Critical AI & Crisis Interrogatives (CRAI-CIS) Seminar

Monthly dialogues and critical perspectives on artificial intelligence, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), participatory design, and crisis-related research for societal impact.

The CRAI-CIS Seminars engage emerging work across critical AI, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), participatory design, and crisis-related research. The seminars seek to invoke dialogues on how computational, human-centred, and social sciences perspectives can offer new insights and methods for inclusive approaches and critical inquiry with societal impact.

Each event features invited speakers who share distinct perspectives, ongoing research, methods, and challenges for future work in a 45 minute talk, followed by Q&A and space for mingling and networking. The talks will be recorded for open access in the future.

Lear more about the seminar series →

Minna Ruckenstein: How to make the most of machines?

Time: April 13, 2022, 13:30–15:00
Venue: Computer Science Building, room T5 (Konemiehentie 2) and online

Abstract: 

Humans and machines are inseparable in the ’Real AI for Real People in the Real World’, but we tend to pay too little attention to the work that humans do for the machines. In order to build societally robust algorithmic systems, the maintenance and repair work that such systems require needs to be acknowledged, alongside appropriate divisions of labor between humans and machines. Ideally, algorithmic systems combine the strengths of machines with those of humans. In order to get there, however, we have to learn what those strengths are, in particular situations, and how to make the most of them.

This talk outlines a research approach that aims to re-humanize algorithmic systems. Such re-humanizing is not a new endeavor, but it is needed with ever-increasing urgency. With the spread of algorithmic systems from media and health to urban planning and education, algorithms have drifted out of the computational realm to shape the everyday. Credit scoring, hiring practices, allocation of social benefits, health care diagnostics, and student evaluations can now rely on algorithmic logics. The focus on re-humanizing emphasizes that we need to stay close to how algorithmic systems shape and seek to transform everyday lives and societal structures. Methodological choices are at the core of re-humanizing efforts, as they will influence how we think about present and future possibilities in relation to technologies. When people play the leading role in our inquiry, we can trace their influences, explore their practices, and eventually sketch alternative futures from the ground up.

Speaker Bio: 

Minna Ruckenstein works as professor at the Consumer Society Research Centre. She directs The Datafied Life Collaboratory that studies processes of digitalization/datafication by highlighting emotional, social, political and economic aspects of current and emerging data practices. The disciplinary underpinnings of the work range from anthropology of technology, science and technology studies and communication to consumer economics.

Currently funded research projects focus on re-humanizing automated decision-making, algorithmic culture, and everyday engagements with algorithmic systems in Helsinki and in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Ongoing cases studies mainly deal with everyday and organizational aspects of datafication, in fields ranging from content moderation and advertising to digital health, insurance, and social work.