THE FUTURE OF AI: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ASPECTS

Online lecture series

Helga Nowotny (ETH Zurih)

In AI We Trust. Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms

One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for social behaviour, for our institutions and what it means to be human. At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. Science and technology have enabled us to embark on an open-ended co-evolutionary path with the machines created by us – we are well-advised to have wisdom on our side.

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, founding member and former President of the European Research Council. She has held teaching and research positions at universities and research institutions in several European countries and continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at European and international level, such as member of the Board of Trustees of the Falling Walls Foundation, Berlin, Vice-President of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, member of the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. She received multiple honorary doctorates including from the University of Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Her latest publication “In AI we Trust. Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms” has been published by Polity Press in September 2021. Le macchine di Dio. Gli algoritmi predittivi e l’illusione del controllo has been published by LUISS University Press in May 2022. Spanish, Chinese and German translations of the book are underway.

This lecture is a part of The Future of AI: Social and Cultural Aspects online lecture series that brings international experts to discuss the philosophy of AI, AI and post-digital aesthetics, cultural impacts of AI, AI (in) art, non-human agency, AI-driven social transformations, and, more generally, our coexistence with AI and digital technologies in all aspects of daily life. The series is organized by the Digital Society Lab [DigLab] of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.