4S 2023 Open panel - Decolonizing Data Infrastructures: Pluralizing Imaginaries and Histories of Datafication (due May 26)
*** Please feel free to share and circulate to your networks *** -- - *Submission Instructions*: https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions.php <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions.php__;!!DZ3fjg!61oFNb7qv0_AN1qOg6gxGzN8LF0cdrvWrDY7LG9-batN110VGWZPGkNAaFnlXqjpy-HBAZlXAZjrkBlUPWc$> - *Deadline for Abstract *Submissions: May 26, 2023 (notification of acceptance on June 9) 90. Decolonizing Data Infrastructures: Pluralizing Imaginaries and Histories of Datafication <https://streaklinks.com/BexeNN94uPDoRFUKtAnGHDZl/https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.com%2Fv3%2F__https%3A%2F%2F4sonline.org%2Fnews_manager.php%3Fpage%3D31437__%3B%21%21DZ3fjg%2161oFNb7qv0_AN1qOg6gxGzN8LF0cdrvWrDY7LG9-batN110VGWZPGkNAaFnlXqjpy-HBAZlXAZjrFxljjh4%24> *Yousif Hassan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Jane Yeahin Pyo, University of Massachusetts-Amherst;** Paola Ricuarte, Tecnologico de Monterrey; Anita Chan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign* Discourses of decolonization have become salient in the field of AI/Big Data and global circles of responsible innovation. These discourses often take a universalist view of ethics, or imply a vision of AI mono-futurism based on Euro-American centric understandings of the social, political, and economic implications of data-driven developments across different geographies of the Global South and North. This panel attempts to problematize such trends by recovering the pluralistic histories of decolonization across different geographies of knowledge production. We seek nuanced discussions of surveillance, prediction, and segregation economies and resistances to them that are underpinned by alternative ways of knowing and being in the world. We invite methodological, theoretical, and empirical contributions that engage with alternative future imaginations to remake or refuse dominant data-driven imperatives and look for past and present practice from places that have been historically excluded from knowledge-making. This includes work that: - Open up spaces for solidarity and reimagination of shared human futurities that confront and seek to dismantle systems of oppression - Problematize notions of intelligence and ethics based on Western understandings of human difference. - Explore colonial ideologies reproduced through information ecologies and their impacts on marginalized communities - Illuminate Southern epistemologies that contribute to more inclusive and accountable practices or policy around data infrastructures. - Address feminist, racial and social justice approaches to technology to interrogate relations of power across situated data ecologies. - Examine communal approaches to technology and their implications for political economies *Contact: *asaychan@gmail.com, yousif@illinois.edu, forrain526@gmail.com, pricaurt@tec.mx Keywords: Social Movements and STS, Decolonial and Postcolonial STS, Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning, decolonization infrastructures, data/AI colonialism, data solidarities, AI mono-futurisms, socio-technical pluri-histories, political economy of technology, datafication, Indigenous STS, Feminist STS, Race/Black Studies and STS, Social Movements and STS, Transnational STS, coloniality, decolonial computing and media technologies, critical race and media studies, infrastructure studies ᐧ
*** Please feel free to share and circulate to your networks *** -- · Submission Instructions: https://www.easst4s2024.net/callforabstracts/ · Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 12 February 2024 · Conference 16 – 19 July 2024 EASST/4S 2024 - Open Panel Making and Doing AI from Africa: Critical Insights on AI and Data Science Short Abstract: This panel explores the questions of what analytical frameworks for the social study of AI and data might look like when they are shaped by knowledges and experiences from Africa and how understandings of concepts such as intelligence, learning, and computing are contested in an African context. Long Abstract: This panel grapples with two interrelated questions: What might analytical frameworks for the social study of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science look like when they are shaped by knowledges and experiences from Africa? How are understandings of key concepts, such as intelligence, learning, data, digitality, virtuality, artificiality, computing, and so forth contested in an African context? Several scholars in African studies, anthropology, information science, and other allied fields have argued for analyses of technology that do not take for granted systems of knowledge based in Europe and the West (Archambault 2017; Hassan 2022; Newell and Pype 2021; Nyabola 2018). Africans and other communities in the Majority World have been grappling with the social and political effects of AI and data science. Kenyan employees have reported experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of labeling datasets and moderating AI content for OpenAI and Facebook. Mobile phone companies continue to collect and use personal information of their African users while expanding demand for its uses. Several African cities have embarked on projects of ‘smartness,’ including rolling out digital platforms for government services, monitoring environmental change with sensors, and supporting innovation hubs, such as Yabacon Valley and Konza Technopolis. As some quarters embrace digitization, others have warned of a new algorithmic (Birhane 2020) or digital colonization. We invite papers that examine African experiences of AI and data that intervene into discussions about labor, ethics, environmental impact, governance, practices of data collection, and innovation. We encourage, but not limited to, presentations that articulate how African experiences of AI and data might contribute to analytical frameworks for a critical study of AI and data. Convenors: Yousif Hassan (University of Michigan) Kwame Edwin Otu (Georgetown University) Kebene Wodajo (University of St.Gallen) Jia Hui Lee (University of Bayreuth) Laila Hussein Moustafa (University of Illinois) ᐧ
** Please feel free to share and circulate to your networks ** -- · Submission Instructions: https://www.easst4s2024.net/callforabstracts/ · Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 12 February 2024 · Conference 16 – 19 July 2024 EASST/4S 2024 - Open Panel Making and Doing AI from Africa: Critical Insights on AI and Data Science Short Abstract: This panel explores the questions of what analytical frameworks for the social study of AI and data might look like when they are shaped by knowledges and experiences from Africa and how understandings of concepts such as intelligence, learning, and computing are contested in an African context. Long Abstract: This panel grapples with two interrelated questions: What might analytical frameworks for the social study of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science look like when they are shaped by knowledges and experiences from Africa? How are understandings of key concepts, such as intelligence, learning, data, digitality, virtuality, artificiality, computing, and so forth contested in an African context? Several scholars in African studies, anthropology, information science, and other allied fields have argued for analyses of technology that do not take for granted systems of knowledge based in Europe and the West (Archambault 2017; Hassan 2022; Newell and Pype 2021; Nyabola 2018). Africans and other communities in the Majority World have been grappling with the social and political effects of AI and data science. Kenyan employees have reported experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of labeling datasets and moderating AI content for OpenAI and Facebook. Mobile phone companies continue to collect and use personal information of their African users while expanding demand for its uses. Several African cities have embarked on projects of ‘smartness,’ including rolling out digital platforms for government services, monitoring environmental change with sensors, and supporting innovation hubs, such as Yabacon Valley and Konza Technopolis. As some quarters embrace digitization, others have warned of a new algorithmic (Birhane 2020) or digital colonization. We invite papers that examine African experiences of AI and data that intervene into discussions about labor, ethics, environmental impact, governance, practices of data collection, and innovation. We encourage, but not limited to, presentations that articulate how African experiences of AI and data might contribute to analytical frameworks for a critical study of AI and data. Convenors: Yousif Hassan (University of Michigan) Kwame Edwin Otu (Georgetown University) Kebene Wodajo (University of St.Gallen) Jia Hui Lee (University of Bayreuth) Laila Hussein Moustafa (University of Illinois) ᐧ
participants (1)
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Yousif Hassan