2]https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7 All the best, and of course, if you have questions, feel free to email me directly, Annette Annette N. Markham (she/her) | Chair Professor of Media Literacies and Public Engagement | Utrecht University | [3]Department of Media and Culture Studies | Faculty of Humanities | Muntstraat 2a, 3512 EV Utrecht | Room 2.04 | [4]a.n.markham@uu.nl | [5]www.uu.nl/staff/anmarkham | professional website: [6]https://annettemarkham.com References 1. https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7 2. https://forms.gle/RqbY41SLb7BT37HE7 3. https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/department-of-media-and-culture-studies 4. mailto:a.n.markham@uu.nl 5. http://www.uu.nl/staff/anmarkham 6. https://annettemarkham.com/